Our tree-swinging ancestors had feet that were fantastically adapted to grabbing and climbing. The transition to walking on human feet was perhaps not the most shining example of evolution’s capabilities:

“When our ancestors descended from the trees and began walking upright, they faced some major mechanical challenges. “Being on two limbs is just a real problem,” DeSilva says. “If you were taking shop class and your assignment was to build a chair, and you built a chair with two legs, you’d fail the class because it would fall over all the time.” Simply balancing an animal upright is a feat of evolutionary engineering—and that’s before the animal starts moving around.”

In keeping with this week’s theme of injury prevention, I wanted to share an article from Scientific American. My teammate Miss E. Masculator sent it my way, and I thought it was worth passing along to you too!

The gist?

1. Most knee injuries are actually non-contact injuries – just a wrong step or a weird fall. Protect yourself as much as possible by doing moves like the ones in my Happy Knees video.
2. Highly-structured shoes, like most modern running/training shoes, tend to weaken your feet. By over-supporting, they allow the network of built-in support muscles to weaken.  If you jog or run for crosstraining (or for fun), you might want to consider the lightweight, ‘barefoot’ style runners.
3. Read the article for the full story on apes and ACLs…

Here’s what I’d like to know from you: What injury-prone area do you need advice on? Be a good monkey – leave a comment below and let me know.

did you like this post? buy me a smoothie :)