Weekend Warrior Workouts
By: Aparna Mele, MD
Too swamped during the work week to even contemplate finding time to exercise? Good news, research suggests that cramming the recommended amount of physical activity into just the weekend still has significant health benefits.
A study published in the journal Circulation, analyzed information from nearly 90,000 people in the U.K. who wore wrist accelerometers. The devices logged both their physical activity and the times they were active. The researchers found that people who only worked out on the weekends (a.k.a. “weekend warriors”) and those who had more regular physical activity patterns both lowered their risk of developing 264 diseases, compared with inactive people.
Scientists followed people’s health for years after monitoring their exercise patterns and saw reduced risks across the full spectrum of human disease, from hypertension and diabetes to mood disorders and kidney disease. The strongest effects were for cardiometabolic disorders. Compared with inactive people, the risk of hypertension was more than 20% lower in weekend warriors and regular exercisers, while the risk of diabetes was down more than 40%.
The more concentrated bouts of physical activity favored by weekend warriors seemed as effective at reducing the risk of future disease as regular sessions spread evenly through the week, leading researchers to suspect the total amount of exercise people got was more important than how frequently they trained.
In another study published in the journal Obesity, researchers used dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA scan) to measure abdominal and whole-body fat mass and also looked at BMI and waist circumference in nearly 9,700 participants aged 20 to 59 years old. They found that both “weekend warriors” and regular exercisers had lower abdominal fat and whole-body mass fat compared to inactive people.
This means that the volume of physical activity matters far more than the weekly frequency of exercise, and the weekly nationally
recommended total physical activity amount—which is 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity and two days of muscle strengthening—can be done either evenly throughout the week or during one to two days.
The largest question is whether exercise is really preventing disease, or whether healthier people, who already are at lower risk of disease, simply just exercise more. While both are likely true, some physical activity, regardless of when or how often, is better than none at all. It should be considered that exercising intensely for more than an hour in one go isn’t for everyone. Your age, fitness level, and any injuries all determine what you’re capable of performing, when first starting out. Also, for those who are already reaching the guidelines for minimum amount of exercise to maintain health, increasing the frequency of exercise would help to increase the total volume of physical activity and therefore obtain further health benefits. For example, you could aim to do a few shorter workouts, even just brisk walks, during the week and then something bigger, like a long mountain bike ride or long run on the weekend.
Regardless, the important takeaway from these findings is that any amount of exercise is better than none at all. Your workouts don’t have to be relegated to the week or the weekend, and you don’t need to be intimidated by the 150-minute guidelines. The important thing is to just start moving when you have the time and understanding that being consistent is much more important than doing what’s considered ‘optimal”. People who are regular exercisers tend to live longer and have a lower risk of dying at an early age.
References:
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.124.068669
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38374722/
