Physical activity doesn’t need to be spread out over the week – ‘weekend warriors’ seem to get same health benefits.
Summary
Cramming one’s weekly activity into two days seems to provide similar health benefits as working out daily. Among 90,000 UK Biobank participants, those who exercised at least 150 minutes each week had a lower risk of high blood pressure, stroke and hundreds more diseases – regardless of how they distributed their workouts.
Exercising at least 150 minutes each week is associated with a lower risk of 264 medical conditions. And it doesn’t seem to matter if the activity is crammed into a few days or spread out evenly over the week.
Researchers looked at activity data from almost 90,000 UK Biobank participants who had worn a movement tracker for a week. Those who did at least half of their 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity within one or two days were classed as ‘weekend warriors’. Those who followed other activity patterns were classed as regular exercisers.
If your schedule is busy and you can’t manage to be active on most days, be active on the days when you can – it all counts.
Dr Shaan Khurshid, Massachusetts General Hospital, US
Less time, more intensity
Moderate intensity activities include brisk walking or mowing the lawn. Vigorous activities such as running make it difficult to talk without pausing for breath. The NHS recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate activity – or 75 minutes of vigorous activity – spread out evenly over four to five days each week.
But the study’s results indicate that “if your schedule is busy and you can’t manage to be active on most days, be active on the days when you can”, lead researcher Shaan Khurshid tells The Washington Post. “It all counts.”
Both weekend warriors and regular exercisers had a more than 20% lower risk of high blood pressure, and more than 40% lower diabetes risk, compared with less active people. Being active – even if it’s on weekends only – was also associated with a lower risk of heart attacks and stroke than being inactive. Previous studies had shown similar effects. But they usually relied on people’s notoriously unreliable memory of their activity.
Concerns that weekend warriors are more injury-prone seem to be unwarranted. Both they and regular exercisers had lower rates of serious muscle and bone injuries than less active people.
If 150 minutes without breaking a sweat is all you can manage, then it doesn’t matter when you do it.
Dr Peter Swoboda, University of Leeds, UK
Correlation, not causation
The study doesn’t directly prove that exercise reduces disease risk – only that the two are linked. There are many other factors at play in people’s lives. The researchers tried to control some of these: for example, they only compared people with similar diets or similar smoking and drinking habits.
It’s also possible that healthier people simply tend to exercise more, rather than exercise staving off disease. The researchers tried to address this by ruling out people who developed a disease within two years of the activity monitoring.
Heart health researcher Peter Swoboda points out in a Conversation comment piece that more is always better. “If 150 minutes without breaking a sweat is all you can manage, then it doesn’t matter when you do it. But if you can manage something more strenuous, then you really should make an effort to do it.”