Born To Walk: The Broken Promises of the Running Boom, and How to Slow Down and Get Healthy-One Step at a Time

The romanticized notion that humans are “born to run” has buoyed the so-called running boom of the past 50 years: well-intentioned fitness enthusiasts lacing up their cushioned shoes and plodding down roads and trails in pursuit of the runner’s high, a trim physique, and the fountain of youth. Unfortunately, born to run is a big, fat ruse—a marketing gimmick and a gross misappropriation of evolutionary biology insights about our Homo sapiens genetic attributes for endurance. While any movement away from a sedentary-dominant lifestyle is laudable, the truth is that humans are actually born to walk, not run.

Mark Sisson, New York Times bestselling author, forefather of the ancestral health movement, entrepreneur founder of Primal Kitchen and Peluva footwear, and former 2:18 marathon runner, is officially proclaiming an end to the running boom. For the vast majority of enthusiasts, running—even slow-paced jogging—is far too physically, metabolically, and hormonally stressful to promote health, weight loss, or longevity. Alas, the elevated, heavily cushioned modern running shoe enables ill-adapted people to run with poor technique, increased impact trauma, and a truly embarrassing rate of chronic overuse injuries.

Born To Walk will help reshape fitness culture to reject flawed and dated “no pain, no gain” ideals, and replace them with a simple, accessible, sustainable program to increase general everyday movement, improve aerobic conditioning the right way, avoid the risks of injury and burnout associated with running, and promote a healthy, happy, energetic, long life–one step at a time. In Born To Walk you’ll learn:

• How the “endurance runner hypothesis” of evolutionary biology is irrelevant to most modern citizens, whose genetic endurance gifts are buried under excess body fat, insufficient daily activity, weak musculature, and dysfunctional feet caused by a lifetime in shoes
• How the running boom was made possible by the invention of the heavily cushioned shoe. Without this, most people would be unable to run more than a short distance (especially on pavement) before succumbing to discomfort or injury
• How elevated, cushioned shoes actually increase impact trauma, enable poor technique, and are the driving cause of overuse injuries
• How to avoid the shocking 50 percent annual injury rate among regular runners by slowing down, improving foot functionality and implementing a correct midfoot landing technique
• How running does not help you lose excess body fat, and in fact can prompt genetic signaling for increased appetite, carb dependency, fat storage, and poor metabolic and hormonal health
• How running can promote a “skinny fat” physique: deficient strength and muscle mass, poor posture, and an accumulation of health-destructive abdominal fat–even if you run lots of weekly miles
• How an extreme devotion to endurance training can increase cardiovascular disease risk, compromise gut health, and suppress immune and hormonal function
• How the misplaced competitive intensity and struggle & suffer ethos of modern running culture can promote and unhealthy obsession and a high risk of burnout
• How marketing hype, distorted cultural values, and unsavory peer influences lure you into events like marathons and ultras that are inherently antithetical to health
• How aerobic conditioning at comfortable heart rates is the foundation of all fitness endeavors, and improves performance at all higher levels of intensity
• How to identify your ideal training pace using “fat max” heart rate–likely a brisk walk for most runners
• How the world’s greatest endurance athletes train in a relatively less stressful, more sensible manner than the average novice, and how you can refine your approach to honor their protocols
• Why humans have a genetic imperative to walk extensively every day to support cognitive, immune, hormonal and mitochondrial function
• How walking can be a great catalyst for fat reduction by improving metabolic flexibility, regulating appetite and satiety hormones, and prompting an “under-the-radar” increase in metabolic rate
• How going barefoot or wearing minimalist shoes with flat, flexible soles and individual toe articulation can strengthen feet and reduce injury risk–and why you should walk in them, but not run
• How to implement an ancestral-inspired, broad-based functional fitness program, where your workouts are aligned with human genetic expectations for health.

This approach will get you fitter, leaner, and stronger than ever–without the pain, suffering, and sacrifice of the typical approach to endurance training.