Walking

Walking is the most fundamental basic form of human physical activity. The average sort of hunter-gatherer will take 10,000 to 15,000 steps a day. The average American before the pandemic was taking something like 4,700 or so steps a day. Only about 20% of Americans get the very minimum levels of exercise that every health organisation in the world thinks is the minimum for an adult- which is 150 minutes a week. So 80% of us really struggle and fail to get very basic amounts of exercise, but almost everyone says that they want to get enough exercise. We live in a world where we no longer have to be physically active. We now, in a very strange way, have to choose to be physically active, and that's not so easy 'cause there were no ellipticals and other kinds of machines back in the Stone Age. If you want to get your heart rate up you were probably running. And one of the biggest myths about running is that it'll destroy your knees. There are tonnes and tonnes of studies, more than a dozen randomised, controlled-perspective, gold-standard studies, which show that people who run more are less likely to get arthritis. In fact, lots of research shows that physical activities like running cause your joints to repair themselves and to stay healthy. The other kinds of running injuries- I think that a lot of them are caused because we don't learn how to run properly anymore. I think running is a skill like swimming or throwing or, you know, all kinds of other things that we do.