Over the past decade, Korean exercise physiology has expanded its scope from performance enhancement and rehabilitation to broader domains such as aging, metabolic syndrome, and digital health. In parallel, Exercise Science has experienced increasing manuscript submissions, diversification of research themes, and ongoing efforts toward greater international visibility and SCIE-level competitiveness. This shift reflects changes in social structure, rising demand for chronic disease management, and advances in digital technology. At the same time, it raises a more fundamental question: where should Korean exercise physiology go next?

Most importantly, exercise physiology must move beyond being a science of averages. Traditionally, the field has relied on comparing group means before and after a training intervention to explain the effects of exercise. Although this approach has been essential to the development of the discipline, it is no longer sufficient. Under standardized aerobic training conditions, inter-individual variability in physiological adaptation is consistently observed. Some individuals exhibit substantial improvement in VO₂max, whereas others demonstrate comparatively attenuated or negligible responses [1]. Similarly, resistance training can result in large gains in muscle strength and hypertrophy in some participants but modest adaptations in others [2]. Potential explanations include genetic background, endocrine status, sex differences, baseline fitness, sleep and recovery quality, nutritional status, psychological stress, and adherence-related behavioral factors [1,2]. Accordingly, the central question is no longer whether exercise is effective on average, but why responses differ across individuals and under what biological conditions such variability emerges.

Addressing this question requires a shift in both research design and analytical strategy. Studies based primarily on mean differences and simple pre-post comparisons are limited in their ability to explain the heterogeneity of exercise responses. This perspective is especially relevant during life-course transitions. Growth and maturation, pregnancy and postpartum recovery, the menopausal transition, and the progression from healthy aging to frailty are not merely age-defined categories; they are distinct physiological states in which endocrine, metabolic, neuromuscular, and behavioral factors interact. Exercise physiology must therefore move beyond cross-sectional age comparisons and instead track these transitions longitudinally to explain individual trajectories of adaptation.

A second challenge lies in redefining representation in exercise physiology research. For too long, the implicit “standard” participant has been male, relatively healthy, and drawn from a relatively homogeneous population. Clinical and exercise science literature consistently demonstrates that women remain underrepresented in physiology and sports performance studies despite known sex-specific differences in endocrine regulation, metabolism, recovery, and adaptation [3,4]. Thus, the underrepresentation of women is not simply an issue of inclusion; it is an issue of scientific completeness. Women should not be regarded as a subgroup to be merely added to existing study designs. Rather, they constitute a central population through which exercise physiology can refine and strengthen its scientific foundations. Importantly, recent issues of Exercise Science have also begun to reflect this transition through studies specifically focused on female cohorts, including investigations on insulin resistance, osteoarthritis, respiratory function, gait, and body self-esteem in older women and women with abdominal obesity [5,6].

More broadly, representation must be redefined to include diversity in sex, age, disease status, body composition, and lived context. If exercise physiology is to produce evidence that is clinically relevant and socially meaningful, it must reflect the populations it seeks to serve. Stronger science depends not on narrower standardization alone, but on evidence that captures the diversity of human physiology in real-world settings.

The third transition concerns the setting in which physiology is observed. Traditional exercise physiology has flourished in the controlled environment of the laboratory through rigorous protocols, precise measurements, and tightly regulated experimental conditions. These strengths remain fundamental. However, human physiology unfolds not in laboratories, but in everyday life where sleep is irregular, stress fluctuates, diet varies, adherence is inconsistent, and recovery is often incomplete. If exercise physiology is to maintain clinical and societal relevance, it must extend its focus beyond controlled environments and into the settings in which adaptation actually occurs.

At this point, wearable devices, digital biomarkers, and AI-based analytics offer important new opportunities. The continuous measurement of heart rate, heart rate variability, sleep, skin temperature, movement, and recovery patterns allows researchers to observe trajectories of change over time rather than relying solely on isolated data points. These technologies make it possible to examine variability, fluctuation, and context-dependent responses with far greater precision than was previously possible. Emerging evidence further suggests that wearable-derived physiological monitoring may improve ecological validity and facilitate individualized exercise prescription in free-living conditions [7].

The field must move from confirming average effects to explaining variability, from relying on limited standard subjects to reflecting the true diversity of human populations, and from prioritizing laboratory control alone to engaging with the complexity of real-world life. Precision, inclusion, and intelligent science may appear to be separate agendas, but in reality they represent a single movement toward a more rigorous, more applicable, and more mature exercise physiology. In this context, Exercise Science should continue to broaden its editorial direction by encouraging longitudinal cohort studies, sex-specific analyses, wearable and AI-integrated methodologies, and translational research connecting laboratory findings with clinical and public health applications. The journal may further strengthen its international impact through interdisciplinary collaboration, methodological transparency, and promotion of precision exercise science approaches.

If the past decade was largely about confirming that exercise works, the next decade must be about explaining how it works differently across diverse bodies, life-course transitions, and lived contexts. That knowledge must ultimately be translated into better science, better programs, and better health.