{"id":241071,"date":"2025-07-05T21:31:20","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T21:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/241071\/"},"modified":"2025-07-05T21:31:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T21:31:20","slug":"can-you-get-just-as-fit-training-only-at-weekends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/241071\/","title":{"rendered":"Can you get just as fit training only at weekends?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This feature\u00a0originally appeared in the print edition of Cycling Weekly,\u00a0on sale in newsagents and supermarkets, priced \u00a33.35. You can subscribe through this link\u00a0<\/strong>here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is rare for me \u2013 usually I can only get out at weekends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sound familiar? It came from a rider on my regular Tuesday night ride. As always with a group of cyclists, we were busy getting our excuses in early: too much work, childcare, bad weather, a broken bottom bracket \u2013 they all came out. It was a wonder any of us had made it to the start.<\/p>\n

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That said, my first reaction was to empathise. Lately I\u2019d lost my appetite for cycling, conscious that I\u2019d been failing to string together enough consistent training<\/a> rides to make progress, and it was becoming disheartening. My \u2018Fitness and Freshness\u2019 graph told the story \u2013 brief upward blips followed by a steady slide back to the bottom. Cycling, I told myself, is only fun when you\u2019re fit \u2013 otherwise, it\u2019s just hard work.<\/p>\n

The term \u2018weekend warrior\u2019 is often used with a hint of derision by riders with plentiful spare time<\/a>. It implies that anyone riding only on Saturdays and Sundays is somehow less serious, less committed, and unlikely to reach serious levels of performance. But for many of us, being a weekend warrior isn\u2019t a choice \u2013 it\u2019s simply all we can manage. And now there is evidence that weekend-only training might be just as good as training across several days of the week.<\/p>\n

No worries for warriors<\/p>\n

The good news for weekend warriors comes in the form of research published in February by the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, suggesting that cramming your rides into the weekend might be just as effective as spreading them out. The study compared two groups over an eight-week training programme, one riding twice a week (weekends only), the other four times (high-frequency training). Both saw similar improvements in fitness and health, particularly in VO2 max<\/a> and muscle capacity. The implication would appear to be that spreading sessions through the week isn\u2019t crucial, provided you match the volume and intensity at weekends.<\/p>\n

Fantastic \u2013 we\u2019re not haemorrhaging fitness between Monday and Friday after all. We can keep smashing out those big weekend rides, safe in the knowledge that we\u2019re reaping similar benefits to our weekday-riding counterparts. But hold on \u2013 that\u2019s not the whole story. How our bodies respond to training depends heavily on the intensity and duration of each session. While the effects of exercise intensity are well understood, the role of frequency has been studied less. Here\u2019s the crucial detail: in the study, the weekend warriors and the high-frequency trainers did the same total volume, and none of them began in well-trained form.<\/p>\n

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Turn up the volume<\/p>\n

In the study, the weekend warrior group trained twice per week on back-to-back days, while the high-frequency group trained four times per week with no obligation to ride on consecutive days. Because the total training volume was matched, each session for the weekend warriors had to be twice as long as those in the high-frequency group. For the former group, this meant one longer endurance ride of around 80 minutes, followed the next day by a brutal interval session with eight four-minute efforts at threshold.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the high-frequency group spread out their training stress across five days, with less volume and intensity in each session. The key difference between the two training routines lay in how much stress each workout placed on the body and how frequently that stress occurred. For the weekend warriors, sessions were longer and more taxing, with five days of recovery between each two-day training period, while the high-frequency group trained more often but for shorter periods, with no more than two days of recovery in between.<\/p>\n

Generally, intensity is the biggest driver of workout stress. Research shows that muscle fatigue and the accumulation of exercise-related byproducts don\u2019t increase in direct proportion to duration, although longer sessions do expose the body to peak stress for longer. With the weekend warrior model, the body is pushed hard twice a week, followed by extended recovery periods. Little and often, or loads just at weekends \u2013 which is better?<\/p>\n

To drill down into this question, I spoke with Dr Jamie Pringle, associate professor of exercise physiology at the University of Birmingham. \u201cIt\u2019s an interesting study and a hard one to perform from a physiological point of view,\u201d he said. \u201cI applaud the research team for taking it on.\u201d Pringle cautions against viewing the study in isolation: \u201cIt should be seen in the context of the authors\u2019 wider body of work.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the authors\u2019 previous studies compared sprint-interval training (SIT) and endurance training (ET), assessing how each influenced muscle metabolism. Despite SIT involving short, intense sessions totalling just one hour per week, and ET requiring 4.5 hours of steady-state riding, both approaches led to comparable gains in fitness and metabolic adaptation. The takeaway was that training need not be time-consuming to be effective. The new study echoes this theme in finding that, when volume and intensity are matched, low-frequency routines like the weekend warrior model are not inherently inferior to high-frequency approaches.<\/p>\n

However, there is a catch \u2013 and arguably a major one. The study\u2019s weekly training volume \u2013 for both groups \u2013 was just 2.5 hours, which is far less than the average training volume of a Cycling Weekly reader. OK, an hour on Saturday, then 90 minutes on Sunday might just about qualify as weekend warrior training, but most serious amateurs rack up upwards of four hours per week. To be seriously competitive, even as an amateur, much higher volumes are needed \u2013 too much to squeeze into weekends alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can get fit as a weekend warrior, but can you reach your full potential? That\u2019s a different question,\u201d says Pringle. To illustrate the challenge, he lays out what it might look like: \u201cFour sessions a day, spaced two hours apart, each lasting up to 90 minutes \u2013 that\u2019s six hours a day, 12 hours across the weekend. That would get you close.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if cramming that much training into a weekend didn\u2019t break you, would it get you fit? \u201cWould you get the same adaptation as doing 90 minutes a day across six days a week? That\u2019s an interesting question,\u201d says Pringle. But it\u2019s a question few weekend warriors will have the time, or desire, to answer.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Andy Jones)<\/p>\n

Jogging muscle memory <\/p>\n

While it\u2019s promising that both groups in the study improved despite the low volume, it\u2019s worth noting that the participants were cycling newbies. \u201cIf you\u2019re already well trained, that\u2019s a different context \u2013 the training effect on someone new to cycling will be very different,\u201d warns Pringle. How long you\u2019ve been cycling plays a big role in how your body responds to training frequency and intensity. \u201cA fair number of weekend warriors have trained systematically in the past,\u201d says Pringle. \u201cThere seems to be a kind of muscle memory \u2013 if you\u2019ve done high-intensity training before, you can return to it and still benefit from that past effort.\u201d In other words, a previously well-trained weekend warrior can regain fitness more quickly and with less training. Even if they\u2019ve had a layoff and not ridden for weeks, perhaps even months, their training history still counts. Pringle uses a Christmas tree metaphor: when you first start training, you rapidly hang new baubles of fitness on the lower branches. As you progress, gains are harder to come by \u2013 you\u2019re reaching for higher branches. \u201cEven if you\u2019re very detrained, restarting almost from scratch,\u201d he says, \u201cyour body remembers how to climb the tree.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you look closely at the training in the study, it doesn\u2019t truly reflect typical weekend warrior behaviour. The sessions were relatively short \u2013 just over an hour \u2013 and tightly controlled for both intensity and duration. A real-life weekend warrior, speaking from experience, rides for several hours with a group, digging deep on climbs, launching senseless sprints, and eventually crawling home completely wrecked. That\u2019s the beauty of weekend warrior life: we\u2019re fresh, fired up, and ready to chase anything that moves. As for control, forget about it. Having recovered for five days, we arrive at the weekend ready to throw everything into our rides, which can yield considerable training gains but also carries a risk of going too deep.<\/p>\n

Stick to the plan<\/p>\n

If you want to train smarter, the answer is almost always the same: have a plan, and stick to it. \u201cYou get fit from doing stuff and keeping on doing it,\u201d says Pringle. \u201cBeing able to do something month on month, year on year is what makes the difference.\u201d In the study, not only were volume and intensity carefully controlled, but they were also progressively adjusted over the eight-week training block to ensure continual development. It\u2019s worth noting too that participants completed 99.2% of the prescribed sessions \u2013 consistency few of us match in real life. As for how much training is actually needed to see improvement, that\u2019s harder to pin down. \u201cYou need to do enough, but not too much. Enough to get an adaptation, but not so much that you can\u2019t recover,\u201d Pringle concludes.<\/p>\n

At its core, the research is encouraging news for weekend warriors \u2013 and for people like me who\u2019ve long carried the guilt that riding only twice-weekly doesn\u2019t constitute proper training. If weekends are all you have, you can still make meaningful fitness gains. Those sessions matter, especially if you\u2019re just starting out or have a solid base from previous training. But if your goal is to move beyond weekend warrior status and push your performance further, adding even one or two more sessions a week will make a real difference. \u201cA consistently higher volume of training seems to be more important in the long term,\u201d says Pringle. \u201cHigh intensity gives you very fast returns, but not necessarily long-term ones.\u201d The real magic, as always, lies in consistency, control and following a structured plan \u2013 whether it\u2019s over seven days a week or just two.<\/p>\n

Weekend warrior training: key stats from the study<\/p>\n

8<\/strong> \u2013 Length of the study, in weeks<\/p>\n

28<\/strong> \u2013 Number of participants \u2013 14 men and 14 women<\/p>\n

4.3<\/strong> \u2013 Average increase in VO2 max, in ml\/kg\/min, among participants in the \u2018weekend warrior\u2019 group<\/p>\n

4.9<\/strong> \u2013 Average increase in time to exhaustion, in minutes, for the \u2018weekend warrior\u2019 group<\/p>\n

19<\/strong> \u2013 Average increase in total haemoglobin mass, in grams, in the \u2018weekend warrior\u2019 group<\/p>\n

150<\/strong> \u2013 Amount of training per week, in minutes, that proved enough to produce significant performance gains<\/p>\n

Get it right: Train like a true weekend warrior <\/p>\n

SATURDAY: INTENSITY<\/strong> Use a HIIT protocol or intense group ride to hit your VO2 max system. Intervals of 2\u20137min at 90\u2013100% max heart rate.<\/p>\n

SUNDAY: ENDURANCE<\/strong> Ride long to build endurance and muscular conditioning for longer events and sportives. Focus on time in the saddle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This feature\u00a0originally appeared in the print edition of Cycling Weekly,\u00a0on sale in newsagents and supermarkets, priced \u00a33.35. You…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4322],"tags":[1630,105,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-241071","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-fitness","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114802766091178205","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}