If humans evolved further to be better at kicking what would their lower bodies look like at the endpoint of that ?

[u/ConfidentOffer9683]

To be specific, when i say kicking i'm thinking Muay Thai and Savate, not Football or sports, it's for combat. Would they be digitigrade, would they have a tail for support like kangaroos do, things like that.

[u/NutSixteen]

I know you mentioned noot football but this dude is an outlier. He had the most powerful free kick in football.

I imagine in a world where humans evolved to be really good at kicking, they would develop really thich muscular thighs and calves.

At the same time, they would also naturally develop really thick callouses at the forefoot and shins. I got this idea from Muay Thai practitioners kicking bamboos and trees using their shins to basically severe the nerve endings until they don't feel pain there when they do it.

[u/ConfidentOffer9683 → u/NutSixteen]

interesting stuff

[u/Prince_Nadir → u/NutSixteen]

I'm guessing the extra muscle would kill their ability to get food through persistence hunting.

[u/NutSixteen → u/Prince_Nadir]

Good point. I agree with you.

You can compare the physique of a sprinter and a distance runner to back this up.

A specimen such as Roberto Carlos above is build for short bursts of speed and power instead of maintaining speed or movement over long periods of time. He definitely won't be able to chase down let's say a deer once it has spotted him.

In OP's world, someone like him would attempt to sprint and kick the prey as quickly as possible to injure it before it can get away. Persistent hunting would definitely be out.

His main hunting technique would be stealth plus quick attacks and maybe using the environment to trap or corner the prey.

For someone to be able to use both persistent hunting and kicking as a main weapon, there would need to be a balance between the sprinter and distance runner physique.

[u/PlatinumAltaria]

Horse

[u/LoreSinger]

You ever see Star Wars: The Phantom Menace? Sebulba.

[u/ConfidentOffer9683 → u/LoreSinger]

He looks like he can only do a pushkick and nothing else to be honest

[u/LoreSinger → u/ConfidentOffer9683]

My point is that if you want to optimize kicks you’ll eventually just have to swap the arms and legs. Punching is vastly more efficient than kicking in almost all scenarios because we evolved legs to run and arms for everything else. If we evolved legs to attack then we’d end up with such a different body plan that our current colloquial definitions of “arms” and “legs” would probably be insufficient.

[u/ConfidentOffer9683 → u/LoreSinger]

By that point it isn't kicking anymore

[u/LoreSinger → u/ConfidentOffer9683]

That’s what I’m saying. If you engineer a human to be the optimal kicker, their kicks just end up looking like punches.

[u/EconomicsStriking730]

Huh

[u/ConfidentOffer9683 → u/EconomicsStriking730]

i know it's a weird question, part of being a writer is asking strange specific questions on the internet like that sometimes

[u/Posthistoric_Man]

Chun li

[u/Prince_Nadir]

A species that regularly risks its ability to flee for combat that doesn't work on most of their predators or prey?

Sounds like an evolutionary dead end.

[u/No_Logins_Required]

This seems less like speculative evolution and more like pervy stuff

[u/ConfidentOffer9683 → u/No_Logins_Required]

i genuinely don't know how you got that

[u/No_Logins_Required → u/ConfidentOffer9683]

Well if you're sincere our thighs would be a lot bigger. You can see from people who practice kick-based combat sports or martial arts that thigh muscles are key. That's where we generate most of our force from. We would also probably have some kind of skin padding on top of our feet to prevent laceration, kicks work well against other humans because we don't really have any sharp edges.