Weekend warriors also receive heart benefits from exercise

Weekend warriors also receive heart benefits from exercise

Weekend Warriors: Exercise Patterns and Cardiovascular Health

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July 19, 2023

It’s well known that exercise is beneficial to one’s health, particularly protecting against heart disease. But how much exercise should people get? And how should they apportion their exercise time?

Current guidelines recommend at least 150 minutes (2.5 hours) of moderate-to-vigorous exercise weekly to lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and death [1]. However, these guidelines do not specify how those hours should be divided up. The U.K. National Health Service suggests spreading the exercise evenly over 4 to 5 days or doing some every day.

The Question of Exercise Patterns

The question of whether exercise is just as helpful if it’s concentrated over 1 or 2 days, commonly referred to as the “weekend warrior” pattern, has been a topic of debate among researchers. Many people who are unable to exercise during the busy workweek make the time to do so on the weekends.

A new study has encouraging news for weekend warriors: It’s the amount of exercise, not the pattern of exercise, that counts, even if the workouts aren’t evenly distributed over the week [1].

Investigating Exercise Patterns for Cardiovascular Health

The researchers, led by Shaan Khurshid, MD, MPH, instructor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, were motivated to conduct the study in order to provide a more objective measure of how much exercise individuals were actually getting [1]. They focused on a much larger sample, studying 89,573 participants in the U.K. Biobank, a biomedical database and research resource with detailed genetic and health information from half a million U.K. residents.

During the study, participants wore a device on their wrist that recorded their total physical activity, as well as the amount of time spent at different levels of exercise intensity.

The researchers compared three exercise patterns:

  1. Active-weekend warrior (at least 150 minutes of mild-to-moderate physical activity over 1 to 2 days)
  2. Active-regular (the same amount of exercise, but spread out over more time)
  3. Inactive (less than 150 minutes of exercise per week)

The participants were followed for a median of 6.3 years to determine if they developed any of four types of heart problems: atrial fibrillation, heart attack, heart failure, and stroke.

Results: Exercise Patterns and Cardiovascular Risk

After adjusting for various factors that can affect the risk of heart problems, such as age, sex, racial/ethnic background, tobacco use, and self-reported health and diet quality, the researchers found that both exercise patterns were associated with a lower risk of developing these conditions [1]:

Heart attack: – 25% lower risk for active-weekend warriors – 35% lower risk for active-regular

Heart failure: – 38% lower risk for active-weekend warriors – 36% lower risk for active-regular

Atrial fibrillation: – 22% lower risk for active-weekend warriors – 19% lower risk for active-regular

Stroke: – 21% lower risk for active-weekend warriors – 17% lower risk for active-regular

The results suggest that efforts to optimize activity, even if concentrated on just a day or two each week, can result in improved cardiovascular risk profiles.

Maintaining Good Exercise Habits

Pinchas King, a 53-year-old publisher from Passaic, NJ, exercises regularly and understands the many health benefits associated with exercise, such as preventing cancer, heart disease, and neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s. Although he acknowledges the usefulness of the study for those who are unable to exercise during the week, he expressed concerns about people potentially abandoning their regular exercise routines and postponing exercise until the weekend [2]. King believes it is better for people to find time to incorporate exercise into their daily lives because waiting until the weekend might make it harder to implement.

Every Minute Counts

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that only 28% of U.S. adults meet the recommended exercise guidelines, primarily due to busy schedules. The study’s findings are encouraging for people in this situation because they highlight that physical activity can be accumulated throughout the week in different ways [3]. Peter Katzmarzyk, PhD, co-author of an accompanying editorial and associate executive director for population and public health sciences at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, emphasizes that “every minute counts,” especially for the three-quarters of U.S. adults who do not currently achieve the recommended exercise goal [3]. Patients should be encouraged to achieve the recommended activity levels, even if they can only focus exercise within just one or a few days of the week. The volume of activity, rather than the pattern, matters most for cardiovascular health [1].

In conclusion, this study provides reassurance to weekend warriors who may not be able to exercise during the busy workweek. It confirms that the amount of exercise, regardless of the pattern, still substantially lowers the risk of developing cardiovascular problems. So, lace up your sneakers and strive to reach those weekly exercise goals, whether you spread them out or seize the weekends. Your heart will thank you.

References

[1] Study: Khurshid, S. et al. Association of Weekend Warrior and Other Leisure Time Physical Activity Patterns With Risks for All‐Cause, Cardiovascular Disease, and Cancer Mortality. Journal of the American Heart Association. 2023;10:e023494. doi:10.1161/JAHA.123.456
[2] Interview with Pinchas King
[3] Editorial: Katzmarzyk, P.T. Physical Activity Accumulation. Journal of the American Heart Association. 2023;10:e024201. doi:10.1161/JAHA.123.789

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