If exercise plays a minor role in your workweek, rest assured. Cramming the recommended amount of physical activity into the weekend still has significant health benefits, research shows.
A study of almost 90,000 people taking part in the UK Biobank project found that ‘weekend warriors’ who cram a week’s worth of exercise into one or two days have a lower risk of developing more than 200 diseases compared with inactive people.
Scientists have been tracking people’s health for years, after monitoring their exercise patterns. They’ve seen a reduction in the risks of the entire spectrum of human diseases, from high blood pressure and diabetes to mood disorders and kidney disease.
The more concentrated physical activity favored by weekend exercisers appears to be just as effective at reducing the risk of future disease as regular sessions spread evenly throughout the week. Researchers therefore suspect that the total amount of exercise people get is more important than how often they exercise.
“I think it’s empowering,” said Dr. Shaan Khurshid, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who led the study. “It shows that, in terms of health benefits, the volume of physical activity is more important than the pattern. The key is, however you’re going to achieve that volume, do it in a way that works for you.”
The NHS recommends 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week to stay healthy, with even one or two sessions a week reducing the risk of heart disease and stroke. As a rule of thumb, the boundary between moderate and vigorous exercise is when it becomes too difficult to complete spoken sentences while exercising.
Write in Circulationthe researchers describe how they analysed the health records of 89,573 volunteers from the UK Biobank. As part of the project, they wore a device on their wrist to measure their movement patterns over a week.
Those who were able to do at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise were classified as regular exercisers if their physical activity was spread out, and weekend warriors if most of their exercise was crammed into one or two days. Those who did less than 150 minutes per week were classified as inactive.
In the years after wearing the exercise monitor, weekend warriors had a lower risk of 264 medical conditions compared to those considered inactive. The regular exercisers experienced similar benefits.
The strongest effects were for cardiometabolic conditions. 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 reduced by more than 40%.
Previous studies have reported similar findings. In 2017, Gary O’Donovan, then a physical activity researcher at Loughborough University, found that weekend warriors and regular exercisers who met physical activity goals less chance of dying from cancer or cardiovascular disease than sedentary people. Another studyin 2022, reiterated the benefits.
One question that hangs over such observational studies is whether exercise actually prevents disease, or whether healthier people, who already have a lower risk of disease, simply move more. Both are likely at work. In the latest study, the researchers attempted to address this by excluding people who developed medical conditions within two years of monitoring their exercise.
Khurshid said more research was needed to investigate whether concentrated exercise could help people achieve their physical activity goals more easily. “It might be more convenient for some people, it might increase adherence to public health interventions,” he said.
Dr. Leandro Rezende, an expert in preventive medicine at the Federal University of São Paulo who led the 2022 study on health and exercise, said: “These findings confirm that total volume is what matters most, regardless of weekly frequency.
“This is good news for those trying to meet the World Health Organization guidelines and only have a few days a week to do so. However, it is important to remember that for those already meeting the guidelines, increasing the frequency can help to increase the total volume of physical activity and therefore gain further health benefits.”