Weekend Exercise Effective AS Regular Exercise, Study Finds

Do you fit your physical activity in a single day or two days and consider yourself a “weekend warrior”? Worry not. According to a recent study, leading this habit is just as beneficial to health as exercising daily.

Researchers from several countries discovered that those who exercise exclusively on the weekends reduce their risk of dying young by the same amount as those who balance out their activity across the week. Moreover, compared to lazy slobs, both groups have a lower mortality rate from cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other disorders.

The researchers wrote, “The findings of this large prospective cohort study suggest that individuals who engage in active patterns of physical activity, whether a weekend warrior or regularly active, experience lower all-cause and cause-specific mortality rates than inactive individuals.”

How much time should you spend working out?

As soon as the scientists considered the total activity level, the findings were consistent across all disorders. For people aged 18 to 64, experts suggest a minimum of 150 minutes of gentle activity or 75 minutes of strenuous exercise.

So an individual may achieve these recommendations by going for a brisk thirty-minute walk five days per week or by jogging for one hour and 15 minutes weekly. The research is based on over 50,000 American adults who were tracked for, on the median, slightly over ten years. There were roughly 22,000 deaths. However, there were 8% fewer deaths amongst weekend athletes, and 15% decreased deaths amongst regular exercisers.

Exercising during weekends has the same comparable effects as regular exercise 

The study showed that subjects who exercised on weekends and regularly exercised had comparable all-cause and cause-certain death rates. This indicates that extending it over additional days or packing it into shorter periods may not impact mortality outcomes when engaging in the same level of physical activity.

The findings have ramifications for individuals who find it difficult to fit in exercise because of family or work obligations. They might discover integrating shorter regular exercise periods into a hectic schedule is simpler.