Jogging: the body killer

Zero citations and handwavy arguments. The credibility of this article is on par with those touting "alkaline water".

Ok, this article is quite flawed, to put it gently. And I say that as someone who hates running himself but has a lot of family member who love it.

The load argument implies that, for example, if I were to gently slap you a hundred times it would be equal to smacking the equivalent force of the sum of all of those slaps into your face at once. I hope it's obvious why that assessment is wrong

Of course, running does involve forces capable of hurting the body - anyone who has bruised himself by falling can attest to that. What you have to realise is that running (or walking) is dynamic, meaning that what we call a "step" is effectively falling in a certain direction and catching ourselves. The body is capable of dealing with the impact of repeatedly catching-ourselves-when-falling, we have evolved to do so, but it requires the right running technique that disperses the energy of the impact properly. The real problem is that we tend to land on our heels, which is an unnatural running technique that we actually actually tend to learn because we have too comfortable shoes. You have to land on your front-feet:

http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2013/02/21/barefoot-running

Mind you, you don't actually need to pick up barefoot running to fix this problem. My sister used to complain about her knees, I suggested that she actively try to land on her front feet, and a month later I got a text from her that her knees love me.

The article also assumes that our beauty standard equals a healthy body, which I find highly questionable.

I always thought this. Thanks for validating my 10+ hours a day in a computer chair with science.