Why can humans skip? While little girls most often skip, was there a time in human history when skipping was universal, a standard human gait equivalent to a canter or trot?

Interesting question.

I used to skip with my friends between the school and the playing field where we had P.E (physical education) and found that skipping was very good for moving fast, and you only felt tired once you stopped.

Basically, I think that using your body's momentum for movement is a more efficient way to move fast than sprinting, there is less impact on the floor, meaning more energy is transferred into forward momentum instead of being wasted.

I can imagine that skipping, much like how a rabbit or other animals run when required to move fast, was the most efficient way for early humans to run from predators (assuming there were predators that could pose a threat to early humans - I believe early humans were very much smaller than we are now?) but has gradually come to be replaced with other methods of moving due to the gradual decline in need to escape predation.
Perhaps it was even a left over evolutionary trait from an earlier ancestor which has been abandoned as we moved to bipedal movement?

I expect that the final stage of the triple jump jump is further than the jump in the long jump technique, but I do not know if this is true or not.

Good ideas.

MonoExplosion wrote:

Basically, I think that using your body's momentum for movement is a more efficient way to move fast than sprinting, there is less impact on the floor, meaning more energy is transferred into forward momentum instead of being wasted.

You understood what I mean. Thank-you. All the Google Images are jump-rope, the Wiki page for "skipping" is also about jump-rope. It's a conspiracy? But admittedly it is hard to take a picture of skipping.

Describe skipping: skipping is a double step with each footstep: skipping adds a hop into each step.

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I can imagine that skipping, much like how a rabbit or other animals run when required to move fast, was the most efficient way for early humans to run from predators (assuming there were predators that could pose a threat to early humans - I believe early humans were very much smaller than we are now?) but has gradually come to be replaced with other methods of moving due to the gradual decline in need to escape predation. Perhaps it was even a left over evolutionary trait from an earlier ancestor which has been abandoned as we moved to bipedal movement?

Were parties of ancient humans skipping across the Savannahs?

Somewhere I read there is a pacemaker in the brain that runs running and walking: you hook into it and off you go walk on cruise-control without thinking about it. If such a circuit is there; is it hardcoded or learned? Tetrapod evolution is long, 350-million years plus, we must have passed through innumerable forms and gaits, as well as the intermediary gaits between quadruped and biped all of which could have left evolutionary hard code, maybe even fish swimming code?

Radical Blank-Slate: Neurons are generic, they are self organizing; walking crawling, sprinting, skipping, and so on come together from scratch for babies, from unfiltered unorganized sense input and trial-and-error random action. Same with horses: four legs, n many ball-and-socket and hinge joints equals "walk, trot, cater, gallop" emergently, not hard coded per say. Skipping is I think a "leaping gait", there's quite a few different possible sequences of foot falls depending on the number of legs, animal, etc.

Not exactly sure how skipping rates on calories/km for efficiency versus jogging, if significantly.

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I expect that the final stage of the triple jump jump is further than the jump in the long jump technique, but I do not know if this is true or not.

Triple Jump is an Olympic sport; it was also in the Ancient Olympics with contestants making jumps just a few meters less than today's athletes. But skipping itself is not an Olympic sport. Skipping doesn't yet have the legitimization of jogging, sprinting, or walking.

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I used to skip with my friends between the school and the playing field where we had P.E (physical education) and found that skipping was very good for moving fast, and you only felt tired once you stopped.

Children often toe-walk. Less common in adults (now?), most mammals toe-walk except for Giant Sloths. But skipping isn't childish because it is a toe-walking, skipping uses the heel; skipping has an effeminate reputation because it requires lightness, or quickness at least, to do the hop.

We don't see many people skipping around. If someone skips and isn't seven years-old they are seen as some kind of deviant. Even seven year-old have to watch out. Contra jogging which has elaborate ancillary props and social justifications for why someone is for no apparent reason running by in the street and is not a robber or a cop.

Skipping culture is seriously underfunded, skipping is underdeveloped but has a super potential for recreation, fitness, and locomotion use; unfortunately there are irrational prejudices like ageism, homophobia, gender issues, etc. Let it be here and now decreed the creation of the First International Skipping Trust © for the propagation of skipping and skipping tolerance!

skipping issues now or how do i get from childhood memories to dimensionalism?
the skipped parts holding audiences in tension just assuming them to be alike?

audiences? but there was little time to view anything that is made to appear as a common experience now.


ah yes, peer groups do age, faster than their mutual understanding can be projected as learning experiences. needs a forum for counter projections, just as nice....

Seeing a kid skipping along makes me think that they are full of joy and carefreeness, some of this rubs of on me and brings a smile and a remembrance of how it once felt to be in such a state.
Perhaps adults don't skip because life has sapped away the inner joy we once had, our hearts may now be too heavy to skip.
Didn't Christ say something along the lines of - we have to become like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven- Maybe we have to learn to skip again.

Skipping is a form of plyometrics, meaning that it involves a stretching shortening cycle of the muscle to develop power; it is an explosive means of travel and really, if people continued to skip into their adult lives they'd probably all be super fast at walking and things would be done a lot quicker.

wow, is that a para-science now?

Yeah, and you wouldn't be able to hide up on high objects either, because they'd have the power necessary to jump higher and spot you...
On the positive side, they'd probably avoid skipping and jumping too much as it can be quite tiring; they'd have longer rest periods to recover in which time you can move to a different hiding place if necessary!

You got the right Idea with those images Imp-pulse! You basically use your legs like springs, which is effective and efficient, but also tiring and can be quite fatiguing on your joints and muscles.

"Exercise is a science" - not an ideal science, but it does deal with real empirical data. To turn what I hypothesized into a proper scientific experiment I'd need to formulate a null-hypothesis: Skipping into adult life would have no effect on the speed of people's walking; they'd get things done at the same rate.
Then I'd take two groups... one skipping all their lives, the other not, and see whether the null-hypothesis is proven. If it is not, then it is fair to say that my hypothesis is not ridiculous and I'd probably do some more experiments to confirm it. However, I can't be bothered with that, it was just a statement.

Remember, scientific experiments should not look to prove the hypothesis, but to disprove the null-hypothesis. Like saying,

Hypothesis: "All crows are black"
Null-hypothesis: "Not all crows are black"
To disprove the hypothesis you only need to find one "non-black" crow (and don't go painting crows now...), until such a time as you find a "non-black" crow, you can safely assume that the hypothesis is workable and thus, use it for some purpose... or take it be "fact". I don't know a purpose for that hypothesis other than to demonstrate the method a scientific experiment should be set up... Anyway,
the main point is that skipping is fun, and that it develops power and co-ordination of the body, meaning that people should do it more often.

Serious athletes only do small numbers of reps per exercise, however, I found that continuous skipping for a few minutes is not only good fun, it is also a good cardio workout, depending on how hard you push yourself. I like to bound along as far as I can each "skip", once you get going you feel like you're in the air for ages and its really much more exciting than walking. Walking is boring.

Can birds skip?

if there's sufficient "ground" for them to imitate you.

skipping issue: such as ....

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/nov2011/jedg-n17.shtml

getting used to shock and awe, gradually? but not to the aftershocks, imho.

\!!

http://www.guantanamotrap.com/the-film

frantic shitstorms meanwhile?


habeas corpus? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_petitions_of_Guantanamo_Bay_detainees

which chorus would make it (i.e. which "religion" would define an underlying body, so the logic would make sense at all)?

http://americanhistory.about.com/od/americanhistoryterms/g/d_habeascorpus.htm


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

anxiety issues? anxiety and quick fix issues!

http://gickysoriano.hubpages.com/hub/Transforming-Anxiety--Fear-and-Anger

i may fear a transformation into a parrot, lol.

or, may i not?

\!!

or, i may just not ... (not get to...)

too? many? anachronisms?