Exercise addiction is one of the most keenly researched topics in behavioural addictions. It is a unique form of addiction, because in contrast to other addictive morbidities it is carried out with major physical-effort often leading to injury. The current evaluation highlights that most of the published studies report the risk for exercise addiction, as measured with various tools, rather than actual clinical cases. The unrealistic preponderance of exercise addiction, ranging from 0.3% to 77%, reported in the literature is attributed to the lack of an adequate conceptual model for the disorder. Extant theories of exercise addiction are reviewed and it is pinpointed that the idea of its evolutionary genesis, or the progressive nature from healthy to unhealthy exercise patterns, drives research into the wrong direction. As an alternative, an interactional model is offered accounting for the adoption, maintenance, and transformation (or misuse) of exercise behaviour. The model incorporates a "black-box" in whic