People who fit an entire week’s recommended exercise into a couple of days have a similarly low risk of heart disease and stroke as those who spread out their physical activity, researchers say.
The results from a major study on “weekend warriors” against more regular exercisers suggest that even when people are too busy to exercise in the working week, making up for the inactivity at the weekend can still improve cardiovascular health.
“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,” said Dr Patrick Ellinor, a cardiologist at Massachusetts general hospital in Boston. “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. But it has been unclear whether the same benefits come from concentrated exercise or more regular, spread-out physical activity.
The researchers analysed medical records for nearly 90,000 people enrolled in the UK Biobank project. All 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 clocked up less than 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity each week, while 42% were classed as active weekend warriors, racking up at least 150 minutes, mostly 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 Dr Shaan Khurshid, a cardiologist, found that both concentrated and spread-out exercise were associated with lower cardiovascular health risks compared with inactivity. The risk of heart attack was 27% lower for weekend warriors and 35% lower for those who spread their exercise over the week.
When the researchers looked at heart failure, the risk was 38% and 36% lower for weekend warriors and more regular exercisers, respectively. The risk of atrial fibrillation – abnormal heart rhythm – was 22% and 19% lower. For stroke, it was 21% and 17% lower.
“Physical activity concentrated within one to two days was associated with similarly lower risk of cardiovascular outcomes to more regular activity,” the authors write in the Jama journal. The work builds on other studies that have found benefits to health and fitness from weekend exercise.
The researchers now aim to investigate whether such concentrated exercise has similar benefits on a range of other diseases. “Our results may also motivate future studies of physical activity interventions delivered in a concentrated fashion, which may be more practical and efficient,” said Ellinor.
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 the latest results highlight the flexibility with which physical activity can be accrued to improve health.
“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,” they write.
