If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.1 Barely a day passes in the popular press without mention of the falling levels of fitness in Australia and the consequent impact on our national health and wellbeing. Countless stories are published on the best solutions, including a multitude relating to exercise. The word ‘exercise’ is interesting in itself, as the formal definition includes ‘activity requiring physical effort, carried out to sustain or improve health and fitness’2 and ‘bodily exertion for the sake of developing and maintaining physical fitness’.3