Doing the recommended amount of exercise during weekends is just as beneficial as spreading physical activity out across the week, a new study has found

An international team of researchers tracked 350,000 US adults over a period of 10 years to see how the health of “weekend warriors” – people who are highly physically active during weekends – compared with those who are active throughout the week.

The study suggested that the type and total amount of exercise were more important than the number of exercise sessions.

The key finding was that adults who perform 150 minutes or more of moderate physical activity (or 75 minutes of vigorous activity) per week experience similar health benefits whether the sessions are spread throughout the week or concentrated over a weekend.

Large study linked to Death Index
Led by a team of international researchers and published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal, the cohort study included 350,978 adults who self-reported physical activity to the US National Health Interview Survey from 1997 to 2013. Results were linked to the 2015 National Death Index.

“The findings of this large study suggest that individuals who engage in active patterns of physical activity, whether weekend warrior or regularly active, experience lower all-cause and cause-specific mortality rates than inactive individuals,” said lead researcher, Mauricio dos Santos, an exercise physiology researcher at the Federal University of São Paulo in Brazil.

“Significant differences were not observed for all-cause or cause-specific mortality between weekend warriors and regularly active participants after accounting for total amount of Moderate to Vigorous Physical Activity (MVPA) – a standard measure of physical activity,” he said.

“Therefore, individuals who engage in the recommended levels of physical activity can experience the same benefit whether the sessions are performed throughout the week or concentrated into fewer days.”

Read the report, Association of the weekend warrior and other leisure-time physical activity patterns with all-cause and cause-specific mortality at www.hcmmag.com/weekendwarrior