So let me get this straight…
From what I’ve been reading, tall people are more economical at walking because they have a longer stride in each step when they’re walking. This means that they can walk longer without getting tired.
Short people are less economical at walking, but they are better at long distance running. And this is because they have less body mass (you gain body mass at a higher rate than you gain height for each increase in height). It could also be because short people need less oxygen since they are smaller, and dissipate heat faster (higher surface area to body volume). Anyway, regardless of the reason the best distance runners are short people.
I have never heard of this, but apparently, as far as marthoners go, the average height of winners is somewhere in the middle at 5’7". So maybe not “short,” but a bit below median height, as far as the US is concerned, but median for other countries (looks like Kenya, for instance, the median male height is right about this measurement, too.)
I am but one point of anecdata, but it’s true for me.
I am 13 inches taller than that 5’7" average, and I’m a terrible runner. Heck overall, I’m pretty physically un-gifted.
ETA whoops forgot to finish. I always felt bad for short guys when we were doing “humps” (hikes under load) in the military. Plenty of times they were jogging/shuffling and I’d just be striding along.
Haha, or not too long ago my wife and I were on a trail run. She was chugging up a hill in front of me, and I was just kind of power hiking up. She glanced back and saw me and pretty much yelled “You’re WALKING?!?” I’m like hey, not my fault man.
Generally, smaller people will need less energy to move themselves, but have smaller muscles with which to do so. So it’s kind of a wash. Or rather, individual variation becomes more significant, swamping any residual pattern between short and tall runners.
The Army would sometimes put us into formation with shorter people in front for big battalion runs. Regular PT sessions they didn’t seem to care, but if the colonel was running with us, we wanted to stay in formation the whole time, even if those of us in the back were just speedwalking at that point. So the Army thought it was the opposite of the OP: shorter = slower. So they put them in the front for pacing.
Besides those Army runs that were mainly just for show, I can’t say I’ve noticed any particular trend.
From an engineering perspective, I don’t think body mass is much of a factor when you’re moving at constant speed over level ground (there may be an effect due to the vertical motion of your center of mass as you run). The specific thing that does matter is the mass of your legs, because each step requires energy input to accelerate your leg forward, and you don’t get that energy back when you decelerate that leg just before planting it. So the faster you run, the greater your power requirement - and more relevant here is the fact that heavier legs also result in a greater power requirement.
Assuming a short person and a tall person share the same proportions, the taller person will have more massive legs, true, resulting in a greater power requirement for a given running speed - but the taller person will also have a greater total aerobic power capacity because of their larger lungs, heart, etc. So who can sustain a higher speed - short person, or tall person? Not immediately obvious to me.
This assumes that heat dissipation capacity is the limiting factor for aerobic performance. It may be under certain circumstances, but it’s certainly not universally true.
If pulykamell’s cite is correct, then height is either not a factor in running/walking capability, or it’s a factor of such weak significance that it’s overwhelmed by other factors like body type, training, innate aerobic capacity, body fat percentage and location (e.g. the amount of deadweight you’re carrying on your legs) and so on.
One theory I don’t believe – and that my less-than-five-feet-tall ex-girlfriend used to subscribe to when we were walking together – is that tall people have longer legs and therefore take longer steps, and what matters is the number of steps per minute, so therefore taller people can walk/run faster with less energy. I don’t think all those assumptions are true, and “taller = faster” doesn’t seem to prove true in real life either, but it’s the theory we were told in the Army, and my short-person ex believes it, too. For what it’s worth.
I’ve never heard that taller people walk better but shorter people run better. It’s always been both one or both the other. And usually it’s the “short is slow and tall is fast” theory I hear touted.
Well, it could be that height is correlated with all those things, as well. I personally would have guessed tall and skinny would make the best runner, but it looks like there are tradeoffs and perhaps there’s a happy medium where for all the factors that go into making a good runner peak at an ideal of around 5’7". I’m not saying that is the case, but I’m not ready to discount it, either.
I’m about 6 feet, and was a good distance runner until she and extra weight caught up with me. Although some of the extra weight is flab, most of it is muscle from eating more protein and doing more resistance training. If I trained and ate like I did 20 years ago I’d be slower, but not by a huge amount. Here’s something else. Despite my height my wife, who is around 5-5, has legs as long as mine. I don’t doubt I’d be a little faster with longer legs, but a lean body and lots of fast-twitch fibers is the bigger factor.
But the question is the energy required for somebody with a taller frame taking fewer steps vs someone with a smaller frame taking more steps. It doesn’t necessarily follow that fewer steps = less energy, except with all other factors being equal, and all other factors are not equal in this case.
Try this: get a 3 foot sledge hammer and a 12 inch sledge hammer, both the same weight. Now set them both hammer side down on the floor. Pick one up a few inches and swing it like you would a leg. Is it easier or harder to swing the large hammer ~30° or the smaller hammer? Try it again but with a 30 inch swing instead of 30 degrees. Now imagine the experiment with different weights on the end.
I’m not sure which will be easiest in which scenario, but the point is that it isn’t as simple as “longer = easier”.
One thing that is not equal is that weight does not scale up directly with height. It’s greater than 1:1…the taller you get, the heavier, proportionally you get. Think about it…I probably outweigh a guy 12 inches shorter than me, built like me, by a good 50 pounds, maybe 65.
Then take into consideration something I was told once…wish I could remember by whom. You get talking leg length, stride length, blah blah blah…it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that yes, I might have more muscle than someone shorter, but I have to propel a higher body weight with it. And when it comes down to it, it’s just simple physics…the amount of energy it takes to move my 225 lb. self a given distance is going to be much greater than what it takes to propel random-average-150 lb.-dude the same distance.
I suspect that center of gravity plays a part as well. I immediately thought on my greyhounds, the breed notoriously used for racing. Their horizontal body position makes a huge difference of course when compared to human runners. But even they lower their bodies in order to power through the turns.
So I figure that short people are better runners because they have lower center of gravity compared to a long legged person.
Even at the world class level, humans don’t run fast enough to require banking on outdoor tracks.
It’s close, though. One factor in deciding the running order in the 4x100 relay is the individual runners’ ability to run the curve.
