October 25, 2024, 12:34 pm | Read time: 6 minutes
Exercise is important for your health, preferably every day or at least every other day of the week. Right? That’s right. However, a new study shows that exercise can also be effective when done in a bundle, e.g., only at the weekend. FITBOOK medical editor explains the research findings.
Many people find it difficult to find time for regular training sessions in their stressful everyday lives. But that’s no reason to be frustrated and give up completely. As a study published in the specialist magazine Nature Aging shows, you can also “catch up” on exercise at the weekend. In other words, for long-term health, it doesn’t seem to matter whether you are active for less time during the week or just two days a week, e.g., Saturday and Sunday, but more concentrated and longer.
Overview
How much exercise does the WHO recommend per week?
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise or at least 75 minutes of intensive endurance training per week.1
Can you “Catch up” on exercise at the weekend? A recent study
The current study was based on precisely these guidelines. The researchers responsible based their investigation on data from the UK Biobank, a large British cohort study that tracks the health of around half a million people. Data from 75,629 people (average age 62 years), from whom validated accelerometer data was available, was used for the recently published study. These were recorded over the course of seven days. The average follow-up period was 8.4 years. During this time, the researchers observed the occurrence of neurological diseases – stroke, dementia, Parkinson’s disease – and mental disorders such as anxiety disorders and depression on the basis of hospital data and deaths. 2
Based on the recorded movement data, the scientists categorized the test subjects into three groups:
- Inactive: people who did not achieve the amount of activity recommended by the WHO during the week (applied to around 24,300 test subjects).
- Regularly active: People who exercised moderately to intensively for 150 minutes per week and divided their training over the course of a week (applied to around 21,200 test subjects).
- “Weekend Warriors”: People who achieved the recommended amount of exercise but concentrated 50 percent of it on one or two days a week (e.g., at the weekend) (applied to around 30,000 test subjects).3
In their analysis, the researchers also looked at other lifestyle factors that could have an impact on brain health and the development of diseases: Age, gender, habits such as smoking, alcohol consumption, and general diet. Possible pre-existing conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer were also taken into account.
Effects of just two days of exercise on brain health
The analysis of the data provided evidence that people who concentrate their training on just two days or catch up on exercise at the weekend need not fear any disadvantage in terms of the health effects of their training.
Compared to inactive people, the so-called “weekend warriors” had a 26 percent lower risk of dementia, a 21 percent lower risk of stroke, and a 45 percent lower risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. With regard to mental illnesses, their risk was reduced by 40 percent (depression) and 37 percent (anxiety disorders). The two-day sports group did not need to shy away from comparison with regular exercisers. The risk reduction for the aforementioned illnesses was in a similar range.
When the researchers also differentiated according to the age of their test subjects in their analysis, they found that the risk reduction for neuronal diseases (stroke, dementia, Parkinson’s disease) through “weekend workouts” was particularly pronounced in over 65-year-olds. When it came to reducing the risk of depression and anxiety disorders, both under and over-65-year-olds benefited equally from the concentrated sports sessions.
New research results support the findings of an earlier study
A study published in the journal JAMA International Medicine in 2022 also looked at the question of whether exercise could be done at the weekend or on one or two days instead of regularly throughout the week.
The test subjects whose data the scientists analyzed completed the recommended amount of exercise either spread over several days or bundled on one or two days a week. For example, a person could either take a brisk 30-minute walk five days a week – or jog for an hour and 15 minutes one day a week instead.
Course of the study
For their study, the scientists drew on data from 350,978 people who had shared their information between 1997 and 2013 as part of the US National Health Interview Survey. The subjects had been followed for an average of ten years.4
The researchers compared the activity of the survey participants with deaths and causes of death such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. In this way, they found out how exercise – distributed or concentrated – versus no exercise affected health and life expectancy.
What are the benefits of “catching up” on exercise?
The scientists’ findings: It doesn’t seem to make a noticeable difference in mortality from the so-called lifestyle diseases mentioned above, whether you exercise more often and for a shorter period of time per week or less often and for longer. In other words: yes, it seems that you can “catch up” on the sport you missed during the week – at the weekend, for example – with possibly the same effect on your health. The main thing is to do the recommended amount for the whole week. Good news for people with stressful weekdays: extended training sessions at the weekend also promote health.
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Classification of the studies
Of course, the studies, which were based on data from snapshots and related these to illnesses that occur later, still leave many questions unanswered. Is the apparent protection against illness really causally – and exclusively – attributable to the amount of sport? And even if this were the case, did all the test subjects maintain both their amount of sport and the distribution of their sport units in the long term? The studies cannot answer either question.
Nevertheless, they provide exciting information and important arguments for not giving up exercise completely when there is a lack of regular motivation or time. It is, therefore, better to “catch up” on exercise for the sake of your health than to skip it completely.