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Is Weekend Warrior Exercise Routine Healthy?

By Jiri Kaloc

The weekend warrior is someone who only exercises on Saturday and Sunday. This is not uncommon amongst cyclists because it’s hard to find time for long rides during the workweek. Is it enough to exercise on the weekends or would it be healthier to do shorter workouts spread out more evenly across the whole week?

30 minutes every day or a 3-hour ride on the weekend?

A study from the Massachusetts General Hospital compared the effects of being a weekend warrior to exercising regularly. The researchers analysed information on nearly 90,000 individuals that wore wrist accelerometers that recorded their physical activity and its intensity.
The participants were categorized as either weekend warrior, regular, or inactive based on the recommended 150 minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. The study looked at the impact of these different activity patterns on the risk of 678 different conditions across 16 types of disease groups including mental health, digestive, neurological, and others.

Weekend warriors and regular exercisers both win

The research showed that both weekend warriors and regular exercisers had substantially lower risks of over 200 diseases compared to the inactive group. For example, both of the active groups had 23% and 28% lower risk of developing hypertension respectively. They also had a 43% and 46% lower risk of getting diabetes.
“Physical activity is known to affect risk of many diseases. Here, we show the potential benefits of weekend warrior activity for risk not only of cardiovascular diseases, as we’ve shown in the past, but also future diseases spanning the whole spectrum, ranging from conditions like chronic kidney disease to mood disorders and beyond,” said co-author Shaan Khurshid.

Ride when it works for you

The authors of the study encourage you to simply exercise enough without worrying too much about how it spreads over your week.
“Because there appears to be similar benefits for weekend warrior versus regular activity, it may be the total volume of activity, rather than the pattern, that matters most. Patients should be encouraged to engage in guideline-adherent physical activity using any pattern that may work best for them.” said Khurshid.
These results are pretty exciting for cyclists. Even if you’re having a hard time finding time to exercise on workdays, you can take comfort in knowing that you can still do a lot for your health by going for a long ride or two on the weekend.