- A new study compares how our frequency of exercising during the week can affect our mortality.
- Research shows that it may not matter if you squeeze all your physical activity in at the end of the week, as long as you’re getting your steps in.
- The new evidence might make you rethink the way you view your workout schedule.
We all wish we had more hours in the day, especially when it comes time for daily exercise. Let’s be honest, many of us struggle to find the time during the week to pack up our gym bags and get our exercise in.
After all we have learned from science, like how many minutes to work out each day or how exercise can effectively reduce depression, now we finally have evidence that lets us all feel better about not getting to the gym during the week. A new study shows that working out on the weekends is just as effective for your health as working out daily is, as long as you’re getting the same amount of exercise.
In the new international study, the researchers investigated the question: “Does performing the recommended levels of weekly physical activity in 1 to 2 sessions (weekend warrior) vs 3 or more sessions (regularly active) influence mortality?”
In other words, does it matter if you squeeze all your exercise in on the weekend or are you better off spreading out your physical activity over more weekly sessions? Although previous studies have shown health benefits of being a so-called “weekend warrior,” scientists have failed to show how doing only one or two sessions of exercise a week compares to performing more frequent, regular sessions of physical activity, specifically in terms of reducing the risk of mortality…until now.
After comparing the two exercise groups, weekend warriors and weekday gym-goers, the researchers found very little difference between them in terms of reduced mortality risk from all causes, or specifically from cancer or cardiovascular disease.
“Compared with physically inactive participants, hazard ratios for all-cause mortality were 0.92 for weekend warriors and 0.85 for regularly active participants; findings for cause-specific mortality were similar,” the researchers reported. A hazard ratio of one means that there is no difference in survival between the two groups. Given that both ratios were very close to one, this means that both weekend warriors and regularly active participants share very similar mortality rates.
The study authors wrote that their findings suggest that “individuals who engage in active patterns of physical activity, whether weekend warrior or regularly active, experience lower all-cause and cause-specific mortality rates than inactive individuals.” Given that there was no significant difference when it came to the comparison between the two groups, the authors concluded that “individuals who engage in the recommended levels of physical activity may experience the same benefit whether the sessions are performed throughout the week or concentrated into fewer days.”
A few limitations of the study were reported, including that the survey data came from self-reported questionnaires, which are prone to including a certain level of error compared to more objective measurements.
However, on a positive note, the findings in the study involved a very large research population which were observed over a long period, providing a considerable amount of confidence in the statistics reported.
The bottom line: as long as you are getting the recommended amount of physical activity in at some point during the week, it doesn’t matter if you pushed the workout off until the weekend. A win for the procrastinators and weekend warriors!
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