This seems like a gross over-simplification and yet a new study in the Journal of Health Psychology suggests there may be a kernel of truth to it.
The researchers, led by Todd McElroy at Florida Gulf Coast University, gave an online test of "Need For Cognition" to lots of students, to find 30 who expressed a particularly strong desire to think a lot and 30 others with a strong preference to avoid anything too mentally taxing. This test has been around for over three decades and it involves people rating how strongly they agree with items like "I really enjoy a task that involves coming up with new solutions to problems" and "I only think as hard as I have to". The 30 thinkers and 30 non-thinkers then wore an accelerometer on their wrist for 7 days, to provide a constant measure of how physically active they were during that time.
The thinkers were "far less active" Monday to Friday than the non-thinkers – a difference that the researchers described as "robust" and "highly significant" in statistical terms. At the weekends there was no difference in activity levels between the groups.
The weekday result makes sense in light of past research from the 90s that showed non-thinkers are more prone to boredom than thinkers, and find boredom more aversive. Perhaps non-thinkers resort to physical activity as a way to escape their inner worlds.
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Source material from BPS Research Digest