Doctors recommend at least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity every day.
And that number only increases if a person wants to lose weight or meet fitness goals. Experts recommend breaking the number into smaller chunks if it’s hard to get 30 minutes in all at once.
For many, however, it can be challenging make that time every day, day in and day out, while balancing work, family, and a host of other responsibilties.
Weekends generally allow more time for everything, including exercise. Imagine if we could get the same benefits of daily exercise by condensing those 150 to 210 weekly minutes into Saturday and Sunday.
A new study suggests that the recommended total amount of time may not need to be evenly spread out.
Medical News Today reports on how “weekend warriors” may benefit just as much from their concentrated efforts as those who spread their exercise over more days. Here’s the start of the story:
A new study suggests that weekend warriors who complete most of their exercise over one to two days within a week may reap similar cognitive benefits — such as lower risk of dementia and Parkinson’s disease — as those who exercise more regularly.
Experts agree that participating in moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) for at least 150 minutes a week is associated with profound health benefits. For many, however, finding time to exercise during a busy week is difficult.
Now, a large observational study published in Nature Aging finds that when the majority of physical activity occurs on just two days a week—the weekend, for example—the same health benefits apply, particularly in the area of brain health.
The purpose of the study is to investigate an area the authors feel has been under-researched: the timing and pacing of recommended levels of MVPA.
Depending on one’s schedule, those two days may or may not be the weekend. The point is that, according to the study, one can go a bit lighter on physical activity during busy days and make up for it in less tightly scheduled times.