It’s a Friday night a little before 11, and the fields at the Pittsburgh Indoor Sports Association — a complex in Harmar the size of a jet hangar — are filled with men from their 20s through their late 50s playing soccer and 4-on-4 flag football. It could be a scene out of a beer commercial or, better yet, one for Wrangler Jeans, except that none of these weekend warriors has Brett Favre’s pedigree.
Don’t mention that to Rob Roberts, however.
He’ll be the field general for all three of his team’s games this night, just as he has been nearly every week for the past 20 years that he’s participated in flag leagues. It’s also the primary and often sole form of exercise for the 46-year-old father of two from West Mifflin. And, according to recent research, it might be just enough to lower his risk of developing heart disease and cancer.
A 18-year study of nearly 64,000 adults over age 40 in the United Kingdom published last month in JAMA Internal Medicine found that “all-cause mortality risk was approximately 30 percent lower in active versus inactive adults, including ‘weekend warrior’ respondents who performed the recommended amount of 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous activity from 1 or 2 sessions per week.”
Previous findings have indicated that 150 minutes a week of moderate or 75 minutes a week of vigorous activity is something of a magic number but is ideally spread throughout the week in smaller intervals. The American Heart Association’s guidelines for adult exercise recommend at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity five days per week, or 25 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity at least three days per week (or some combination thereof).
But study author Gary O’Donovan, a researcher at the National Centre for Sport & Exercise Medicine at Loughborough University in central England, counters that the exercise can come all at once, if need be, and wrote via email that “quality may be more important than quantity: Vigorous-intensity exercise improves aerobic fitness more than the same amount of moderate-intensity exercise, and two bouts of vigorous-intensity exercise per week are sufficient to maintain aerobic fitness.”
That’s good news for those who’ve started to slip already on their 2017 New Year’s resolutions of daily gym visits — once a week is potentially enough to do the trick.
It’s also something of a relief to Mr. Roberts, who said that career and family responsibilities offer a tight window for fitness.
“It just easier to fit once a week into a hectic schedule,” he said.
The middle-aged Antonio Brown to Mr. Roberts’ Big Ben, 57-year-old Keith Durst of Tarentum is a wide receiver on the team. He’s likewise played in these leagues for years and prefers competitive sports, or a rigorous weekend hike, to daily workouts.
“The people lined up in rows on treadmills in the gym — that’s not me,” he shrugged.
Interestingly, the study indicates that the results hold for former and even current smokers, Mr. O’Donovan said, referring to another recent study he co-published that analyzed data from more than 100,000 participants in the Scottish Health Survey and the Health Survey for England.
Naturally, it wouldn’t be prudent for an otherwise sedentary adult to jump right into an extended session of vigorous activity. To that end, Mr. O’ Donovan recommends folks with any previous kind of chest pain or dizziness to see a doctor first and then start off easy with a 12-week program of brisk walking before amping it up, but he added, “It’s important to remember that, for most people, the benefits of becoming more active far outweigh the risks.”
And to paraphrase Newton’s law of inertia, Mr. O’Donovan said keeping your body in motion with consistency is the key to reaping benefits of physical activity, which he said must “be maintained to reduce the risks of morbidity and mortality.”
Or, as Mr. Durst said of his yearslong weekend warrior routine, “Once you stop, you’re done.”
In flag football, as in life.
Dan Gigler: dgigler@post-gazette.com; Twitter @gigs412.
First Published: February 7, 2017, 5:00 a.m.
