'No significant difference' between 'weekend warriors' and daily weekday workouts - study
Intensity and consistent total time seem to be the overall thing that matters, as opposed to when you choose to workout.
Woman training at gym. Pexels/Jonathan Borba
702 and CapeTalk's Africa Melane speaks to fitness enthusiast Liezel van der Westhuizen.
Listen below:
What's better: weekend warrior workouts or daily exercise?
First, let's understand the difference between a weekend warrior and a daily exerciser.
A weekend warrior is typically someone who fits in their weekly recommended exercise, which is about 150 minutes of intense, vigorous physical activity, in just one or two days, over a weekend or two days in the week.
Meanwhile, a daily exerciser is someone who engages in daily moderate workouts.
"New research finds there is no significant difference between weekend warriors and people who do steady weekday workouts," reports Van der Westhuizen.
A new study from the Journal of the American Heart Association tracked and analysed health and exercise data from more than 93,000 participants in the UK Biobank, a comprehensive biomedical database, to investigate potential associations between exercise patterns and mortality risk.
The research increasingly demonstrates that it’s the volume of exercise (hitting that minimum of 150 minutes), not the pattern, that determines the benefits.
"I prefer the word 'activity'... I don't like to word 'fitness'. I don't like the words 'weekend warrior'... We are athletes, whether we're doing 75 minutes of rigorous activity or winning the 4x100 metre relay..."
- Liezel van der Westhuizen
Scroll up to the audio player to listen to the full conversation.