It's perfectly fine to work out only on weekends and rest on weekdays

The gains of an intense workout session or two on the weekend are not dissipated if you don't have time to exercise during the week, researchers have found. — Christian Charisius/dpa

The slog of commutes, shopping, bringing kids to school and doing housework often leave scant time for exercise during a 35-40 hour working week.

Being ran off one’s feet at work, as the saying goes, often means little time or energy for real running, at least outside the weekend.

But that in turn raises a question: is that kind of off-on exercise any use?

A week is a long time in politics, as another saying goes, but is this also the case when it comes to fitness?

Would the gains of an intense session or two on a Saturday or Sunday be dissipated by a break of six or seven days?

No, is the answer, according to doctors from Massachusetts General Hospital in the United States, who went through data on almost 90,000 people from Britain’s Biobank who wore wrist accelerometers that recorded their physical activity for a week.

”Our findings suggest that interventions to increase physical activity, even when concentrated within a day or two each week, may improve cardiovascular outcomes,” said senior author Patrick T. Ellinor, chief of cardiology at the hospital.

In other words, the so-called “weekend warrior” who worries about that long gap during the working week when training isn’t possible can rest easy, during the week at least.

Go hard on Saturday and Sunday, however, is the advice, as such fitness routines were ”associated with similarly lower risks of heart disease and stroke compared with more evenly distributed exercise,” according to the hospital team, whose research was published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). – dpa