In this article, we’ll look at what flat feet are, whether people with flat feet can run, how it affects runners, and what can be done to address the problems associated with it. For the most curious, let’s start with an excursion into history and ancient times, let’s see how it was formed and why we need such a complex structure as afoot. Choose the best walking shoes for men with flat feet. The most impatient can skip this part and go directly to the problem of flat feet, as well as to the question: is it possible for people with flat feet to run?
Best runner on earth
The cheetah is the fastest land animal, the mantis shrimp has four times more color receptors than humans, and turtles can live for hundreds of years. And what about people? Of course, we are the smartest creatures, but our physical abilities are rather miserable compared to some animals on the planet.Do we have any quality that allows us to surpass all other beings on Earth? There is. Evolution has made us the best endurance runners. Some of you will immediately ask, “What about horses?” Of course, horses can be faster than people, but they cannot “run over” them. Since 1980, in the UK, in the suburb of Llanwrtyd Wells, a competition has been held, the name of which has remained unchanged to this day – the Man Versus Horse Marathon. On them runners and horses sort things out. 22 miles, distance through the forest, total climb about 1500 meters. And in such seemingly not the best conditions, the person won twice, although the overall statistics of victories are on the side of the horses.In addition to other “devices” that help us to make many kilometers of jogging, we can distinguish a unique ligamentous apparatus and skeletal structure that allows us to store energy and, like a spring, return it to us during the run.
Evolution of the foot
Our legs support us. The bones that make up the feet make up about a quarter of the human skeleton, the evolution of the human foot is the history of the development of Homo Sapiens as a whole and the formation of man as the best distance runner on the planet.In 1935, anatomy professor Dudley Morton suggested that the modern human foot is the result of two different transitions. In the first case, the foot would have “ape-like” qualities with broader grasping ability and flexibility, in particular, an elongated midfoot region. In later stages, the foot would move away from these traits, although it may have retained the ability to “grip” with the big toe.
These ideas were good, but they needed proof. As data accumulated from archaeological sites around the world, scientists have hypothesized that the human foot evolved from the foot of a tree chimpanzee. Scientists believed that the foot of the Australopithecus was already adapted for walking on two legs, but also allowed these human ancestors to hide in trees if necessary. The generalization of all these discoveries made it clear that the evolutionary history of the human foot was not linear and the foot developed independently of other events in human evolution.The story of the human foot is unique because the differences that scientists have found in the bones of the feet in Australopithecus alone suggest that there are differences in the way they walked, even within the same genus.This is also true for modern people: we have different step lengths and different ways of setting the foot. Don’t forget how much the footwear has influenced our feet, including its effect on the morphology of our feet.