{"id":3661,"date":"2016-06-30T21:55:19","date_gmt":"2016-06-30T21:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fightfast.com\/blog\/?p=3661"},"modified":"2021-03-31T14:28:50","modified_gmt":"2021-03-31T14:28:50","slug":"walk-like-warrior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/30\/walk-like-warrior\/","title":{"rendered":"Walk Like A Warrior"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What Do I Mean?<\/h4>\nIn reading contemporary historical accounts written by soldiers (cavalry and dragoon), settlers, scouts, pioneers, and other citizens of the American frontier in the 1680s-1880s, I find mention that Native Americans (\"Indians\" or \"Savages\" in the accounts) did not walk like \"white men.\" Their gait, stride, and foot placement is often described in poetic terms such as \"light\" or \"light-footed,\" \"fleet\", \"gliding\", and often times \"springy\" or \"spring-like.\" These terms, while descriptive of the effect, do little to tell us the how or why of their gait.\n\n[dfads params='groups=292&limit=1&orderby=random']\n

Clues In History<\/h4>\n
\n\t<\/div>\nWe can find clues in the accounts given by trackers in any of the myriad \"Indian Wars\" or skirmishes that riddled the continent in the first few centuries spanning the settling of North America. The telltale barefoot imprint or the soft impression of a moccasin was often a giveaway that the tracker was on the trail of a Native American, but this became less reliable as more and more Anglo backwoodsmen adopted this footwear.\n\nBut there are a few accounts that mention how one could distinguish a Native American warrior's imprint from the tracks of an Anglo by carefully inspecting the strides of the tracks. Incidentally, the strides discussed were not used exclusively by the warrior caste, but by all people of a given tribe. However, it might have been of particular value to a warrior. The key, it seems, was in the direction of the stride.\n

Self-Experiment Time<\/h4>\nTry this: Stand up right now wherever you are and go for a brief walk. A mere 10-12 steps will do it. While walking, look at your feet. If you are like the vast majority of human beings you walk with the toes pointed slightly out to the side.\n\nNow stand-stock still. Look down at your feet. Chances are you stand with your feet in this same \"toes out\" position. According to our trackers, the Native warrior's imprint had zero toe-out orientation. In fact, the toes pointed in the direction of the walk.\n\nIs this \"following the toe\" orientation a genetic quirk of Native American skeletal structure? An artifact of primarily living barefoot or moccasined? Or is it simply a cognitive choice? We'll come back to these questions.\n
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Weight Distribution<\/h4>\n
\n\t<\/div>\nWhen Anglos take a step the heel lands first, followed by a rocking forward motion toward the inside ball of the foot, leading to a push off for the next step.\n\nThe Native warrior's track, however, sees little heel imprint at all. Instead, their imprint favors the balls of their feet and\/or the whole sole of the foot landing as a single unit (as if they were treating their foot like a natural snowshoe).\n\nIn Native American tracks the imprints of the ball of the foot become deeper because the calves are actively engaged to push to the next step rather than rocking into it. In essence, the balls of the feet are the 1st to make contact and the last to leave the earth with each step as you \"follow the toe\" with each stride forward.\n\nIf you experiment with this stride you will find that it does lend itself to such descriptors as light, gliding, and springy. One can easily imagine such a stride being extraordinarily useful for stalking, but it seems this stride was the default for Native Americans. Yes, it was used for stalking and skulking (war scenarios), but it was also in everyday life by young and old; men, women, and children alike.\n\nAgain, this begs the question: Was this a skeletal quirk? An artifact of not using hard-soled footwear over their lifespans? By choice? Bear with me, we're almost there.\n\n[dfads params='groups=292&limit=1&orderby=random']\n

Contemporary Accounts<\/h4>\nThe contemporary accounts I mentioned, whether they be of the tribes of the Eastern woodlands, the Plains Indians, or the bands of the Southwest, often discuss incidents of remarkable endurance demonstrated by Native Americans on the move. There are many, many stories of the seemingly infinite stamina of the Native Americans relayed both admiringly and sometimes begrudgingly in military accounts from soldiers forced to face them in war.\n\nWe'll discuss the interesting running \"training\" tactics used by various tribes another day, but today we'll keep it slow and stay with the walk. And here I will paraphrase two accounts that I believe answer the questions we've been asking this whole time. I believe that these accounts will demonstrate that the aforementioned stride is one of conscious choice<\/strong>.\n
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The Remarkable Ely S. Parker<\/h4>\nGeneral Ulysses S. Grant had under his command a Seneca Indian by the name of Ely S. Parker. A remarkable man who, despite being the subject of unforgivable intolerance by many, served the United States with honor, represented Native Americans with aplomb, and earned the respect of General Grant. Mr. Parker's life deserves many words, but for now we'll allow one anecdote to suffice as it pertains to the topic at hand.\n\nMr. Parker served as an engineer under Grant during the Civil War where there were often long marches through the \"Wilderness.\" After many days and many miles of this slogging trek, the Anglo soldiers were rightfully fatigued. Mr. Parker went to Grant and asked if he might make a suggestion to which General Grant replied \"Take command.\"\n\nParker instructed the soldiers to alter their stride from the \"toes-out\" position to the \"following the toe\" position. He offered a few words on placement, but the main crux of his instruction was that following the toes engaged more muscles in the feet and distributed the workload more equally. Mighty interesting. Here we have a Native American warrior who also happens to be an engineer who is able to articulate exactly how and why such an alteration in stride might be of value.\n\nThe moral of this particular anecdote, according to the accounts that mention it, is that the trek through the \"Wilderness\" was recommenced and the soldiers relayed back that they were far more refreshed and better able to bear the workload with this different method of locomotion.\n\nSo far it seems there is more than enough evidence to at least experiment with this stride, but let's add one more piece to the \"conscious choice\" evidence column.\n\n[dfads params='groups=292&limit=1&orderby=random']\n

Walking Uphill<\/h4>\n
\n\t<\/div>\nWhen moving uphill, Anglo tracks do not deviate from the toes-out orientation, whereas the Native American tracks abandon their \"follow the toe\" stride. What we find instead is a \"toes-in\" stride. When walking, hiking, loping up hill, Native warriors (and tribe members in general) adopted a slight pigeon-toed gait. I find this mentioned in many accounts with seldom a mention as to why...\n\nBut, then in an obscure passage we find a nameless warrior instructing an Anglo (who had adopted moccasins) to toe-in while following him up a slope.\n\n\"Why?\" the Anglo asked.\n\n\"So that you don't slip. You can grip with the feet.\"\n
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Final Thoughts<\/h4>\nIn barefoot self-experiment I find that there does indeed seem to be better traction with the toes-in method when scrambling uphill. Over the course of a few months of consciously working these techniques, I stand convinced that the \"follow the toes\" on flat ground and \"toes-in\" when going uphill are mighty useful adaptations.\n\nInitially they call for more work from the calves that have grown used to a lifetime of heel-landing and rocking to the toes. Following the toes has let me know how long my calves have actually been dormant.\n\nNow, whether you try the self-experiments or not is up to you, but I think we must all acknowledge that the conscious effort to make everything more efficient including our mere walking strides is a mighty thought-provoking exercise in ingenuity. What other bit of obviousness might we all be blind to?\n

\n Click here for more training by Mark Hatmaker!<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What Do I Mean? In reading contemporary historical accounts written by soldiers (cavalry and dragoon), settlers, scouts, pioneers, and other citizens of the American frontier in the 1680s-1880s, I find mention that Native Americans (“Indians” or “Savages” in the accounts) did not walk like “white men.” Their gait, stride, and foot placement is often described Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[140],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3661"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3661"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12756,"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3661\/revisions\/12756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightfastvideos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}