We live in an increasingly polarised world – and I'm not talking about politics, I'm talking about exercise. There's a fitness community obsessed with constant optimisation and hacks : how can you get from 50 press-ups to 100, from an eight-minute mile to seven minutes, or increase your deadlifts from body weight to double or triple body weight – ideally using just “one weird trick” or novel method no one has seen before. It seems as if no one is happy with basic fitness or steady progress.