'Weekend Warrior' Workouts Could Deliver Protection Against 200 Diseases, Says Study
New evidence has shown that 'weekend warriors' receive just as many health promoting benefits as those who train throughout the week. Good news for those who struggle to fit the time in to work out before or after work.
It's currently recommended that people partake in 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week. Researchers aimed to find out the health effects of cramming physical activity into one or two days (weekend warrior style), compared to spreading it more evenly across the week (regular activity).
The researchers analysed the effects of the two different approaches on 678 conditions across 16 types of diseases, including mental health, metabolic, digestive and neurological conditions.
When compared to inactive participants (completing less than 150 minutes moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week), results from both weekend warrior and regular activity groups were associated with a lower risk of disease.
The study concluded that when the weekend warriors and those who regularly exercise were compared, no health conditions differed significantly. Fitting in at least 150 minutes moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week was key when reducing the risk for disease, regardless of how the workouts are spread across the week.
Speaking to EurekaAlert, co-senior author Shaan Khurshid said, 'Physical activity is known to affect risk of many diseases. Here, we show the potential benefits of weekend warrior activity for risk not only of cardiovascular diseases, as we’ve shown in the past, but also future diseases spanning the whole spectrum, ranging from conditions like chronic kidney disease to mood disorders and beyond.'
'Our findings were consistent across many different definitions of weekend warrior activity, as well as other thresholds used to categorise people as active,' says Khurshid. '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.'
What This Means for Us
If we are really struggling to shoehorn our workouts in alongside our workday, we can receive a whole host of health benefits from fitting them in at the weekend – providing we get the length of workout and intensity right.
To put that into context, the weekend warriors in the study trained for 75 minutes over two workouts or 150 minutes in one workout. That is still some considerable graft. What's most important, however, is choosing an exercise frequency and duration which fits your time constraints and commitments, whether that's midweek or weekend.
You Might Also Like
