• Posted April 3, 2025

'Weekend Warriors' Reap Similar Health Benefits As Steady Exercisers

Life is busy, and some folks simply don’t have time until the weekend to work out.

Turns out, that’s just fine for their health, a new study suggests.

“Weekend warriors” who cram their week’s exercise into one or two days appear to gain as much benefit as people who are physically active throughout the week, researchers reported April 2 in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

“You don’t need to exercise every day to stay healthy,” senior researcher Zhi-Hao Li, an epidemiologist with Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China, said in a news release. 

“As long as you get 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week — whether packed into one to two days or spread out — you can significantly reduce your risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, cancer or other causes,” he said.

For this study, researchers analyzed data for more than 93,000 people participating in UK Biobank, a large health research database project.

Their physical activity was tracked with wrist devices, and researchers compared that data to participants’ risk of dying from any cause, from heart disease and from cancer.

Current guidelines recommend that people get at least 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise or 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise.

Vigorous exercise might include running, swimming laps, aerobic dance, fast bicycling, jumping rope and heavy yard work that involves digging or shoveling, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Moderate exercise includes brisk walking, recreational swimming, slow bicycling, active yoga, ballroom or line dancing, as well as light yard work or home repairs, the CDC says.

The research team slotted people into three groups:

• Weekend warriors who completed their week's exercise in one or two days.

• Steady exercisers who spread their workouts throughout the week.

• Inactive people who didn’t get their recommended minimum amount of exercise.

Both the weekend warriors and steady exercisers had a significantly lower risk of premature death compared to inactive folks, results show.

Weekend warriors had an overall 32% lower risk of death, a 31% lower risk of death from heart disease and a 21% lower risk of cancer compared to inactive folks.

Likewise, steady exercisers had an overall 26% lower risk of death, a 24% lower risk of death from heart disease and a 13% lower risk of death from cancer.

Even though weekend warriors appeared to have a lower risk of death than steady exercisers, those differences were not statistically significant, researchers noted.

Researchers admitted that they were surprised by the findings, as they’d expected that steady exercise throughout the week would be more beneficial.

“This message is encouraging news for busy people who struggle to fit in daily workouts but can manage a concentrated burst of activity on weekends or over a couple of days,” Li said. 

“The research provides reassuring evidence that even sporadic physical activity can have lasting health benefits, making it easier for people to prioritize their well-being amid busy schedules,” he  continued.

However, the results jibe with other studies that have found a “weekend warrior” pattern of exercise beneficial to health.

For example, weekend warriors lose about the same amount of weight as steady exercisers, according to a 2024 study in the journal Obesity.

And either exercise pattern reduced the risk of developing more than 200 possible diseases across 16 categories, ranging from heart and digestive conditions to mental health and brain illnesses, according to a 2024 study in the journal Circulation.

These findings emphasize that the total volume of physical activity matters most to health, rather than how a person weaves workouts into their week, American Heart Association spokesman Keith Diaz said in a news release.

“Many people struggle to fit in daily exercise during the work week; however, this research shows that even if you can only be active on the weekends, you can still gain meaningful health benefits," said Diaz, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.

“One important caveat to remember is that trying to fit 150 minutes of exercise into just one or two days can be a lot on your body,” Diaz added. “Some research suggests that weekend warriors have a slightly higher risk of musculoskeletal injuries compared to those who exercise more regularly. However, the benefits of exercising just on the weekend far outweigh the potential risks.”

Diaz recommends that weekend warriors reduce their risk of injury by taking the time to properly warm up and gradually increasing their exercise over time.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on measuring physical activity intensity.

SOURCE: American Heart Association, news release, April 2, 2025