I don't have any studies that answer your question specifically, but I don't think there's any real debate when it comes to frequency vs. cumulative in terms of health benefit. Frequent increments of smaller time blocks of exercise undoubtedly produce higher yeilds in every physiological category, not to mention the damage and injury that would result from only one marathon-length exercise session per week.

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The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W

Thanks for the response, I tend to agree with you. I was asked the question recently and responded that we know 30-60 minutes a day is much better than less or nothing- the question came back is 2-3 hours once per week as good, not as good, no good at all? So I'm looking for some numbers- if there are any...

Ken

there's some good info in this week's NEWSWEEK (general, but interesting). I don't think they covered exercise over an hour, but there was an article about exercise intensity (higher intensity has greater gains in CV health than moderate).

There was also a mention that an hour of exercise an adult performs works out to add two hours of increased lifespan (or expectancy, I don't remember now).

Interesting stuff, I've been meaning to look up the studies it was based on, but haven't yet.

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mckenzie

.......I am going to go off of this topic a little and say that for Ironman training I think that too many athletes focus on too much "frequency" and dont have enough long blocks of recovery time between workouts b/c they are always putting in short swims/bikes/runs instead of focusing on fewer workouts that maybe should be longer/higher quality.....

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short answer: 2-3 hours, once/week is good (obviously), but not as good as.

A few points:

- The American College of Sports Medicine recommends '45-60 min of exercise most days of the week' or some such - it's been a while since I've had to quote this; you can google it. The biggest improvements are seen from the couch potato --> moderately active step (google 'Cooper clinic, Blair'). So anything is better than sitting on your duff.

- Regular exercise is good for EVERYBODY in regards to improving your chance of avoiding or delaying diabetes, not just high risk groups. There is a reason why we call 'adult-onset diabetes' 'type II diabetes'. Exercise also confers numerous other health benefits. In fact, if there are 'silver bullets' to cure a large portion of society's ails, 'regular exercise' and 'portion size' are the two big ones. Shocker, I know.

- An acute exercise bout (say, 45-60 min of jogging) has some immediate benefits. E.g., in type 2 diabetics, exercise will bring typicall blood glucose levels down from an elevated state, an in insulin resistant folks ('pre-diabetic', if you will), as little as one bout of moderate exercise will improve insulin sensitivity (a good thing). These improvements are relatively transient, and in the case of improved insulin sensitivity, last around 24 hours or longer. So you can see that exercising every day is important.

- Practically, most sedentary folks find it hard enough to do 30 min or 10,000 steps of walking per day. 3 hrs of anything on Saturday is typically a non-starter for a sedentary person. The key is to establish a routine that is manageable over the long term. Hitting it hard once/week is a recipe for some serious soreness, and back to the couch they go.

- So, in short, there are practical as well as physiological reasons why you would spread your exercise out over several days, and hopefully increase your weekly hours as well. But get your friend of the couch, that's the biggest favor you can do him/her.

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Josef
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blog

I think I just learned a big lesson in "you get what you train for."

I've been doing IM training, running an hour a day except one long day of 2:15 or so. It's been working for me.

But this year I started to run ultras. Everyone in that community told me the midweek stuff is fluff, don't need too much of it. Go long on weekends or you'll die. Or as the Western States website says, don't run 15 miles a day or you'll become the best 15-mile runner at Western States. Run the same number of miles per week but make sure you run 35 on Saturday and maybe 15-25 on Sunday.

I didn't take their advice and couldn't go the distance on my IM training. So I changed my training to run long on weekends. It didn't change my short distance times, but I sure can run further now.

Thanks for all the responses. From a performance perspective, I don't think there's much question regarding the value of frequency in training. The question put to me regards health concerns. It's an interesting question really. I would hypothesize that 3 hrs of moderate intensity one day per week would confer less health benefits (diabetes, CV disease) than 30 minutes 6 days/week, but I'm having trouble finding support for this idea. You grant writing types are free to take notice...

Ken