Yeah, I realized this one time while watching a documentary on some tribes hunting methods. They were hunting by running after the animal until it basically dropped from exertion. Hunters didn’t sprint. They paced but continuously and simply followed animals foot prints and droppings. They said these hunters would run for many hours each time. And sometimes they’d even be unsuccessful.

> Our bodies are mechanically optimized for running at every level

My flat feet (and those of my mom, and those of one of her parents, ad infinitum) would beg to differ lol

Also, most of the energy our bodies burn to run just turns into heat, it's all very inefficient... even if sweating itself works pretty well, and even if our heat tolerance is high assuming we have a source of fresh water

I had flat feet most of my life, until I started a 5x per week yoga practice (ashtanga based). One day about a year into it I noticed that I had defined arches, something I hadn’t expected at all. All those one leg standing balancing poses really develops your ankles, knees, and feet.

Some years later when I started running with typical arch supporting running shoes, picked out for me at a specialty running store where they record your stride etc, I developed pretty bad plantar fasciitis as soon as I started hitting 8k on my runs. Swapped them out for zero drop Altras and I haven’t had issues since.

All that is to say our feet are pretty well designed as long as you give it the strengthening it needs. You should take care of your feet, but not coddle them, is how I’ve come to view it.

My wife's a podiatrist. I can conjure what I've heard her tell a thousand people over the years: invest in arch supports. Shoot for the ones that run about $50 and are rigid. Don't start with the $500 custom ones, and skip the $10 soft ones you see at the pharmacy. Go to REI or a running shop or a sporting goods store and get those instead.

My knees freaking killed me when I was running. I started using the supports my wife bought for me and it instantly improved, and far beyond any placebo effect. Before: my knees ached after I ran 100% of the time. Now: they never ache anymore.

Counterpoint: I am personally skeptical about the long term value of arch supports. The reason is that while they can undoubtably help with short term pain, they also inhibit strength development and introduce an unnecessary dependency (kind of like a software library). I am not disagreeing with your experience or discouraging people from using supports to deal with injuries. I am just questioning making yourself reliant upon them.

About 20 years ago, I was riding my bike everywhere and hardly walking. I went on a trip to NYC and was walking 10+ miles a day. I developed severe shooting pains in my feet. Getting some supports helped dramatically and so I started wearing them whenever I wore shoes.

I did this for about 15 years and completely swore by arch supporting shoes. Then, one day I was playing basketball and landed on someone's foot going for a layup. My foot basically folded in half in the opposite direction of the arch. This was a major injury and I could not walk at all for a week and it took multiple years before I stopped feeling pain regularly in that foot.

After the injury, I completely stopped wearing arch supports. I had a theory that my feet had been weakened by using them and that this weakness was the underlying reason for the severity of my injury. For the last few years, I have averaged about eight miles of walking a day and mostly wear zero drop minimal shoes. I have developed the ability to run on concrete with them, though I do not particularly enjoy this (primarily because my running efficiency is poor).

If I were running a marathon, I would certainly wear shoes with padding, but I don't find much padding or support necessary or even desirable for brisk walking for hours at a time. And for almost 15 years, I never left the house without bulky supports.

I believe you are correct and I believe that what you are expressing can be generalized - and distilled - as the following:

Bracing a body part weakens that body part in the long run.

Anybody who has ever had a cast on their arm knows this firsthand.

Yep. I walk barefoot everywhere I can and if not, then I wear sandals. I was having terrible pain in my feet when I was wearing “shoes with support”, which went away once I started wearing sandals and going barefoot everywhere. If I run I run with glove shoes or whatever they’re called nowadays.

> glove shoes

Probably Vibram FiveFingers

also possibly the least attractive footwear one could use, IMHO, but eh

I have them, they're actually litteraly attractive to pople that won't judge you by your looks. People I hang out with hardly notice them.

Also: wearing them makes you understand that you wear gloves when everyone is stuck at mittens.

How the hell do you find time for eight miles of walking a day? I mean, that's just shy of a third of a marathon! I can only assume you're independently wealthy, retired, or have no kids.

(Beleaguered parent of a toddler here struggling to find ANY workout time, or the energy for it! It's killing me, literally and figuratively)

I see you! Don’t worry, you’ll have time again. Micro workouts (like literally, a single set of something during a break at work) help some, but mainly I try to console myself with all the lifting of kids and playtime involving physical activity. You’ll have time to yourself again soon, though, as they get bigger!

I used to wear custom orthotics for a lot of growing up and into my early 20's. I definitely feel like it was something that I really could have gotten away without having if I instead had better shoes, and strengthened the muscles more. Unfortunately even the physiotherapist I had when I was young advised orthotics and didn't seek to treat the strength issue. Of course I was kid and myself and my parents were just doing what the experts told us.

A lot of my problem also related to back pain when growing up, and I realized also in my 20's how much going to the gym helped with the back pain. As my back got stronger via strength training, I no longer suffered from back pain. Additionally I invested more in things like a good office chair at home and ensured I had a good one at work.

Overall I no longer have back problems and no longer require any inserts in my shoes.

Better yet, get stability/motion control shoes. Don't skimp on running shoes and be prepared to try a few different types for extended periods of time before you settle on one.

I found that there is only one type of shoe on the market that prevents me from getting injured (Asics Gel-Kayano). Everything else - low drop, high drop, HOKA, Brooks, Nike, even Asics' own GT-2000s - is a quick route to knee injury for me. And I don't need arch supports when using the Kayanos, even though I am a very clear overpronator.

Absolutely. And what works best is incredibly personal. My wife tends to run in Nikes because others don’t fit and move just right for her. Meanwhile, I’ve never found a pair of Nikes I could stand, but Brooks Adrenaline give me superpowers.

Don’t ever get what someone else likes instead of what you prefer. Your feet aren’t theirs.

Motion control were found to cause higher injury rates than either neutral/stability in this study https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/45/9/715

Matches my own experience, first season of cross country in HS I had neutral shoes and they were perfect, went back for new shoes next season and they put me in motion control shoes which gave me instant knee pain.

OK, here is a study with 10x the sample size reading out the opposite effect: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26746907/

The point of my post was that these experiences are highly personal and specific to your physiology. Different shoe models labeled the same type can have drastically different dynamics depending on their design and the specifics of your gait and strike. If you have pain or injuries, don't trust the studies, try different shoes and cross-training/stretching techniques until you find what works for you.

AND YOU DON'T NEED TO RUN to start with.

And if you are overweight and sedentary DON'T RUN TO GET INTO SHAPE.

Walking, hiking, swimming, biking, and weight training. Mix all of it so you get cross training effects and distribute stress across many domains.

Running is, by the standards of the statistical hole America is in terms of obesity, an "advanced" activity. We're talking about something that involves a stress increase of 2.5x to 4.x over walking.

Now consider that an obese person with an extra 50 lbs of fat is on their body. Running will be an extra 200 lbs of stress on your feet, and none of that fat tissue is absorbing impact or stabilizing that impact. And on top of it, the fat will disrupt the neuro-biomechanical flow of your neuromuscular system, making you less coordinated and therefore also harder to absorb the impact.

As I said elsewhere: use GLP-1 to get the fat down and simultaneously employ a gentle ROUTINE activity program that morphs into more and more exercise and exercise variety.

"And if you are overweight and sedentary DON'T RUN TO GET INTO SHAPE."

This. Many people aren't in good enough shape to run. And if they do run their form is often terrible.

There was a website years ago at WasWayFat.com about a guy that lost a ton of weight just stepping on an aerobic stair in his home.

Wayback machine has it: https://web.archive.org/web/20170710225625/http://www.wasway...

It can be really hard to get cardio without running. I still agree despite that.

It is, it is so low-cost (running shoes) and available (walk out the door).

And doing it is close to the maximum calories you will burn per unit of effort and time.

Rucking will get you your cardio

Isn't this similarly hard on your joints to running, though, which is part of the problem with running when you're overweight? Or am I overestimating the joint impact?

If you are overweight enough that running carries a significant risk of joint issues then just walking at speed is likely to be enough cardio for you.

Peter Attia in his book "Outlive" recommends exclusively zone 2 training for sedentary beginners: half an hour, 3x a week, of light to moderate exercise (e.g. on a stationary bike), for half a year or so before more strenuous exercise is added.

My feet seemed to get better after I started running. First time without pain in some time. Even walking made them hurt before. It’s taken a few months to build up though.

BMI of 29 starting so not obese but overweight and running has me down at 27 now.

What the brand of arch support are you using?

Sole Supports work for me, but it’s different for everyone.

My friend has fixed his flat feet by focusing on yoga poses that engage the “knife edge” of his feet (ie: the outside). It took some time but he reckons it’s very noticeable. Maybe worth a try?

It worked for me, it's not even about specific poses, you need to consciously keep your ankle from collapsing and yoga helps with that.

I’ve read in a few places that the flat feet comes from wearing shoes that don’t allow your toes to splay, which causes the muscles that create the arch to atrophy. Not a scientist and have never had flat feet, so can’t confirm, but I recently started wearing zero drop shoes and definitely feel a healthy soreness as my feet get stronger.

Also when you run don't land flat-footed or heel-first. Land on the front part ("ball") of your foot, this lets your calf muscle absorb the shock, rather than sending the shock straight up your tibia into your knee.

This was a total game changer for me when running. I would always develop some sort of knee pain at some point but since making a very minor change to how I land my foot, I am running without any.

Make sure to start and transition slowly though as there are warnings about injuring your Achilles and other muscles in your calf if you start off too aggressively.

Nobody claimed we are intelligently designed.

Evolution is not perfect. We are still better at running long distances for long stretches of time than any other animal.

> Evolution is not perfect. We are still better at running long distances for long stretches of time than any other animal.

Not really. We are on par with many animals, or rather they are on par with us, with some tradeoffs on both sides (e.g. humans are better in hotter weather).

Wolves, wild dogs, horses (and other fast hoofed herbivores) are all roughly on par in pure ability to run.

What made us even more successful is the ability to plan and organize (wolves have this), sweat (only humans can do full-body) and use of tools.

Evolution is also just optimizing you to live long enough to reproduce and then help your kids get well set up. So, it is fine if your legs start to go in your 40’s. You can help chase down the antelopes ‘till then, then go weave baskets and watch the fire for a decade or so, then die in your 50’s.

Actually, it doesn’t seem like a horrible life, but I think we’re hoping to stick around a little longer.

We're optimized for walking, not sprinting.

And if you think our moving->sweating is bad, check out horses and dogs.

Flat feet are often a problem of foot muscles and posture. Physiotherapy and strengthening your feet can most likely work wonders even if your family has genetic predisposition for the problem.

Most energy used for any work (in the physics sense) ends up as heat, eventually.

I mean, would you prefer we add in some evolutionary pressure?

Note also that there are numerous champion runners with flat feet.

One contributing factor to human weight gain when given a non-limited supply of food is apparently the knocking-out of the gene that produces uricase, which pretty much every other animal has (and they usually don't get fat, even when given unlimited food supply). Not a single human has a working uricase gene. It has been hypothesized that famines throughout human history (there's your "evolutionary pressure") have contributed to this.

My point is that selection pressures do not always lead to optimal outcomes...

https://chatgpt.com/share/688e4822-4e44-8004-9625-21a254fa02...

If you'd been running barefoot as a kid as nature evolved us for you likely wouldn't have the issue.

How much of that is due to only using two limbs? Which also makes us slower I guess.

There is actually some evidence that, in a sprint, humans might be able to run faster on all 4 limbs than on 2

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27446911/

The article was published in 2016, and the authors extrapolated from 7 data points (!) over about 7 years of progress in the world record. This is obviously insufficient to project 30 years into the future.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27446911/#&gid=article-figur...

That record progressed

  2008 18.58
  2015 15.71 

2.87 seconds over 7 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenichi_Ito_(athlete)

If we check in on more recent progress since then, we find the current record is 15.66 set in 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20241222175947/https://www.guinn...

Another 7 years, for an improvement of 0.05 seconds, or about 850 years of linear improvement to reach Bolt's 9.58 seconds.

Anyone wanting to bet on beating Bolt by 2048?

>some evidence

https://xkcd.com/605/

I think it's sort of reasonable in this case, given there's very little investment in running on 4 limbs, while nation states fund track and field programs to the tune of millions of dollars. That the small number of 4 limbed runners are making progress against 2 limbed runners does indicate it might allow higher peak performance. Of course, 4 limbed runners have probably already plucked the low hanging fruit in performance improvements, but the researchers aren't projecting linear improvement

Don't sprinters start with 4 limbs on the ground? The advantage of the 4 limbs seems to be gone by the second step.

Trail runners often run with poles on up or down hills. Not sure about top speed, but from experience the poles definitely help with endurance.

It's a tradeoff. Having two general purpose limbs is useful for all sorts of things, but not escaping scary things, so endurance can somewhat make up for that.

Two limbs combined with afro hair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro) which acted as a sun shade allowed humans to move faster and longer at midday in Africa than most of their prey. Lack of sun hitting the body being upright plus sweat from the largely hairless skin made them overheat less than the prey.

"We have ostensibly spent much of our evolutionary budget on the ability to run ~indefinitely no matter what."

This appears to be the case and this idea is explained, in-depth, in the excellent book:

_Born to Run_

... by Christopher McDougall.

I highly recommend it.

A few books have changed my life, Born to Run is one of them.

> Compared to virtually any other animal, we can vastly outperform them in the most arduous environments. Our bodies are mechanically optimized for running at every level.

I'm not sure from where you got this because any documentary/book/article and simply real life experiences related to this subject states the opposite (take a common animal such as a dog as an example)

Have you ever went running with a dog? Dogs can go fast over a short distance but they overheat quickly. People just keep on running way past the time the dog has collapsed.

This is not an obscure theory, it's called the "Endurance running hypothesis" [1], and it does seem that humans are one of very few species exceptionally well-adapted to very long-distance running (though dogs and wolves are another one). The idea is that ancient hominids in Africa practiced "persistence hunting"[2], where they would hunt e.g. antelopes and similar species by repeatedly chasing them down. The prey would sprint off when humans got close, but doing this repeatedly causes the animal to exhaust their energy or die of heat stroke, humans being much better adapted to running for many hours on end (this kind of hunting is known to happen to this day). It's plausible that persistence hunting also contributed to evolving our other super-powers, as it requires good spatial awareness, tool-use and communication.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting

This is specifically about long distance running, where basically no animal can keep up.

A key hunan advantage was persistence hunting - track and run after a deer (or similar) prey. Tgey can burst outrun the human, burt hemshe keeps on running, eventually, often after double-digit kilometers, the human can just trot up to the exhausted nimal and kill it. That's what the tendons and evaporative cooling do.

There's a famous Uktramarathon race, iirc, the Western States 100, 100 miles in the Sierra mountains that was a horse race, until some people started running without the horse, and winning.

“Real life experience” tells me I’ll run any dog into the ground if it’s over 50F. Cooler than that? The dog still better be part of a trained sledding team.

Ask anyone in the army how all those years of running drills have affected them as they got older. It’s not so rosy. Lots of knee problems in that group. Above average practice of running throughout life also increases likelihood of requiring pacemakers later in life.

This is a gross simplification on both accounts.

US Army veterans do have a higher rate of arthritis but their days are quite different from the "run 3-5 days a week" that most people think of when talking about recreational runners.

And the pacemaker comment stood out so I did a bit of digging and found a study [1] you might be referring to. Again, the effects were strong only in the heavy-duty-exercisers/pro/semi-pro cross-country skiier group. Additionally, this didn't offset the gains to cardiovascular or mortality risk - that group was still "healthier."

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39101218/

People in the army are also regularly carrying an extra 50 pound ruck, 25 pounds of body armor, and enough other various and sundry items to add up to about 100+ lbs of total kit. That's probably what's destroying people's knees more than the running by itself

Coupled with weeks if not more of regularly scheduled sleep deprivation so you never actually recover from any of those hard days.

It's more that the military's goal isn't to produce adults that are indefinitely healthy, but rather a robust geopolitical deterrent that only requires its employees to be physical capable for about twenty years, after which their service life is over. Running is not the issue. Even a car designed for driving can be driven irresponsibly.

I can’t be sure, but my impression is that army drills (1) push uniformly (rather than let you improve at your own pace) and (2) often involve carrying your kit, which is 20-40lbs. Neither of these is similar to the kind of running GP describes, namely unburdened, at a comfortable speed, over ~arbitrary distances.

I was going to say, I don't believe that sitting on a chair for 40 hours a week is great but I've also never seen so many wounded and disabled people than with people heavily into sports.

It's possible to do too much of anything.

Too much but also sometimes in a wrong way or with bad luck.

Army personnel in general is unnaturally beefy and I'm sure these running drills often are done carrying load, no?

Humans are evolved to run, but not to have heavy frames and not carrying material for fighting wars.

Hm, I'm skeptical. I think the data might be a little equivocal on that one.

I'm also part of the barefoot running army and tend to think that the braking forces from shoes have a role to play in knee problems (I personally stopped having them when I started running barefoot so that's where my bias comes from.)

I guess there are a lot of confounding variables in there, having taken up running a few years ago my resting heart rate is very low, and I'm far more aware of it than a non-runner. I suppose folks with a family history of heart problems may take up exercise to try and get ahead of it too.

Older soccer players, and other professional sport players have physical issues BUT they train at extremes.

To be fair, it was the weight not the distance that destroyed my knees and ankles. But still, I've aged a lot better than many of my friends and family who were more sedentary, so who knows.

Just because our ancestors did something doesn't mean it's automatically good for your health. After all, prehistoric men weren't known for their long life expectancy.

"After all, prehistoric men weren't known for their long life expectancy."

After surviving early years, people still used to get old. Infant mortality was just way higher bringing the average down. (And that those metrics often compare to poor peasants and our paleo ancestors were not peasants)

What data are you basing this on? My understanding is that historical life expectancy is only as low as it is because of the immense infant mortality rates. People who survived through childhood tended to live long.

Longer than is generally thought, but not as long as we do today either.

Pretty much. Here's an in-depth look at mortality patterns in pre-modern societies: https://acoup.blog/2025/07/18/collections-life-work-death-an...

> One quirk to these model tables I want to note, because it sometimes confuses folks, is that they express ‘life expectancy’ not as a total expected age, but as average years of life expectancy from a given age, so a 25-year-old with 26.6 years of life expectancy is expecting to life to age 51, not just a year and a half.

> What we see in these models is that life expectancy (female:male) at birth is very low, 25:22.8, but after the first year rises dramatically to 34.9:34.1 (note the gender gap narrowing) and by age 5 to 40.1:39.0 (remember to add the five years they’ve already lived). So life expectancy goes up quite a lot over the first several years of life, which is not, intuitively, the pattern we expect: we normally assume the more you’ve lived, the less years you have left.