Are there benefits in concentrating exercises on the weekend? – 07/25/2023 – Balance

Physical exercises are good for health in general and for the heart in particular. There are guidelines that recommend doing 150 minutes of moderate to intense activity per week.

But does the timing of these exercises make a difference? Should we spread this time out over the week, or do we lose some of the benefits if we get it all together over the weekend?

A new study analyzed information from the British database UK Biobank to try to specifically answer this question.

About 90,000 healthy middle-aged people wore bracelets with accelerometers to track their activity. The devices recorded their activity levels for a week, with specific emphasis on moderate to intense activity, as we’ll see later.

The researchers concluded that, in the six years after the accelerometer evaluation, there were fewer cases of stroke, heart attacks, cardiac arrests and atrial fibrillation (which causes heart rhythm irregularities) among people who regularly engaged in moderate to intense physical activity, compared to sedentary people.

But the breakthrough finding of this study was that there was no difference between people who concentrated more than half of their physical activity on Saturday and Sunday and those who spread their exercise out over the week. Moderate to intense physical activity was associated with better heart health, regardless of when you exercised.

In the study, the authors called “weekend warriors” people who focused most of their weekly 150 minutes of moderate or intense physical activity on one–two days. This appellation seems to conjure up images of groups of cyclists in Lycra riding up mountains or muddy middle-aged men playing soccer in a grueling 90-minute match.

As it turns out, more than 37,000 study participants met the definition of “weekend warrior.” Why then aren’t the roads congested with cyclists and the parks full of football players?

It’s certainly something that seems to contradict the obesity epidemic and sedentary lifestyle we hear so much about.

Weekend warriors? Serious?

It may seem like a matter of semantics, but it is important to define who the “weekend warriors” are.

In this study, the threshold used for moderate to intense exercise was three METs (metabolic task equivalent).

The METs scale is used to measure physical activity. Washing the dishes, for example, is equivalent to 2.5 METs. Vacuuming the house is 3.3 METs and walking at 5 km/h is 3.5 METs. By comparison, cycling at 24 km/h on flat terrain is equivalent to 10 METs.

Therefore, the limit established in the study, of 3 METs, is somewhat unpretentious. It sounds like something many people would achieve in their daily lives without a concerted effort to exercise.

So when we think of the people in this study, instead of calling them “weekend warriors,” maybe we should say “Saturday hikers,” or someone who stretches on Sundays.

The other point about this study is that these people were not athletes or sportspeople, but normal middle-aged people going about their daily activities. Some of these activities included exercise and others were normal activities measured on an accelerometer.

This context is important for analyzing how we can use these results to inform patients.

I wouldn’t want anyone to think that two and a half hours of vacuuming or taking a weekend walk is enough to prevent heart disease. This is the essential minimum of physical exercise. To see real benefits, you have to break a sweat.

The relationship between physical exercise and heart health is simple: the more exercise, the better for your health.

The study actually demonstrates that doing some physical activity is better for your heart than being sedentary — which is an important message for the many people who don’t get 150 minutes of moderate activity a week.

Knowing these limitations of the study, we need to abandon the idea that it’s okay to live a sedentary life from Monday to Friday and then redeem yourself by doing just over an hour of walking on Saturday and Sunday.

The conclusions of this study do not confirm this interpretation. If all you get is 150 minutes of not breaking a sweat, it doesn’t matter when you do it. But, if you can dedicate yourself to something more strenuous, you really should make the effort to pull this off.

The study’s findings also don’t apply to more intense exercise. So if you have the opportunity to ride your bike to work on Tuesday or go swimming on Thursday, take it. Your heart will thank you.

This article was originally published on the academic news site The Conversation and republished under a Creative Commons license. Read the original English version here.

This text was published here

Peter Swoboda is Professor of Cardiology at the University of Leeds in the UK.