There’s quite a popular theory that human beings were ‘born to run’, that evolutionarily it was our ability to chase down big game that provided us with the calorie rich diet necessary for the quantum leap in the development of our brains (and thus the development of Tik Tok, the pinnacle of human intellectualism).
Questions of ablism on the back burner, a number of credible paleoanthropologists believe that the discovery of fire was far more important to our evolution. Not only are we better able to metabolise cooked food versus raw, but it also most likely worked to keep predators away at night, this wouldn’t only have increased survival rates but it would have allowed our great great grandma’s to drop into the type of deep sleep that’s necessary for accelerated brain development.
Fire aside, modern research into tribes such as the sub-Saharan Hadza, whose hunter-gatherer lifestyle is fairly analogous to our ancestors, shows that they don’t actually run that much, possibly preferring to walk after their pray over long distances. This actually makes sense when you consider how quickly fuel requirements rise as we work our way up the gears. (Although running efficiency could have been a key selective factor).
Whether we’re ‘born to run’ or to walk or neither, in modernity we’re increasingly leaning towards doing… not much at all, with up to 40% of Brit’s being described as ‘inactive’.
Whilst this is potentially problematic, I don’t think our current approach to exercise and physical culture, particularly in education and the fitness industry is always as helpful as we’d like to hope.
If your idea of worthy exercise starts at a jog as a minimum, then you may struggle to see the benefits (and thus find the motivation) to do anything less, such as going out and getting in a walk.
On top of this, I can think of several experiences I’ve had with people who were otherwise adept at pretty high intensity exercise, but struggled to run more than a few hundred yards without panic breathing. Could this have been due to bad mechanics or a lack of exposure? Maybe.
But I find it far more likely after further conversation, that the cause was anxiety, brought on my memories of being forced to run at school under threat of punishment or ridicule (but that’s another subject).
The truth is, and this is something I’ve had to adapt to myself over the last 12 months, if your lifestyle is one that’s becoming increasingly more stationary- you can’t just combat this with 30 minute bouts of super-mega-hardcore-cross-training, and there’s literature to back this up.
You have to build in more subtle, overarching practices.
Simply allowing yourself to take the foot off of the gas, getting out for a morning or evening stroll, accepting that you don’t have to be doing 7 minute miles every time you lace up, could be the thing that has the most positive effect on your life.
Try it.