A software developer these days is almost certain to engage in some kind of activity to maintain their fitness. Well, I may be stretching things a little :), but there are certainly more than a few developers who exercise pretty regularly; fitness is the “in” thing to do after all. I however found that many developers are either doing the “wrong” kind of exercise or focusing too much on some muscle groups to the neglect of others.

Every profession puts different kinds of stress on different parts of the body, this means that some exercise is very beneficial in some occupations while being almost harmful in others. Here, I will attempt to give some pointers on the types of exercises and muscle groups it would be best to focus on if you’re a software developer (or indeed any other IT professional).

Focus On The Core

For the uninitiated, by “core”, I mean your stomach, or more precisely, your stomach (abs), side (obliques) and lower back muscles. Your core muscles are arguably the most important muscles in the body. As software developers we sit at the computer all day, this puts a lot of strain on our lower back muscles, especially when we slouch (I know that I can slouch even on ergonomic chairs :)). This puts us at high risk of damaging our lower back in some way, so it certainly behooves us to strengthen our lower back muscles. However – with core muscles – balance is key. If you work your lower back, you need to pay equal attention to the abs and obliques. An imbalance in your core muscles puts you in very high risk of injury and since the core supports your whole body, it can make you a very unhappy developer. And by unhappy, I mean you’ll be in some possibly significant pain.

So, how do you work your core muscles? Well, despite what TV would have you believe, the machines of the AB* variety (e.g. ab roller, ab doer etc.) are not necessarily better than plain old crunches and leg raises. Infact I have found them to be worse in many situations. Not to mention the fact that you need the machine with you if you want to use it, where as for crunches and leg raises all you need is an even surface (floor, bench etc.). So I favour crunches and leg raises for your abs and obliques. For lower back, try doing some back extensions, they are surprisingly hard and also surprisingly effective. If you don’t know what back extensions are, then Google is your friend :). Oh, alright, it looks like this:

No matter which exercise you do to strengthen your core muscles, make sure you do it regularly. As a developer who sits at the computer all day, the worst thing you can do for yourself is ignore these muscles. Do not ignore your core!

Engage Many Muscle Groups At Once

We are all busy people and only have so much time to devote to our exercise program. It is therefore surprising how much time people spend doing exercises that engage at most one muscle group (wrist curls anyone?), while ignoring exercises that can potentially work almost your whole body.

There are two exercises that should be part of just about every work-out you do, I am talking about chin-ups and push-ups. Yes, I know that these are very hard and you usually can’t instantly crank out ten reps like you can with a light dumbbell, which is precisely why most people ignore these great exercises. I would however recommend that you give these a good try and don’t give up. You will slowly find yourself doing better and better and the benefits are tremendous.

Push-ups focus on your chest but will also work your arms, back, abs and to a lesser extent your legs. Chin-ups not only give your whole body a good stretch, but will work your arms, shoulders, latissimus dorsi :), abs, and are also good for your spine. But wait – there is still more – these exercises are great for building lean, strong muscle mass (i.e. you’ll be much stronger without looking bulky).

Your time is valuable, there are games to be played, books to be read, code to be written (that is, complained about how badly it was written in the first place and then re-written to be better :)). So, do yourself a favour and use the exercises that give you the most bang for your buck.

Stretch Or Else

One of the most accurate definitions of old age that I’ve heard has to do with your muscles loosing flexibility and suppleness. I wholeheartedly buy into this theory. Work on your flexibility, if you have time to do only one exercise, make sure it is a stretch. This is not just advice for software developers; this is good advice for everyone.

Always stretch, your arms legs and torso before a work-out (and preferably after as well). And don’t just do those half-hearted stretches to “loosen up”. Push your muscles a little bit, but within reason, you can injure yourself even while stretching. Your aim should be to become a little bit more flexible every week, there is no such thing as too much flexibility. I am not going to go into the kind of stretches you should be doing, there is plenty of info around. My job is to remind you of the importance of stretching. If you can’t touch the ground with your fingertips while standing up, no matter how old you are, you’re not flexible enough (touching it with your palms would be even better).

If you subscribe to this theory you will find that as you get older you will be able to easily maintain your lifestyle no matter what you love doing and you will feel good while doing it. Ignore this advice and you will feel old by the time you’re 40 if not before!

The Good Cardio

Aerobic exercise is a tricky one. As developers we spend the vast majority of our time sitting down. Therefore all of us are aware that we should be doing some kind of cardio activity to balance this out, it is simply common sense. Many people join some sort of local sporting team which is great, have fun with your friends while getting a cardio work out. However, team sports can be prone to injury especially if everyone is very competitive (injury is not good for your body no matter how minor). The other problem is that you usually can’t maintain your heart rate at a consistent level when playing a team sport and this is the whole point of a cardio workout.

Running is therefore the perennial favourite to get a good quick aerobic workout. I agree that it is an exercise that makes you feel like you’re accomplishing something, but a word of warning. Running is terrible for your joints, it is very high impact and your bones and joints take the brunt of it. You probably won’t notice it while you’re young, but there is a very good chance that you will pay a high price for it when you get older.

Therefore I favour either walking or cycling as a cardio workout. Both of these are nowhere near as high impact as running, they can still burn some decent calories, especially cycling. They will still give your legs a nice workout (which is a good side benefit). There are other kinds of cardio exercises, but I do recommend doing one that uses primarily your legs, such as the ones I mentioned. This is so that your legs get a workout along with the aerobic exercises you are doing for your body.

“Executive” Summary

Most of the things I talked about above don’t need to be done at the gym (although they certainly can be). With a bit of ingenuity you can do most of these exercises anywhere (e.g. any likely tree branch is your chin-up bar). So, to recap, I am going to keep this short and sweet:

Stretch, Walk/Cycle, Chin-ups, Push-ups, Crunches, Leg raises, Stretch

Then rinse and repeat. It is in your hands from here on in. All your bases are belong to you!

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With the Olympics drawing to a close shortly, I couldn’t help noticing the tremendously high number of Olympic and world records that have been broken. According to the official site 36 world records and 74 Olympic records have been broken as of August 19th. It certainly makes for an entertaining Olympic games, but this started me wondering about the future of sport in general and the Olympics in particular. The question I ask myself is, just how close are we to the limit of human potential as far sporting endeavors go?

Where are we now…?

I would say that if we haven’t passed that limit already, then we are surely very close to what humans with no technological assistance are capable of. And this of course raises the point, just how much of a role is science and technology currently playing in sport?

It is clear that sport has become more professional over the last several decades. Just about all athletes now competing at the games do their sport professionally and certainly training techniques have improved tremendously as well (sport is big business now after all). However, noone can say that technology isn’t playing a major role:

• sophisticated monitoring equipment
• specially formulated drinks and meals
• statistical analysis supported by advanced data storage and retrieval techniques
• etc.

All these now play a major role in the life and training of a professional athlete. And none of those things would be remotely possible without powerful software, hardware and advances in chemistry, biology and medicine. Let us also not forget the medical imaging and testing technologies that can help avoid injury and help athletes recover much faster and more fully in the event of injury. All of this goes on behind the scenes, the only things the public sees are chiseled muscles and jaw-dropping performances.

Of course, one can still argue that all this science and technology is only indirectly supporting athletes, but noone can argue that equipment used by most sports has become, fully as sophisticated as the training methods. This equipment is in no small part responsible for how far performance in many sports has advanced. There has been a lot of controversy already about the shark-skin swim-suits that have become popular in recent years; with some experts saying that they give too much of a boost to what someone without the aid of a suit would be able to do. And let’s face it one of those things could make Buddha look like Apollo tight as they are, so I am inclined to believe it. But what about some other sports that have benefited directly:

• tennis (graphite and carbon rackets, nylon strings)
• pole vaulting (poles made of fiberglass composites rather than bamboo)
• running (specially designed runners and spikes, skin hugging body suits etc.)
• cycling (a decent racing bike costs almost as much as a decent car, I am not even going to go into the technologies involved)
• rowing (they don’t make those boats out of wood any more :))
• there are many others

Surely the results we are seeing now could never have been possible without the modern equipment that science and technology has produced. So, can we really say that all those world and Olympic records are purely the result of human effort? I don’t think so.

What about the future …?

Where does all this leave us in years to come? Well, modern equipment, training methods and fancy suits can only take us so far. The way we are going, given another couple of decades, we will surely hit a performance plateau. What will happen then, no highly entertaining sport competitions, Olympics where no records are broken? Possible but unlikely, like I said sport is big business; losing audience is simply not an option, so we are back to the original question, what next?

Surely none of us are naive enough to believe that all the athletes competing in the games are drug free. I would certainly bet good money that at least some of them are using some kind of performance enhancing juice. Therefore the next step might be to legalize such drugs. Given free reign, science can surely come up with some very interesting substances (with equally interesting side effects I am sure :)) that would push athletes beyond anything we ever dreamed possible. That possibility is somewhat horrible to contemplate, certainly interesting, but no less horrible for the fascination.

The other option, is for us to redefine what “purely human endeavor” actually means. We can allow the use of “assistive technologies” in sport, it would surely provide a lot of entertainment value (miniature jet packs anyone :)), but it will no longer be the sports we know, that is beyond doubt.

Looking even further into the future, will drug tests be replaced by genetic modification tests, or will genetic engineering technologies become an accepted way for athletes to “reach new height of excellence”? Well, I say, bring on the monkey-robot-clone-trooper synchronised diving team it certainly appeals to my sense of the macabre. I would however love to hear other opinions, do you think science and technology have pushed us beyond what humans are capable of, or do you think blood, sweat and tears are the cause of the impressive results that we have seen in the Olympics?

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