People Who Only Exercise On The Weekend Might Actually Be Smarter, Research Finds
"Weekend warriors" can rejoice over this news.
PeopleImages.com - Yuri A | Shutterstock Not everyone has the determination of a gym rat and frankly, most of us don't get as excited about working out as the few exercise enthusiasts that seem to thrive on social media.
But finally, there's some good news for the rest of us.
If you’ve ever thought exercising less frequently would be helpful, you might be in luck. A new study suggested that those who only work out on weekends could actually be smarter.
According to one study, the “weekend warrior effect” is real when it comes to cognitive benefits.
A study published in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory seemed to prove the reality of exercising as a “weekend warrior.”
To perform the study, researchers placed 48 male mice in individual cages. Some of the cages included a running wheel, while others did not.
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According to Eric W. Dolan, who reported on the study for PsyPost, the mice were split into three different groups. Some of the mice exercised every day for two weeks, some exercised two days a week for seven weeks, and some just exercised for two days, followed by a sedentary period.
To test the mice’s cognitive abilities, researchers gave them an Object Location Memory (OLM) test.
“This test involved placing two identical objects in a chamber and later moving one object to a new location,” Dolan said. “The mice’s exploration time of the novel location was measured to calculate a discrimination index, which reflects memory performance.”
In the case of the mice, the control group consisted of those who only exercised for two days and then experienced a sedentary period. The mice who exercised for 14 days in a row, and those who exercised for two days a week for seven weeks were the main objects of research here.
The mice in the group that exercised continuously and the mice who exercised twice a week both showed cognitive benefits when presented with the OLM test. However, the group that exercised two days a week were the only mice that showed cognitive benefits that lasted after a subsequent sedentary period.
In other words, the mice who followed the “weekend warrior” pattern had the strongest, most pronounced cognitive benefits out of all the mice involved in the study.
Despite what one would assume, the amount of time spent running did not affect cognitive function. Running for longer did not produce even greater cognitive benefits.
“This suggests that the exercise regimen, rather than its intensity, was the critical factor in producing long-lasting cognitive effects,” Dolan stated.
Only working out on the weekends also has physical health benefits.
Finding out you could be smarter if you only exercise on the weekends is nice. However, it is a known fact that most people don’t exercise for the benefit of their intelligence. Rather, they are focused on the benefits for their physical health.
Other research suggested that physical health benefits are available for those who follow the “weekend warrior” phenomenon.
A study published in the journal Obesity took a look at body fat mass to determine how useful exercising only on the weekends is. Researchers concluded that as long as you exercise for a total of 150 minutes over the weekend, you will still have the same benefits that someone exercising more frequently would.
So, while the duration of exercise has no impact on cognitive benefits, it does affect physical health benefits.
When it comes to science, mice really are comparable to humans.
It would be easy to assume that this study is a far cry from reality since it used mice and not actual humans, yet presumed to discover information about the human body. However, mice can accurately be used in place of humans in studies like this.
In an article published in the journal Missouri Medicine, Elizabeth C. Bryda wrote, “Mice and rats have long served as the preferred species for biomedical research animal models due to their anatomical, physiological and genetic similarity to humans.”
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Despite the obvious differences between mice and humans, they also have quite a bit in common that makes them useful for scientific purposes, just like this study.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.