Researchers say that people who condense a week’s worth of recommended exercise into a couple of days have a similar risk of heart disease and stroke as those who spread out their physical activity.
A major study on “weekend warriors” compared to regular exercisers found that even when people are too busy to exercise during the workweek, making up for it on the weekends can still improve cardiovascular health.
Dr. Patrick Ellinor, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said, “Our findings suggest that efforts to improve physical activity, even if concentrated within one to two days of the week, should be beneficial for cardiovascular risk. It appears that it is the total volume of activity, rather than the pattern, that matters most.”
Public health guidelines recommend that adults do at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity every week or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity activity. However, it has been unclear whether the same benefits come from concentrated exercise or more regular, spread-out physical activity.
The researchers analyzed medical records for nearly 90,000 people enrolled in the UK Biobank project. All participants wore wrist-mounted accelerometers that recorded their physical activity for a full week.
According to the study, a third of the participants were inactive, meaning they did less than 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity each week, while 42% were active weekend warriors, getting at least 150 minutes mainly over one or two days. Nearly a quarter of the individuals spread their exercise out, doing at least 150 minutes over several days.
The team, led by cardiologist Dr. Shaan Khurshid, found that both concentrated and spread-out exercise were associated with lower cardiovascular health risks compared to inactivity. The risk of heart attack was 27% lower for weekend warriors and 35% lower for those who spread their exercise over the week.
The authors write in the Jama journal, “Physical activity concentrated within one to two days was associated with similarly lower risk of cardiovascular outcomes to more regular activity.” The study builds on previous research that found benefits to health and fitness from weekend exercise.
The researchers now plan to investigate whether concentrated exercise has similar benefits for other diseases. Dr. Ellinor said, “Our results may also motivate future studies of physical activity interventions delivered in a concentrated fashion, which may be more practical and efficient.”
In an accompanying article, Prof Peter Katzmarzyk at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana and Prof John Jakicic at the University of Kansas Medical Center, say that the latest results highlight the flexibility of physical activity in improving health. They write, “There are clearly benefits to achieving more than 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week, but the public health message should also clearly convey that every minute counts.”