A new study adds to growing evidence showing that exercising throughout the week isn’t any better for your health than saving workouts for the weekends.
The research, published in the journal Circulation, found a link between being a so-called “weekend warrior” and having a reduced risk of developing more than 200 diseases. What’s more, the risk reduction was similar to that seen by people who exercise in shorter spurts over several weekdays.
“This study provides more good news for busy people around the world,” Gary O’Donovan, PhD, an adjunct professor at the Universidad de los Andes School of Medicine in Bogotá, Colombia, who has studied weekend workouts, told Health.
So does this mean you can stop scrambling to fit in exercise after a long work day? Here’s what you need to know about the research, as well as what it could mean for your workout routine.
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To assess the effects of weekend exercise, researchers pulled information about 89,573 people included in the UK Biobank, a large biomedical database and research resource. Participants were 62 years old on average, and 56% were women.
The scientists looked for associations between 678 conditions and exercise patterns gleaned from trackers participants wore for one week between June 2013 and December 2015.
They found that people who exercised, whether on weekends or weekdays, had lower odds of being diagnosed with 264 diseases compared to those considered “inactive,” meaning they did less than 150 minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity such as brisk walking or cycling.
When researchers put the diseases head to head and compared weekend and weekday workout patterns, there were only slight differences in risk rates for some of the most common conditions.
For example, weekend exercisers saw a 23% lower risk of having high blood pressure, while weekday exercisers reduced their odds by 28%. Weekend warriors and weekday exercisers had a 43% to 46% lower risk of diabetes, respectively. And people who reserved workouts for weekends had a 45% reduced risk of obesity, compared to 56% for those who spread workouts out throughout the week.
“Associations were strongest for cardiometabolic conditions such as hypertension and diabetes where we saw 20%–40% reductions in risk, but benefits spanned the full spectrum of human conditions,” study author Shaan Khurshid, MD, MPH, an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told Health.
This study isn’t the first to find that weekend and weekday workouts may provide similar benefits.
The same team found in 2023 that the risks for incident atrial fibrillation, myocardial infarction, heart failure, and stroke were similar in those who crammed in exercise on weekends and those who worked out for shorter periods during the week.
And a study published in July, which focused on neurological and mental health conditions, suggested that weekend warriors have similar risks as weekday exercisers in developing dementia, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, depressive disorders, and anxiety.
However, O’Donovan pointed out that large (and thus likely higher quality) studies on this topic focus on aerobic exercise specifically. “More research is required to determine whether resistance training reduces the risk of death and disease when performed only once or twice per week,” he said.
Experts say that regardless of your chosen workout pattern, what matters is that you’re staying active.
Adults need at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise and at least two days of muscle-strengthening activity a week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I imagine people’s personal and work lives, in addition to their degree of enjoyment of exercise, will dictate their workout frequency,” Beau Kjerulf Greer, PhD, a professor of exercise science at Sacred Heart University, told Health. “But, at least this study suggests that skipping a few workouts when a weekday gets too hectic, one may be able to capture the benefits back on days with more free time.”
Khurshid said that exercising when it’s convenient for you is the best way to continue to exercise consistently, which is the ultimate goal.
“I would also note that we did not focus on intensity, but rather differences in the distribution of volume,” Khurshid said. “Our findings do not necessarily say you need to work out more intensely on the weekend, but rather you would need to do more/longer to get to those guideline-recommended levels.”
