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Over the past decade, the conventional wisdom has been that excessive sitting is a lethal activity and should be avoided. There’s a wave of guilt for those of us who want to be fit but are still tied to our computers.
Encouraging news for anyone who tends to cram their exercise in over the weekend has arisen from new research.
An investigation by an international group of researchers, published inJAMA Internal Medicine this summer, found that exercising only on the weekend is enough to compensate for a sedentary lifestyle during the rest of the week as long as you meet the recommended guidelines for level of physical activity The UK research that came to a similar conclusion about weekend warriors is confirmed by this.
The study looked at data from 350,000 people who self- reported their physical activity over the course of a decade. Based on the intensity and duration of their exercise, individuals were classified as inactive or active, and those in the active group were either called weekend warriors or regularly active. Researchers looked at the National Death Index through the end of the year.
There was no significant difference in mortality rates between weekend warriors and regular participants and both groups had lower mortality rates than inactive participants. According to the Times of London, a co-author of the study said that weekend warriors can get comparable health benefits to regularly active people. It would be good to spread exercise over the week, but in the real world that may not be possible and our findings have important implications for people who don’t find this convenient.
According to Jonathan Stine, a medical professor at Penn State, the total amount of physical activity completed is more important than any of the individual components.
There are some things that aren’t quite right with the new findings. The study relied on self- reported activity levels which may or may not be correct. The same study found that people who exercise throughout the week don’t live as long as people who exercise on weekends.
In order to reduce mortality risk, the optimal combination of physical activity intensity, Frequency, and duration needs to be understood. Brad Prigge said that the health benefits of exercise are tied to the number of minutes a week.
Prigge says that it’s important to look at more than just mortality risk. The research doesn’t tell us if weekend-only exercisers can achieve the same fitness improvements as people who work out more frequently.
If you want to get fit and feel your best, you should move more. Prigge says that something is always better than nothing and that we should ask ourselves what he asks his patients.
Don’t beat yourself up if sitting at a desk for eight hours a day isn’t affecting your ability to do other things, like hiking with your kids, running local 10Ks, or keeping up with your friends on weekend bike rides.