This is the case for a new video series, by Fitness First, documenting a three-month experiment in which three avid exercisers stopped all training while three anti-exercisers took it up.
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How does exercise make you feel?
A new Fitness First ad follows three fit people who stop and three people who start exercising, focusing on both the physical and mental impacts.
Let's strip away the contrived, gimmicky footage of the participants standing 'stripped down' in a mock shower (Why? Baring their souls/post workout wash and reflection time? Really, it's anyone's guess).
Underneath it all is an interesting idea, exploring not just the physical changes, but more importantly perhaps how exercise or a lack of it can transform us emotionally and mentally.
![Alisha Kinna didn't realise how much she needed exercise.](/web/20161017190531im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/1/m/q/9/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gs1mk0.png/1476412812915.png)
Alisha Kinna, 23, has never been especially active and when she fell pregnant for the first time, became even less so.
"I was tired and working full-time and got blase," says the mum to seven-month-old son, Liam.
By the time she gave birth she "got into a little shell" and being a mum consumed her life more than she realised it would.
"You're just this milking, diaper changing machine," she says.
![Fitness First's Michael Cunico noticed his mental clarity was not as good.](/web/20161017190531im_/http://www.canberratimes.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/1/m/n/9/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gs1mk0.png/1476412812915.jpg)
Having access to a trainer and committing to three months of exercise four days a week changed her life "in many different ways" and allowed her to regain a sense of self separate to being a parent.
"I'm stronger than I thought I am," she says. "I didn't think I could bench 60 kilograms, I didn't think I could squat 60 kilograms and I didn't expect to feel so happy – it's the accomplishment of doing something for yourself ... I didn't realise how much I needed it."
An increasing body of research shows that physical activity affects our insides as much as it does our outside.
Not only does exercise literally change the brain, it helps us to feel better, reducing stress, anxiety and depression, and allows us to see how much we are capable of, changing our perceptions of ourselves and our bodies.
For Michael Cunico, the national fitness manager at Fitness First, the lack of any exercise over the course of the experiment provided an opportunity to see himself and his life differently.
The inability to release stress and tension through exercise manifested in a seized upper back.
"It was really interesting headspace and physical reaction to the lack of movement," the 37-year-old says, adding that while he didn't "fly off the handle", he felt frustrated and could feel the tension in his body rising.
For the trainer and former professional soccer player, who lost two kilograms of muscle from start to finish and noticed his mental clarity was "not as good", the experiment also gave him pause for thought about how to help people better achieve their goals.
"As someone who's heavily in the fitness industry and it's been what I've done for a while, we bombard people with imagery and 'here's the 12 week transformation' but I don't think much of that actually helps people," he says.
"For the average person ... that's not the key for them. There's more to it. It's that mental game. If it was as easy as here's what you can do in 12 weeks, follow this plan, then we wouldn't have the drop off that the industry has."
About 54 per cent of gym members rarely go, while even more don't renew their memberships.
Showing transformation pictures and focusing on the physical of fitness, he learned, is "not the full picture" and doesn't account for the mental challenge of creating change nor does it account for the way fitness can make us feel.
While he learned about others, Cunico , whose life and work revolves largely around fitness, also gained perspective on its role in his own life.
"Is it filling a void of something else in my life? It gave me a moment to pause," he says. "It's an immersive world that I love to a certain degree and it's because I enjoy it, but am I immersing myself in some of that to the neglect of something else?"
From both ends of the spectrum, the way we exercise or the way we avoid it can reveal a lot about how we feel about ourselves, what's important to us and what we fear; because when we strip it all back exercise is not so much a physical game as it is a mental one.
And dodgy shower scenes aside, that is worth exploring.