If you get all your exercise on weekends, it may be just as good for your cardiometabolic health as regular workouts several days a week, a new study suggests.
Doctors have long recommended that people get at least 150 minutes a week of moderate to vigorous physical activity for optimal health. But it hasn’t been as clear whether people need to exercise most days of the week to get the most health benefits — or whether they could opt instead to get the majority of their physical activity on weekends.
Researchers examined data on almost 90,000 people who wore accelerometers to objectively measure their activity levels and found similar reductions in the risk of conditions like high blood pressure, obesity, and type 2 diabetes for weekend warriors and for people who spread their workouts more evenly throughout the week.
“It was somewhat surprising not to find any conditions where the benefit appeared different for weekend warrior versus regular exercise patterns, despite looking at over 600 diseases,” says the lead study author, Shinwan Kany, MD, of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany.
“This really suggests it’s the total volume of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA), rather than the pattern, that is the key driver of benefits,” says Dr. Kany, who also works at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the cardiovascular research center at Massachusetts General Hospital.
What Is a ‘Weekend Warrior’?
For the study, researchers had participants wear accelerometers for one week to see how much physical activity they got at moderate intensity (such as a brisk walk or biking on flat ground) or vigorous intensity (like a run or cycling on hills).
Almost 38,000 people were so-called weekend warriors, meaning they got at least 150 minutes of moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity (MVPA) and did at least half their exercise on weekends. Roughly another 21,000 regular exercisers got at least 150 minutes of MVPA with less than half their exercise on weekends. And about 30,000 participants were considered inactive because they got less than 150 minutes of physical activity.
After about six years of follow-up, both weekend warriors and regular exercisers were significantly less likely to experience a wide range of health issues than participants who were inactive, according to the results.
Overall, weekend warriors were 11 percent to 65 percent less likely to experience 264 different health conditions than inactive individuals, the study found. Similarly, regular exercisers were 12 percent to 59 percent less likely to experience 205 different conditions than inactive individuals.
The Cardiometabolic Benefits of Exercise Were Most Apparent
The benefits appeared most pronounced for so-called cardiometabolic diseases, a constellation of preventable conditions that impact the cardiovascular and metabolic systems.
In particular, compared with inactive participants, the risk of high blood pressure was 23 percent lower for weekend warriors and 28 percent lower for regular exercisers. Similarly, the type 2 diabetes risk was 43 percent lower for weekend warriors and 46 percent lower for regular exercisers, while the risk of obesity was 45 percent lower for weekend warriors and 56 percent lower for regular exercisers.
There were, however, some musculoskeletal and skin conditions that were more common among both weekend warriors and regular exercisers than among inactive individuals, Kany says. These were likely due to overuse injuries or sun exposure, and the risk was similar for both weekend warriors and for people who spread workouts over several days of the week, Kany says.
One limitation of the study is that researchers measured activity levels only over a single week, and it’s possible that workout habits later changed in ways that might have influenced the results. Another drawback is that the study wasn’t designed to determine exactly which types of workouts might be best.
The Best Time to Exercise Is When You Can
The findings add to the evidence suggesting that all exercise can be beneficial, regardless of when you do it, says Keith Diaz, PhD, a professor of behavioral medicine and the director of Project PossABILITY at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.
“So many of us struggle to fit exercise in during the work week,” says Dr. Diaz, who wasn’t involved in the new study. “So you can get that exercise in any way that your schedule allows.”
Diaz agrees that one potential drawback to being a weekend warrior is the potential for musculoskeletal injury. “But the benefits of exercise just on the weekend outweigh the possible risks,” Diaz says. “It’s better than nothing. The worst is not to do anything.”
