Weekend warrior: does exercising only on weekends count?

On CBS Evening News (November 2023), in a report by Jericka Duncan about people who fit their exercise into the weekend, cardiologist Shaan Khurshid of Massachusetts General Hospital, who led the study the report covered, talked about the advice doctors usually give. In that report, Khurshid called "30 minutes, five days a week" a rule of thumb, and added:

"it makes sense in certain schedules. But that is also very difficult to achieve for other people."

Shaan Khurshid, CBS Evening News, 2023

The rule of thumb and the week you actually have

Thirty minutes on five days is a tidy way to reach the usual weekly direction of 150 minutes. It assumes a week with the same shape every day. Shift work, long commutes, children and caring for someone break that shape, and a plan built on five weekday slots then comes up short every week on paper, even for someone who is active.

Khurshid's point is that the rule is one convenient way to collect the minutes, among others. The report summed up the finding of Khurshid's study: activity packed into one or two days a week was linked with heart benefits similar to activity spread across the week. The study itself isn't one we've read in full, so we'll leave its numbers out.

What the guidelines say

The UK Chief Medical Officers say the same thing in plainer terms. The 150 minutes can be built up in bouts of any length, or done in one or two sessions a week, and lower frequencies still bring benefits (UK Chief Medical Officers, 2019). The same report also suggests being active every day, so the honest reading is that one or two sessions count, not that daily movement doesn't matter.

An earlier British survey study of adults aged 40 and over pointed the same way. As two exercise scientists wrote in The Conversation, people who met the guidelines in one or two days a week were linked with better long-term health outcomes than people who were inactive, while spreading activity across the week was linked with the best outcomes. The activity was self-reported, and the authors of the piece urge caution (Taylor and Graham, 2022).

One caution for weekend-only weeks. US guidance notes that the risk of injury grows with the gap between your usual level of activity and a new one, and advises building up gradually (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2018). A long Saturday session after five still days is a bigger jump than it feels.

How this fits the Build an exercise routine program

In the 1h Protocol to Build an Exercise Routine, you count your week, not a run of days. The paid chapter "What counts" has you set a weekly number you'd hit on an ordinary week, with UK guidance that one or two sessions count, and your plan comes with planned skips so a day that goes wrong was already allowed for. The log counts the week with those skips, and you review it on days 7, 14 and 30. Four one-tap check-ins follow by email on days 1, 7, 14 and 30, if you're signed in. The first chapter is free.

Source: CBS Evening News, Weekend-only exercise can still offer major health benefits, study finds, 25 Nov 2023, at 0:52 Research: UK Chief Medical Officers, 2019 · Taylor and Graham, 2022 · US Department of Health and Human Services, 2018