By A Good Combination
Many people do most of their exercise on the weekends when they have more free time, the “weekend warrior” phenomenon. It turns out that this is still beneficial for your health. But it’s even better if you manage to also do some movement such as walking during the week. Several studies addressing this are discussed this month on Clarence Bass’s website.
The first study [1] looked at all-cause mortality of non-exercisers, weekend warriors, and more frequent exercises out of a population of 351,000 adults. There was a significant reduction in mortality risk for exercisers. The most benefit was for frequent exercisers, but there was still a considerable benefit for weekend-only training. The second study Clarence mentioned [2] showed that the maximum health benefit of strength training appears to occur for those doing a total of about 30-60 minutes of it per week. This easily fits in on the weekend, so it also works for weekend warriors. Finally, Clarence described a review article on the benefits of walking and concluded that combining infrequent (such as on the weekend) more strenuous workouts with activities like walking during the week may be the best of all worlds.
References
dos Santos, M, Ferrari, G, Hoon Lee, D, et al, “Association of the ‘Weekend Warrior’ and Other Leisure-time Physical Activity Patterns With All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality. A Nationwide Cohort Study”, JAMA Intern Med. 2022.
Momma, H, Kawakami, R, Honda, T, and Sawada, S, “Muscle-strengthening activities are associated with lower risk and mortality in major non-communicable diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies”, Br J Sports Med, 2022.
