Total Exercise Matters More Than Number of Days

We know exercise is important for reducing disease risk—even if you don’t lose weight. For example, regularly engaging in physical activity has been linked to reduced risk of dementia and heart disease.

Current guidelines recommend getting at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity per week. Typically, this would be spread out over the week. But what about people who simply do not have the time or energy to exercise during the week due to work and family obligations? Should they just forget about it? 

The answer is a resounding no—keep your active weekend plans! In fact, new research published in the journal Circulation sheds light on the fitness benefits of being a weekend warrior.

What This Study Found

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital took data from the UK Biobank, which has health information on over 500,000 people. 

For this study, researchers used information from 89,573 individuals in the Biobank who had worn an accelerometer for a week—that’s a pedometer-like device that records most movement. The average age of these participants was 62 and just under two-thirds were women. Participants were followed up for an average of over six years.

The researchers were looking for three things: the amount of physical activity per week, how many days per week the physical activity was performed, and what diseases and conditions they developed by the follow-up period. 

Individuals were placed into one of three categories: inactive, weekend warrior and regular exercisers. The inactive group didn’t meet the minimal weekly physical activity recommendations. The weekend warriors met the recommended amount of weekly exercise but got it all in a day or two (not necessarily the weekend). And the regular exercisers met the recommended weekly amount but spread it out throughout the week. 

Researchers considered 678 conditions spanning over 16 categories, including mental health, digestive, neurological and cardiometabolic. 

During statistical analyses, researchers adjusted for demographics and lifestyle behaviors that might affect disease risk, including age, sex, ethnicity, tobacco use, alcohol intake, education, employment status, self-reported health and diet quality. Adjusting for these variables helps isolate physical activity’s role in disease risk and reduces the influence of these other factors. 

The findings indicate that concentrating physical activity into one or two days of the week may be as effective at reducing the risk of disease as spreading out physical activity over the week—and that held true for more than 200 diseases. Compared to the inactive group, the most significant associations between exercise and reduced disease risk were for circulatory, metabolic and digestive conditions. 

Specifically, the exercise groups had reduced risks of hypertension—23% and 28% lower risks for weekend warriors and regular exercisers, respectively—and diabetes—43% and 46% lower risks for weekend warriors and regular exercisers, respectively. 

“Because there appears to be similar benefits for weekend warrior versus regular activity, it may be the total volume of activity, rather than the pattern, that matters most,” co-senior author Shaan Khurshid, M.D., M.P.H., a faculty member in the Demoulas Center for Cardiac Arrhythmias at Massachusetts General Hospital, said in a press release. “Future interventions testing the effectiveness of concentrated activity to improve public health are warranted, and patients should be encouraged to engage in guideline-adherent physical activity using any pattern that may work best for them.”

How Do These Findings Apply to Real Life?

While the U.S. guidelines do not specifically state that physical activity should be spread out over the week, this is common health and fitness advice.

And as a health professional, I have often recommended this approach to help avoid overwhelming my clients—you know, small steps, big changes—not thinking that maybe it was causing more struggles for some to do small amounts of physical activity most days of the week. 

What if, instead, you could go for one vigorous walk/run for 75 minutes one day a week? Or do two 40-minute HIIT workouts two days a week? These are just a couple of examples, but the point here is that you’ve got options to incorporate activity into your routine in a way that works for your schedule and lifestyle. 

The Bottom Line

This study suggests that regardless of how many days it’s spread out over each week, as long as you get the minimum amount of moderate- or vigorous-intensity physical activity, you can reduce your risk for hundreds of health conditions. Both weekend warriors and regular exercisers experienced about the same amount of reduction in disease risk. 

It’s important to note again that “weekend warrior” means exercise on any one or two days of the week, not just on the weekend. This is great news if you’ve felt defeated trying to meet current exercise guidelines. Do what works for you and fits your lifestyle. And remember—any physical activity is better than none, so just get moving!