As we edge into December, exercising outdoors can seem a challenge. The hours of daylight are shorter at this time of year, and not everyone is able to work out first thing in the morning; equally, for many of us, it’s already dark by the time we finish work.
28th November 2024
The winter and being inside too much can lead to a number of problems. There’s the lack of Vitamin D for a start. Additionally, Season Affective Disorder (SAD), also sometimes called ‘winter depression’, comes and eases in a seasonal pattern, with depressive symptoms becoming more severe during the colder months. These can include a persistently low mood, irritability, lethargy and a loss of pleasure in daily activities, among others.
At the same time, the benefits of fresh air on our physical and mental health include:
During the autumn and winter, it can be easy to believe that the only chance you have of working out is to join a local indoor gym or leisure centre, which often levy hefty joining and membership fees. So it’s hardly worth bothering, right? Wrong!
In fact, a new study has found that even if you only exercise once or twice a week, you can reap the same rewards that more regular workouts offer, in terms of both mental and physical health.
The Mexico City Prospective Study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine and which looked at more than 10,000 people, has found that those who only exercised once or twice a week were at the same reduced risk of mild dementia as those who exercised more regularly, when compared with those who were inactive.
Individuals were studied initially between 1998 and 2004, and again between 2015 and 2019. The research found that ‘weekend warriors’ (i.e. those working out just once or twice weekly) had a 25% lower risk of mild dementia than inactive individuals, while those who were more regularly active enjoyed an 11% lower risk.
The study’s Dr Gary O’Donovan said: “(Clearly)… the benefits of exercising once or twice a week are much the same as exercising more frequently.”
He added that he wasn’t sure why the ‘weekend warrior’ group were at a reduced risk of mild dementia compared with those who undertook more regular exercise.
Another study found that people who fit a week’s worth of exercise into a day or two were at a reduced risk of contracting more than 200 diseases compared with those who did not work out at all.
It seems that the total volume of exercise, rather than the pattern, was most crucial when it comes to risk of disease – i.e. you need to exercise for longer when you do fewer workouts, to feel the same benefit. (The UK government recommends that adults complete at least 150 minutes moderate-intensity activity, 75 minutes' vigorous activity, or a mixture of both.)
So why not be a weekend warrior? One great way of doing this is to make use of your local outdoor gym on Saturdays and Sundays, when you are likely to have more free time during the hours of daylight. You’ll reap all the physical and mental health advantages of working out outdoors listed above and keep up the levels of fitness and fresh air needed for your overall wellbeing.
These facilities are free and enjoyable to use and highly sociable – while offering enough varied equipment to provide a full-body workout. Find out how to make the most of outdoor gyms in winter with our previous blog post.
Fresh Air Fitness is a leading, award-winning UK provider of outdoor gym equipment. Talk to us today about how we could enhance your community, whether you’re a school, residential setting, park or recreation ground, housing association, business, hotel or spa.
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