Are you one of those people who are just too busy — or too tired — to work out during the week? If you're exercising moderately to vigorously for one or two days during the weekend, you'll still get plenty of health benefits.

A new study found that a “Weekend Warriors'” pattern of concentrated exercise at the end of the week is just as effective in reducing your risk of developing as many as 264 possible diseases as it would be if you worked out regularly five days a week.

The study, conducted by researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital, analyzed data on nearly 90,000 people. The sample of people between the ages of 40 to 69 was drawn from the UK Biobank, a biomedical database established between 2006 and 2010 that contains genetic, lifestyle and health information on its participants.

There was one minimal downside among some exercisers.

For this research, the volunteers wore accelerometers that recorded their total physical activity and the time spent at different exercise intensities over one week. Their physical activity patterns were put into three categories: weekend warrior, regular and inactive based on a guideline-based threshold of 150 minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.

The researchers were looking for associations between the amount of physical activity a person did and the occurrence of 678 conditions across 16 types of disease — from mental health and digestive issues to neurological dysfunction, obesity and other issues.

Here's what the investigators found:

  • Weekend warriors and those engaged in regular physical activity during the week were associated with substantially lower risks of over 250 diseases compared to those who were inactive.
  • Exercisers need to aim for 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity a week; how they get it — 30 to 50 minutes several days a week or a sustained effort on the weekend — is less important.
  • Beneficial associations of weekend activity were strongest for cardiometabolic conditions such as hypertension and diabetes.
  • The beneficial associations spanned all disease categories tested.

“Physical activity is known to affect risk of many diseases,” co-senior author, Shaan Khurshid, MD, MPH, a faculty member in the Demoulas Center for Cardiac Arrhythmias at Massachusetts General Hospital, said in a press release. “Here we show the potential benefits of weekend warrior activity for risk not only of cardiovascular disease, as we've shown in the past, but also future diseases spanning the whole spectrum ranging from conditions like chronic kidney disease to mood disorders and beyond.”

Exercisers need to aim for 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity a week; how they get it — 30 to 50 minutes several days a week or a sustained effort on the weekend — is less important.

Some results were unexpected. “It was somewhat surprising not to find any conditions where the benefit appeared different for weekend warriors versus regular exercise patterns, despite looking over 600 diseases,” the study's lead author Shinwan Kany, MD, MSc of the University Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany, said in a press release. “This really suggests it's the total volume of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA), rather than the pattern, that is the key driver of benefits.”

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends a minimum of 150 hours of physical activity a week. In this study, both the weekend warriors and the regular during-the-week exercisers were well above the recommended time devoted to working out.

There was one minimal downside among some exercisers. Sore joints and skin conditions were more common among both weekend warriors and regular exercisers than among the inactive volunteers. The researchers believe this is most likely due to overuse injuries or sun exposure.

The takeaway? If you can't fit an exercise routine into your work week, no worries. Grab it whenever your schedule allows — and reap the benefits of good health.

The study is published in Circulation.