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Walk or Run: Are We Built To Be Lazy?
sciencehabit writes "A quick visit to Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks shows just how many ways humans (or at least British comedians) can think of to travel from point A to point B. So why don't we high kick our way to the bus stop or skip to the grocery store? New research suggests that there may be a deep biomechanical reason governing the gaits we choose in different situations. In short, people consistently choose to walk when they need to travel slower than 2 m/s to reach their goal in the given time; when they needed to move about 3 m/s or faster, they ran. But in between—in 'the twilight zone between walking and running'—people tended to mix the two gaits, minimizing their energy expenditure. The findings could help scientists design better prosthetic limbs and even build more human-like robots"
It's not called being lazy. It's called SURVIVING on LIMITED RESOURCES, which is what Humans had to do for hundreds of thousands of years before developing the technology to increase food availability.
Expending the least amount of energy was called SURVIVAL.
We really have completely lost touch with reality, haven't we? We are living in the idiocracy.
I actually had the opposite reaction. I'm 31, and I constantly fight the urge to run everywhere. I remember all through school, even into early highschool, I'd run everywhere I wanted to go.
Then it was uncool to run. Then inappropriate. Then unprofessional. A year ago, effectively 15 years after I stopped running everywhere, I started running for exercise. I'm getting back into shape. And I'm finding it annoying that I can't just run all the time - I'll get sweaty or smelly, and that's just socially unacceptable.
I'm pretty sure we're all meant to run a LOT more than we do - and we've forced ourselves to stop due to social pressure.
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