

The Human Body Is Built for Distance - tokenadult
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/health/27well.html

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dkarl
This is an interesting idea, but there doesn't seem to be much evidence that
specifically points to running. A lot is made of the fact that we aren't made
just for walking, but humans do a lot more than just walk and run.

 _And the gluteus maximus, the largest muscle in the human body, is primarily
engaged only during running. “Your butt is a running muscle; you barely use it
when you walk,” Dr. Lieberman said._

Ah, yes, the gluteus maximus, primarily engaged only during jogging, punching,
lifting, tackling, sprinting, throwing, and swinging a club.

 _And most humans can store about 20 miles’ worth of glycogen in their
muscles.... “Ancient humans exploited the fact that humans are good runners in
the heat,” Dr. Bramble said. “We have such a great cooling system”_

Which allows us to perform _any_ endurance activity over long distances,
including swimming. Or carrying a kill back to camp. Or carrying water,
children, tools, and materials for building shelter. Pretty much any hard
work.

Haven't any of these scientists noticed that it's easy to get tired and
overheat while building a fence in your back yard? For many animals, running
might be the only thing they do that causes them to overheat, but when you're
an intelligent, tool-using, shelter-building, material-possessions-lugging
human, there are _lots_ of things that can tire you out or give you heatstroke
on a warm day.

If I remember correctly, the hunter-gatherers in the Jared Diamond television
special based on _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ didn't spend much time jogging. They
walked, climbed, and paddled. They chopped down trees and carried heavy stuff.
They hunted in the forest, stalking and then sprinting to attack. Their
efficient cooling system, powerful glutes, and springy tendons served them
admirably in all of these activities. Obviously they had a very different
culture from the San Bushmen in Africa -- how can we be sure what culture and
environment had the greatest influence on our physical evolution? I have read
that the San seem to be closer to our origins, geographically, linguistically,
and genetically, but it is all speculative. Even if they are our closest
contemporary link to our evolutionary origins, we can't assume their lifestyle
resembles the lifestyle of our ancestors.

Furthermore, a lot of the popular appeal behind the "born to run" idea is
based on simple astonishment at the difference between trained and untrained
people. Running is the example that has caught the popular imagination, but
many other physical activities could lead to the same result. For example,
with regular training, ordinary people can learn to lift way more than you
would expect, enough to convince a man on the street that people are "built to
lift heavy stuff." If you found a tribe that was as into lifting stuff as the
Tarahumara are into running, I'm sure you would find examples of older people
lifting burdens that would amaze us. And then it would seem quite obvious that
our powerful glutes and efficient cooling system were evolved to help us carry
game back to camp, swing heavy primitive axes and weapons, lift baskets of
wild yams, and carry animal skins filled with water.

~~~
jkkramer
Part of McDougall's point in the book is not just that we CAN run long
distances but that, over the long term, it's good for us. For most intensive
sports, you can only keep up with them for so long before your body starts to
wear and tear. Runners (with proper technique, which is encouraged by minimal
footwear) remain healthy and effective until old age.

One of the coolest anecdotes from the book: the average performance of
marathon runners increases from age 19 to 27, when it reaches its peak.
Performance returns to the 19-year-old level at age 64. That's not true for
any other sport. (Citation needed, obviously, but I don't have the book
handy.)

The book also gives interesting examples of biological traits we possess, such
as bone and muscle configurations, that only appear in animals that run a lot.
I'm not saying the book is scientifically rigorous or conclusive, just that
there's more to it than appears in this article.

~~~
Evgeny
What about martial arts? Not the full-contact ones, I guess, but aikido comes
to mind when I think of the one where a person could keep practicing till very
old age.

~~~
mazuhl
Helio Gracie comes to mind (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helio_Gracie>).
Apparently he was still training at the age of 95. Some of the videos of him
in his 80s in YouTube show him still to have been a force to be reckoned with.

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vsiva68
"Born to Run" has popularized this notion that the human body evolved to run
long distances. However, there is no strong proof for it. The recent
discoveries from the Ardipithecus
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardipithecus>) stories suggest that "both A.
kadabba and A. ramidus lived in "a mosaic of woodland and grasslands with
lakes, swamps and springs nearby," but further research is needed to determine
which habitat Ardipithecus at Gona preferred".

When it comes to evolution, I don't think a popular book can provide all the
answers. I wish they'd make it clear that this is just one theory now widely
popularized by a best selling book.

~~~
aditya
Curious if you've read the book (I haven't) and why you think that an entire
tribe of people where 70 year old men regularly run 30-50 miles is not "proof"
in your eyes?

~~~
Retric
Cleaned up to be less confrontational.

There is a difference in stride efficiency between jogging and running at high
speed. 20 year old men don't _run_ 50 miles in one go let alone 70 year old
men. Now jogging that distance over several hours is a reasonable form of
transportation, but _running_ is out of the question. So, jogging is a way to
trade energy for time and distance where running trades endurance / distance
for time, energy, and speed.

I would assume if humans where built purely for distance running then our most
efficient stride would be used for distance running. But, I don't know what
the overall tradeoffs are.

PS: There seems to be two definitions of running one of which is a stride
there all feet leave the ground at the same time and the other involves high
speed. While skipping falls under this definition of running the implication
of speed is missing.

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nfnaaron
Various comments on whether or not we evolved for long distance running, rock
climbing, swimming, whatever.

It seems likely that, just as we are omnivores, we evolved to dominate the
niche called "generalist," and that's what makes us the baddest mo'fo in the
valley.

~~~
maxwell
In other words, the human body is built for adaptability.

~~~
elblanco
Good point. But why? What evolutionary circumstances pressured our species to
select for adaptability?

~~~
nfnaaron
Not being able to go mammal-a-mammal with a bison, but really wanting to eat
one.

I think it's a combination of succeeding with what genes you have, in the
world you find yourself, where both what you have and your world change
randomly and slowly.

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chasingsparks
These are studies that barefoot runners (including me) frequently cite. There
was a thread indirectly related a few weeks back.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=863018>

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lgv
I wonder if diet plays a role. The only way you're getting 20 miles' worth of
glycogen is from eating grains- which were domesticated just recently in human
history. I'm not sure if that type of glycogen density was available before
then. Maybe now we have the luxury of burning up 5kcals for a very long jog,
but 100,000 years ago?

~~~
inglorian
Diet almost certainly plays a role. The diet of the Tarahumara Indians (the
subject of the 'Born to Run' book mentioned in the article) is practically
meatless and consists of about 75% corn, with the rest made up mostly of beans
and various types of squash. As a result their diet is about 80% complex
carbohydrates, which is what allows them to run for those insane distances.

This doesn't seem to jive with the persistence hunting theory, since meat is
one of the worst fuels for distance running (or any endurance sport).

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alecco
I love running but is this really hacker or news-related?

~~~
tokenadult
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

I had noticed previous posts about running here (I only walk, personally), so
I guessed this might be of interest to regular readers of HN.

~~~
alecco
It's definitely not new. And my question didn't deserve all the down-votes.
(Only now at least it got back to 0. Way to answer.)

