Oct. 17, 2024 -- Can’t find time to exercise during the workweek? Scientists have good news for you.
Evidence is piling up that condensing your exercise into just one or two days a week — being a “weekend warrior” — is enough to reap the many benefits of physical activity.
The latest such study, published in Circulation, shows a weekend warrior routine can ward off a long list of serious illnesses. The exercise pattern was linked with a lower risk of 264 diseases and appeared to be just as effective at reducing risk as more frequent exercise spread throughout the week.
Most of the diseases studied affected the heart and blood vessels — atherosclerosis, heart attack, heart failure, diabetes, stroke — but researchers found that the benefit extended to a surprising range of conditions.
“It was encouraging to see strong associations with chronic kidney disease,” said Shaan Khurshid, MD, MPH, lead author of the study and a cardiac electrophysiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. “We also saw the association with sleep apnea, and even things like gallstones and heartburn. These all make sense but had not been previously shown to this level of detail.”
The “weekend warrior” concept is nothing new. In fact, the term dates back to the 1930s, referring to a military reservist who attends weekend meetings of their unit. By the 1980s, the name had expanded to include people who participate in strenuous activity part-time or only on weekends.
But today, the concept is drawing more scientific attention as the subject of a mounting body of impressive research that promises greater flexibility in how you choose to achieve your workouts.
What the Research Shows
In the new study, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital analyzed the data of 89,573 people from the UK Biobank, a group of relatively healthy middle-aged to older adults in the U.K. Participants wore accelerometers on their wrists that recorded their physical activity for one week.
The scientists looked at the data and classified people into three groups: regular exercisers who worked out several times a week; weekend warriors, who got at least half of their exercise in one or two days; and inactive people, those who got less than the U.S.-recommended 150 minutes of moderate activity a week.
Compared to the inactive people, both the regular exercisers and weekend warriors had much lower risks of disease.
Technically, the regular exercisers had slightly better results — for example, 28% lower risk of high blood pressure compared to 23% for the weekend warriors, and 46% less risk for diabetes compared to 43%. But the differences weren’t big enough to be scientifically meaningful, leading the researchers to conclude that total exercise is what’s important for reducing disease risk, not how often you do it or how you split it up.
Another 2024 trial in Nature Aging found that weekend warriors had a 26% lower risk of dementia, 21% less risk of stroke, and a 45% reduction in the chance of developing Parkinson’s disease than inactive people. Like the newer study, the data set was also massive at more than 75,000 people.
Also this year, the weekend warrior pattern was shown to be just as effective as more frequent exercise for fat loss, helping people lose belly fat regardless of dietary changes.
In 2022, a study following more than 350,000 Americans concluded there were no significant differences in mortality rates for weekend warriors versus regular exercisers.
Why Scientists Are Suddenly So Into Weekend Warrior Workouts
Two reasons, Khurshid said.
For one, advances in technology make it easier than ever to gather accurate information on people’s activity levels. “They used to have people answer questionnaires,” said Khurshid, “and we know they tended to overestimate how active they are.”
But it’s also a response to the rising popularity of weekend warrior workouts.
“[People] are working and have lifestyles that make it harder to exercise during the week,” said Khurshid. “The incidence of cardiometabolic disease is increasing globally. We’re trying to find optimal recommendations that we think the largest population can potentially adhere to in order to reduce the public health burden.”
U.S. physical activity guidelines have previously recommended more regular exercise and specific exercise lengths. Research from doctors like Khurshid is showing that exercise prescriptions need not be that rigid.
“We shouldn’t put constraints on patients, telling them they need to do exercise ‘this way,’” said Khurshid, “because it may discourage them from actually achieving the right volume, which is what’s most important.”
So, One or Two Days Is Enough? Well, Yes — but There’s a “But”
Speaking of volume: Note that the weekend warriors in the new study didn’t get all their activity in one to two days, just the bulk of it. And if you choose to get most of your exercise in such a small window, you’d better be willing to put the “warrior” in weekend warrior, working out for longer than you would in a typical exercise session.
“It did appear that many in the regular group did a greater amount of activity overall,” said study co-author Shinwan Kany, MD, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. The regular exercisers logged about 400 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity, on average, while the weekend warriors got slightly less than 300. “This shows that if you work out every day, it’s easier for you to get your numbers up.”
The study also had some notable limitations. The researchers didn’t gather any information on people’s lifestyles, specifically what kind of exercise they were doing, or exactly how intense it was. They also tracked people for only one week. While Kany said that should be predictive of how they lived the other 51 weeks of the year, he allows that it’s possible some of the participants upped their game when they got their accelerometers and did more activity than they normally would, potentially skewing the results.
There’s also a question of safety. A 2014 study found that of participants who had a severe injury, 55% did so working out on weekends. Since weekend warriors like to get as much in when they can, it’s conceivable that they might push themselves harder and could get hurt as a result.
However, Khurshid said his study didn’t show an increased risk of musculoskeletal injury.
On the contrary, “the literature supports that exercise is good for musculoskeletal conditions,” said Khurshid, “such as chronic back pain. Looking at a population of almost 90,000 people, the signal for the benefit is so much stronger that we didn’t see a risk, but that’s not to say injury isn’t possible.”
That risk may be greater for beginners or those with low fitness levels. “If you didn’t exercise for three months and decided to be a weekend warrior out of the blue, I would say there’s a high risk of you injuring yourself,” Khurshid said.
Still, the bottom line is this: Given all the research-backed benefits of exercise for many health conditions, what seems to matter most is getting it in consistently, in whatever way your schedule allows.
“What I tell people is to get at least 150 minutes of exercise per week,” said Khurshid. “If you can do more, that’s a good thing, and it doesn’t matter how you allocate it. Do it in a way that makes sense for you and allows you to be consistent over time.”
How to Get 150 Minutes of Exercise a Week
While being a weekend warrior can keep you healthy, Robert Linkul, a certified strength and conditioning specialist and trainer in Sacramento, California, specializing in older adults, still recommends being active more often if you can.
“Ideally, you should be a little bit active every day,” said Linkul, a member of the National Strength and Conditioning Association’s board of directors. He suggests breaking the 150-minute goal down into sessions averaging what should be a pretty doable 20 minutes a day.
If you’re new to exercise, start by walking two or three days a week, and work up to rucking — walking with a weighted backpack or vest (5 pounds is plenty). Rucking gets the heart rate up higher while keeping the workout low-impact and offers a strength component as well that can prevent muscle loss. Three other days per week, you should perform strength training (a recommendation that’s also part of the government’s physical activity guidelines but hasn’t been analyzed in weekend warrior studies).
Briefer, more frequent sessions help establish a pattern of exercise, making it easier to adopt as a part of your routine and lessening the chance you’ll overdo it on the weekend.
“The body gets accustomed to doing action when you do it more frequently,” said Linkul. Going days without training could make you rusty the next time you are active, increasing the likelihood of an injury.
If you have trouble sticking with a routine, find a fitness class at your local gym or community center. “There’s a camaraderie that develops when people train together that really helps people stay motivated,” said Linkul, who runs group workouts. “Every week I’ll hear one of my clients say to the group at the end, ‘You ladies are the best. I really didn’t want to come today, but I knew you’d be here, so I made myself do it.’ The older the person, the more they see their community shrink, and the more important that accountability becomes.”
