alt Hacker NewsHe's not wrong though.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5G93ta66xSk
The tribals from the Sierra Madre Mountains in Northern Mexico - called the Tarahumara or the Rarámuri people - are considered to be among the best endurance runners in the world.
Some of the First Nation tribes of the Americas (especially their messengere who ran hundreds of miles to deliver messages) and the traditional African tribals (such as the Maasai tribe) are also among the best endurance runners in the world.
Kenyan athlete Eliud Kipchoge is the first human to run sub-2-hours marathon.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MoxFkJlVZlA
And when we look at exactly how these world's best endurance runners (truly superhumans) run (i.e., their running style), we realise that all the fancy sports shoes we normies tend to run in aren't really conducive for proper running.
The best endurance runners run in such a way that their feet land on the front of their foot during running, but the typical sports shoes cause our feet to land on the heels (ball on the back side of the foot) (which is what causes injuries due to such daily bad way of running).
Humans evolved to be the best long distance endurance runners, compared to any other animal. It is high time modern humans realised what's the right way to run long distance.
Replies
I'm sort of in general agreement with you about healthy running practices, but I don't think endurance running - just running for long distances with no eye on time - is a good comparison with performance running - where timing is key, even if you're running log distances. It's to do with the purpose of the running. Eliud Kipchoge only broke 2 hours because of the shoes he was wearing, which are only used for one race, so you're mixing the two aspects a bit there. There are also issues with running on the balls of your feet. I injured my metatarsals by running like that, and they only recovered when I reverted to a slightly flatter running style. The choice isn't just between "ball" and "heel", there's a grey area in-between, and the thing I distrust about alot of the "natural running" stuff is the ideological purity that it often engenders.
You’re peddling mostly nonsense.
Modern shoes don’t force you to heel strike.
> The best endurance runners run in such a way that their feet land on the front of their foot during running
This is not really true and the whole fore foot vs heal striker thing is a bit of a red herring. There are elite distance runners that are forefoot, mid-foot (probably the majority) and heal strikers. The main thing is that wherever on their foot hits first, the foot itself is under their center of gravity and not out in front of them.