Physical fitness is a popular topic today, and its popularity has been a major factor in motivating college students to pursue careers in physical education, exercise physiology, health education, nutrition, physical therapy, and medicine. In 1980, the Public Health Service listed "physical fitness and exercise" as one of 15 areas of concern related to improving the country's overall health (30). This was far from a new idea. Similar interests and concerns about physical fitness existed in this country more than 100 years ago. Between the Civil War and the First World War (WWI), physical education was primarily concerned with the development and maintenance of fitness, and many of the leaders in physical education were trained in medicine (13) (p. 5). For example, Dr. Dudley Sargent, hired by Harvard University in 1879, set up a physical training program with individual exercise prescriptions to improve a person's structure and function to achieve "that prime physical condition called fitness-fitness for work, fitness for play, fitness for anything a man may be called upon to do" (33) (p.297).