The benefits of daily (or almost daily) exercise have long been known. Physical activity can decrease your risk of disease, strengthen your bones and muscles, reduce the likelihood of falling, boost your mood, help with daily functioning, help you sleep and improve your cognitive abilities.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends the average person engage in 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity (plus 2 days of muscle strengthening) a week. The former can entail anything from playing sports, jogging, bike riding, taking a brisk walk or another type of movement you find enjoyable.
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Related: Not Into Running or Spin? Worry Not, Because the Simple Act of Taking a Walk Has Some Incredible Health Benefits
But if fitting movement into your daily schedule is too much to ask—totally fair!—we have some good news for you.
The Power of ‘Weekend Warriors’
A recent study says it doesn’t matter if you spread out your exercise throughout the week or do it all on the weekends—the benefits you’ll reap are the same.
This isn’t the first of this news, however. A large, prospective 2022 study in JAMA Intern Med examined various health outcomes for 350,978 adults who self-reported their physical activity.
In short, the researchers found no significant difference in mortality rate between those who got all that exercise in on the weekend (aka “weekend warriors”) and those who split the 150 minutes throughout the week.
Related: Here’s What Happens to Your Body if You Exercise for 15 Minutes Every Day
Further, both groups had lower all-cause and cause-specific mortality rates than physically inactive participants.
The more recent study—published in September 2024 in Circulation with UK participants—had similar results. It found that both “weekend warriors” and those who regularly exercised had a lower disease risk (for over 200 diseases!) than those who got fewer than 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise a week.
More specifically, the lower risk pertains to heart attacks, stroke, diabetes and high blood pressure, just to name a few conditions.
The Main Takeaways
So what does that mean for daily living? Well, for one, rushing to the gym every day before or after work may not be the best (let alone only) option for people with fitness and longevity goals.
Related: The #1 Type of Exercise You Should Start Doing ASAP if You Want To Live to 100, According to PTs
If you like to work out during the week for your mental health, for example, or find it easier to fit in shorter workouts during the week and rest during the weekends, that’s fine! *And* if you’d rather hit up a couple of Zumba classes over the weekend instead, that’s also fine!
Really, it’s about the type of exercise and timing that works best for you and your schedule. When it comes to reaping the benefits of exercise, the most important factor is whether it’s something you can stick to.
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Related: The One Popular Workout Cardiologists Are Begging Anyone With a Heart Condition To Stop Doing ASAP
Sources
- Adult Activity: An Overview, CDC
- Benefits of Physical Activity, CDC
- 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
- Associations of “Weekend Warrior” Physical Activity With Incident Disease and Cardiometabolic Health, Circulation
