If you don’t have time to exercise during the week, longer weekends may be good for your heart.
Adults should get 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week. guidelines recommend, contains typical advice to spread out throughout the week. Researchers at Harvard University found that people who packed 2.5 hours of activity into one or two days had a 27% reduction in heart attack risk, compared to a 35% reduction for those who exercised more days. I was surprised to discover that A new study presented Tuesday at JAMA found that “weekend warriors” lowered the risk of heart failure by 38%, compared to a 36% reduction for those who exercised regularly.
“The idea of being able to cram everything into a weekend or two days a week was a little surprising,” said study co-authors. Dr. Patrick Eleanorsaid the Harvard Medical School professor and deputy chief of cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The bottom line, according to Eleanor, is that “the goal is to get 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity per week, no matter what your goals are.”
To take a closer look at how exercise timing made a difference, the researchers looked at: UK Biobankis a widely used database of 502,629 participants aged 40 to 69 who were enrolled between 2006 and 2010. In the new study, part of the group agreed to wear a wrist-worn accelerometer, and physical activity was measured by him 24 hours a day.
Ellinor et al. focused on 89,573 of the participants who wore accelerometers for one week, the majority of whom were followed for 6.3 years. The researchers characterized participants as either weekend warriors, regular exercisers, or inactive individuals.
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A major limitation of the study, Eleanor said, was that the activity data was collected over just one week, so it’s not possible to know whether participants continued the same exercise pattern throughout the follow-up period.
Still, the main message is that people should get 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise each week “as much as possible,” said Dr. John McPherson, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. , said.
“You can do it two days at a time, or you can do it for 25 to 30 minutes each day,” said McPherson, who was not involved in the new study. “What really matters is maintaining 150 minutes a week.”
How to Avoid Exercise Injuries
One of the arguments against shortening exercise to two days is the higher chance of injury reported in some studies of weekend warriors. But experts say such injuries can be avoided with a careful exercise program and proper warm-ups and cool-downs.
If you’re going to cram all your exercise into two days, you need to build up, says Keith Diaz, an exercise physiologist and associate professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Bagueros College of Medicine and Surgery.
“The biggest concern is overuse injuries,” said Diaz, who was not involved in the new study. “You can’t go from zero to 60 in two days.
The type of activity you choose is also important, Diaz says. While you’d love to pick and choose what you love, he added that low-impact activities like swimming and biking are better choices because they’re less likely to damage your joints.
Diaz says limiting training to weekends isn’t the route to peak physical performance, as the adult body begins to lose condition after three days of inactivity.
“People are constantly battling the body’s tendency to return to disuse,” he explained.
Glenn Gaither, professor of exercise physiology at Arizona State University’s School of Health Solutions, said the new study offers good news.
“It didn’t matter how people split their exercise over the course of the week, as long as they got at least minimal moderate-to-vigorous activity,” Gaither says.
To those who fear that exercising only one or two days a week increases their risk of injury, research has shown that most of them come from contact sports, said the new study. Gaither, who was not involved in the study, said.
Calling study subjects “weekend warriors” is “somewhat misleading, because most people don’t do ‘warrior’ activities,” Gaither said. “The majority of people engage in typical cardiovascular activities such as walking and cycling. Those participating in contact games are more likely to get injured.”
To avoid long-term training injuries, pay attention to the messages your body is sending you, says Gregory Katz, M.D., cardiologist at New York University Langone Heart Hospital and assistant professor of medicine at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine. says.
“Don’t ignore that nagging pain,” says Katz, who was not involved in the new study. “Do you feel that this is the kind of strain that should be placed on your body, or potentially harmful?”
