Weekend warriors put up a fight against death
Cramming all your exercise into one or two bouts per week still reaps health benefits
Any exercise — even the weekend warrior approach, cramming it all into Saturday and Sunday — is better than none. Compared with inactive adults, those who got the recommended amount of weekly exercise, or even substantially less, had about a one-third lower risk of death during the study period, researchers report online January 9 in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Gary O’Donovan at the University of Leicester in England and colleagues analyzed data from 63,591 people ages 40 and older, surveyed between 1994 and 2012 as part of the Health Survey for England and the Scottish Health Survey. Adults should be getting 150 minutes of moderate activity (such as walking) or 75 minutes of vigorous activity (such as jogging) spread out across the week, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.