Andy NearyI help insurance professionals turn brand awareness into business growth.

Here is an important lesson about our feet we can learn from our primate ancestors. #foothealth

1 May 2023 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:54

A short conversational YouTube clip (Andy Neary with another speaker) exploring how primate ancestors use their feet—often barefoot—for grasping and survival tasks. The speakers connect this evolutionary perspective to human movement and martial arts, noting an observation from Brazilian jiu jitsu where competitors use their feet actively (e.g., rolling onto their backs to employ guard and feet for defense).

Chapters

Our ancestors, the apes, the monkeys, right? Who we see them picking things up with their feet all the time and doing. Is it because they have spent their entire life barefoot?
Yeah. So if you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, they never enclose their feet. So from a usefulness perspective, they had to. Like, that was part of their survival. But even fighting, like, you ever seen two gorillas go at it? It looks like a Brazilian jiu jitsu match going on, right? And I had the opportunity to witness my very first Brazilian jiu jitsu match, too. And I noticed that a lot of these guys that won and women that won literally got on their backs first. Think about that. They already rolled onto their back so they could put their feet up in the air and use that as part of their guard. I'm like, this is cool. Like, I love the human movement. But then I also made that connection. Like, that's why they're doing it, because. Because now you got your hands and your feet to defend yourself.