Are You a Weekend Warrior?

Summarized by Robert W. Griffith, MD
October 29, 2004

Introduction

"At least 30 minutes, five days a week" is what we hear from all sides, when it comes to healthy work-out programs. But many people find that too demanding, and so they try to pack an adequate amount of exercise into their free weekend time. But just how useful is exercise when it's limited to two, rather than five days a week? A group of Boston investigators have studied this, and they've reported their results in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Here's a summary of their findings.

What was done

Men who matriculated as undergraduates at Harvard University between 1916 and 1950 have been enrolled in the Harvard Alumni Health Study. Over 12,000 of them returned a health survey questionnaire in 1988. Those reporting cardiovascular disease, cancer, or diabetes were excluded from further study.

The questionnaire provided details of their physical activity; it was updated in a second mailing in 1993. Responses allowed the men to be classified as either:

• "Sedentary" (expending less than 500 kcal/week)¹
• "Insufficiently active" (500-999 kcal/week),
• "Weekend warriors" (1000 or more kcal/week from exercise once or twice a week), or
• "Regularly active" (all others expending 1000 or more kcal/week).

They were also classified into "low-risk" and "high-risk" subgroups, according to the presence or absence of a cardiac risk factor (overweight, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol level).

What was found

At baseline 8,421 men were classified as follows: 17% as sedentary, 13% as insufficiently active, 7% as weekend warriors, and 62% as regularly active. Among the weekend warriors, over 75% exercised on two days per week, rather than one. The overall average age was 66. The weekend warriors were slightly younger, slightly heavier, and less likely to eat healthily, on average, but the differences were not significant.

By 1997, eleven years after enrollment, 1,234 of the 8,400 registered men had died. If the likelihood of dying for sedentary men was given a value of 100, that for the insufficiently active men was 75, weekend warriors 85, and regularly active men 64. This suggests that weekend warriors have some degree of protection compared with those who are sedentary, but they don't do as well as the regularly active, or, indeed, as the so-called insufficiently active.

When the results were analyzed according to whether the men were at low or high risk at baseline, it was found that the low-risk weekend warriors were half as likely to die within the 11-year period as those that were sedentary (a 0.41 relative risk). There was no such advantage for the high-risk weekend warriors.

What this means

Obviously, as the results show, regular physical activity that produces over 1000 kcal/week is a good first step to postpone dying. For those who can only exercise irregularly, but who manage to expend 1000 kcal/week (like our "weekend warriors"), there's still a significant delay in mortality over sedentary people. And it doesn't have to be a full gym workout. The study showed that many weekenders reached their calorie expenditure by playing tennis, golf, or gardening.

This is good news for those of us who can't devote a regular amount of time each day to physical activity. And one has to accept the fact that weekend warriors are more prone to injuries. There's no doubt, therefore, that regular (daily) activity is the best way to go, if you can fit it into your busy schedule. Maybe a little less TV?

Source

• The "weekend warrior" and risk of mortality.  Lee I-Min, HD. Sesso, Y. Oguma, RS. Paffenberger, Am J Epidemiol, 2004, vol. 160, pp. 636--641

Footnotes
1. 500 kcal/week can be translated to about 75 minutes/week of brisk walking

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