WEEKEND WORKOUTS ARE STILL BENEFICIAL
The ideal exercise prescription just got a bit more complicated — as if it wasn’t already complicated enough.
A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine states that cramming all your exercise into one or two days a week offers significant health benefits.
Add that to news that highintensity workouts as short as 10 minutes can improve health and fitness, and suddenly there are more players in the exercisefor-your-health game than the traditional recommendation of accumulating 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise over most (if not all) days of the week.
“Little was known about the benefits of a low frequency of physical activity,” said the JAMA study’s authors, who hail from Britain’s Loughborough University.
Indeed, many of the recent discussions about exercise have been centred on duration and intensity, with very little inquiry about the other important player: frequency.
This JAMA study challenges the commonly held theory that moving a little bit each day is better than squeezing all your exercise into a couple of long workouts.
So while proponents of daily exercise may be cringing at the news, you don’t have to listen too hard to hear weekend warriors cheering.
Suddenly those long Saturday and Sunday bike rides, crosscountry ski outings, marches around the neighbourhood and back-to-back beer league hockey games are major players in the quest for improved health.
“One of the most striking findings in the present study was that one or two sessions per week of moderate- or vigorous-intensity leisure-time physical activity was sufficient to reduce all-cause, CVD (cardiovascular disease) and cancer mortality risks regardless of adherence to prevailing physical activity guidelines,” said the Loughborough researchers.
The subjects in the weekend exercise group were about 30 per cent less likely to die from all causes during the study period, which extended over nine years, compared to non-exercisers. They were also 40 per cent less likely to die from heart disease and 20 per cent less likely to die from cancer than those who didn’t exercise.
But another surprise in the study is that exercise once or twice a week leads to a lower mortality risk “even when people didn’t meet physical activity guidelines.”
So even weekend warriors who don’t meet the recommended 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise a week have a lower risk of death than people who never get off the couch. As welcome as that news may be to a certain segment of the population, it’s best to understand that exercising a couple of times a week is no magic pill for all that ails you — or has the potential to ail you.
The study’s authors were quick to point out that more frequent exercisers reap more rewards than those who restrict their workouts to the weekends.
Those benefits include better sleep, improved mood and more energy, generally felt immediately after a bout of exercise. And don’t forget lower blood pressure and glucose levels — other instant byproducts of exercise.
Still, there’s solace in knowing that even a little bit of exercise is better than none.
Busy Canadians who strive and fail to achieve enough exercise during the week to meet the minimum recommendation can now explore ways to cram 150 minutes of exercise into the weekend.
And for those weeks when your exercise routine falls short of that 150-minute goal, it’s good to know you’re still doing a better job at reducing your risk of an early death than those who ignore the call to be more active.
“The present study suggests that less frequent bouts of activity, which might be more easily fit into a busy lifestyle, offer considerable health benefits, even in the obese and those with major risk factors,” said the team from Loughborough University.
Another message that comes across loud and clear in this study, and others that challenge traditional exercise recommendations, is that there’s still lots to learn about the combination of exercise frequency, intensity and duration as it pertains to overall health.
When all is said and done, we’re likely to find out that there’s an exercise routine for everyone, with health benefits doled out to anyone who makes an effort to break out of their routine.
So feel free to rejig your calendar based on when exercise works best for you. If that means committing to a long walk on Saturday followed by a meandering bike ride or cross-country ski on Sunday, then do so knowing that your efforts won’t be for naught.
The same goes for those beer league soccer or hockey games that you manage to squeeze into your schedule a couple times a week. No bout of exercise is without its rewards.