Squeezing exercise into one or two days a week seems to have similar health benefits as doing the same amount of physical activity spread out throughout the week
By Chris Simms
2 April 2025
It may not matter how many days a week you exercise, as long as you do it
Hugh Bao / Alamy
You don’t need to exercise every day to be healthy. Squeezing in at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity at the weekend seems to have similar health benefits as spreading it out throughout the week.
This adds to existing evidence that “weekend warriors”, who fit their weekly physical activity into just one or two days, have a lower risk of early death than people who don’t exercise and about the same risk as those who are consistently active all week.
Read more
How you can use the power of exercise to feel better and think clearer
Advertisement
The World Health Organization recommends that most adults do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity each week, which includes brisk walking, gardening or cycling, or at least 75 minutes of vigorous activity, such as running and swimming, or a combination of both.
To investigate whether it makes a difference when people exercise, Zhi-Hao Li at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China, and his colleagues analysed data in the UK Biobank study on the physical activity of more than 93,000 people, aged between 37 and 73. This was recorded by wrist accelerometers, worn between 2013 and 2015. Most previous studies have relied on surveys, which can be unreliable.
Over eight years of follow-up, nearly 4000 of the participants died. The researchers found that among people who did at least 150 minutes of weekly physical activity but squashed it into one or two days, the risk of death from all causes was 32 per cent lower than it was for people who didn’t manage this level of exercise. The risk of death from cardiovascular disease was 31 per cent lower, and from cancer was 21 per cent lower.