Concentrated weekend exercise can be just as effective as daily workouts | Health and Wellness

Jose Giner is 63 years old. For the past five years he has been cycling with a group of friends on the roads and garden paths of the Horta Sud region of Valencia. They do this on Saturday or Sunday. They bike for three or four hours, depending on the route they take. This is all your weekly physical activity – if the concept of “physical activity” means playing sports. “I have a very bad shift schedule. In the morning or afternoon, when I have free time, I usually do urgent work at home or in the field,” he explains. Like José, according to the 2022 Spanish Sports Habits Survey carried out by the former Ministry of Culture and Sports, 16% of people who play sports admit that they do it mainly on weekends and holidays.

Until now, reducing the weekly exercise recommendations (a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate exercise, according to the World Health Organization and major clinical guidelines) to one or two days was somewhat frowned upon, as it suggested a sedentary lifestyle most days. The most common proposals were four or five days of training. However, a study recently published in a scientific journal Circulation – using data from almost 90,000 people participating in the UK Biobank project – concluded that what is known as “weekend warrior” physical activity has the same health benefits as regular physical activity compared to sedentary activity way of life.

People who met recommendations for weekly exercise for one or two days had a lower risk of developing more than 200 diseases compared to sedentary people, according to the study. The strongest association was observed in a reduced risk of developing cardiometabolic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes or obesity.

“In this study, we show the possible benefit of weekend physical activity on the risk of not only cardiovascular disease, as we have shown in the past, but also future diseases that run the gamut from conditions such as chronic kidney disease to mood disorders . and more,” says Shaan Khurshid, study co-author and physician assistant at the Telemachus and Irene Demoulas Family Foundation Cardiac Arrhythmia Center at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Luis Rodríguez Padial, president of the Spanish Society of Cardiology, said the study was “encouraging” for people who, like himself, exercise mainly on weekends. “There are studies that have shown that three days of exercise can reduce the risk of disease, but it was not so clear whether concentrating all activity into one or two days would be equally beneficial or not. A study with a larger number of patients shows that the results are similar to those obtained by spreading out their time throughout the week,” he says.

This opinion is shared by Almudena Beltrán, a specialist in internal medicine and member of the diagnostic department of the University Hospital of Navarra (CUN), who also considers it important that the average age of the study participants was about 62 years, precisely the age group in which the mortality rate from heart disease begins to increase. vascular disease and the emergence of metabolic risk factors, “where the study indicates exercise has the greatest impact and effect.”

As for the study’s findings, Beltrán emphasizes that they provide health care providers with a “new tool” to help patients prevent disease through exercise. Especially those who cite lack of time as a reason for not working out or who refuse to workout on Saturday or Sunday “because it’s only for one day.”

“This is a very good tool that allows for individualization and adaptation to the patient. That is, do not limit yourself to giving everyone standard recommendations, but rather ask yourself what the life of each of them is like in order to help them make it possible to achieve the recommended thresholds of physical exercise,” says the specialist.

Is quality more important than regularity in exercise?

Researcher Shaan Khurshid, in a press release issued by Massachusetts General Hospital, concluded that since weekend physical activity appears to have similar benefits, it is possible that in the pillar of health that is exercise, the most important is “This is the total amount of activity.” , above the pattern” to complete this exercise. In this sense, Khurshid noted that patients should be encouraged to follow the recommended guidelines, “using whatever regimen may suit them best.”

Although this is an observational study whose findings need to be confirmed in future studies, Luis Rodriguez Padial and Almudena Beltrán agree that what Khurshid said is one of the greatest takeaways from the study. “Simply put, the study says that in those 150 minutes, you do the best you can. The main thing is to achieve quantity. And this is another novelty because they usually recommend spreading out the activity throughout the week: three days of aerobics and two days of strength training,” says Beltran.

“It will be worth seeing whether these results are replicated in other studies, but in my opinion, I think this is consistent data,” adds Rodríguez Pardial, who nevertheless remembers that 150 minutes of exercise is the minimum threshold. upon achieving which excellent results are achieved. health benefits. “150 minutes is the minimum. More the better. But the main thing, as this study shows, is to move away from a sedentary lifestyle,” he concludes.