'Weekend Warriors' May Get Same Protection From These Brain Diseases as Regular Exercisers

For most of us, week days are a frenzy of juggling workloads, family obligations, and social lives. It leaves little time for workouts. Luckily for you, concentrating your physical activity to just two days per week is just as beneficial for staving off an array of diseases as regular exercise, according to a study from Massachusetts General Hospital .

“Physical activity is known to affect risk of many diseases,” said senior co-author Shaan Khurshid, MD, MPH , who works in the Demoulas Center for Cardiac Arrhythmias department at Massachusetts General Hospital. “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.”

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In the study, researchers analyzed information from nearly 90,000 individuals who wore wrist accelerometers to record their total physical activity and time spent at different exercise intensities over a week-long period. The participants were broken into three groups—weekend warrior, regular, or inactive—using 150 minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity as their reference.

With these groups in mind, the investigators then looked for a correlation between physical activity and the occurrence of more than 650 conditions across 16 kinds of diseases including neurological, mental, cardiovascular , and more. What they found was that the “weekend warrior” pattern of exercise was just as effective at decreasing disease risk as more evenly distributed exercise activity.

“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,” said Khurshid. “Future interventions testing the effectiveness of concentrated activity to improve public health are warranted, and patients should be encouraged to engage in guideline-adherent physical activity using any pattern that may work best for them.”

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Moral of the story? Any exercise, even as little as one to two days a week, is better than none. Whether you're able to fit in four 40-minute workouts a week or two 75-minute workouts, you're on your way to a healthier life. As long as you're able to exercise at least 150 minutes per week, the study suggests you can reduce the risk of a plethora of diseases.