Why strength training? A programmer's perspective

• health
Back

About four years ago I started strength training. A strict diet of barbells and kettlebells, averaging between 2-3 times per week. It was one of those decisions that changed my life for the better.

Four years ago my lower back bothered me constantly and my wrists would occasionally hurt. I assumed it had to do with me aging and spending 8-10 hours per day coding.

I assumed it was normal and I just needed to get used to it, but then something unpredictable happened: COVID hit the world.

I've always had an active sport life. Long distance running, football, bouldering, and gym. I enjoyed it, and that's why I did it.

When COVID hit, my main sport was bouldering. I practiced every week and really enjoyed it, although my back, shoulders and other muscles would often hurt after long bouldering sessions.

COVID meant all the bouldering gyms were closed. At first I was cursing at the heavens but then realised it was a blessing in disguise. I had a chance to start over. Pick a new sport. Try something different. Maybe bouldering wasn't that good for my wrists? Maybe my back would stop hurting?

In some sense, bouldering was like "new tech". Fresh, cool, interesting, but with an unknown failure mode. Was I practicing bouldering the wrong way? What are common bouldering injuries? What's the proper way to practice bouldering? I didn't know. The way me and my bouldering buddies approached it was simple: do what you like, have fun.

As a software engineer I though, If I should "pick boring tech", maybe I should also "pick boring sports". So I decided to pick something boring. Something old, 1000s of years old. My rationale being that for older sports there would be more easily available knowledge, failure modes would be better known, and I would be able to better understand if I was doing it wrong.

So like the nerd I am, I built a list of requirements from my next sport:

First, it had to be time efficient. I used to do long distance running and while I enjoyed it, it was just too much time.

Second, it should be healthy. I wanted to pick a sport that I could practice for the next 40 years. Playing football (soccer) and being injured often thought me that not all sport was good for your health.

Finally: it should have not just a physical component, but also a skill component. Like many software engineers out there, I fell in love with the practice of software engineering. Bouldering had this too. It wasn't just about brute strength. There was a lot of skill in being a good climber and that keep it interesting.

And so I did my research. Tried a few different sports. Did yoga, mobility, calisthenics and eventually settled for strength training, mostly barbell and kettlebell based exercises.

I learned along the way that strength training is one of the best ways to improve your longevity, great for weight loss, improves mental capacity, improves sleep, reduces risk of several heart diseases, etc.

After about a year, my back and wrists stopped hurting. That was great, but there's been so many other benefits.

I lost weight and gained muscle. This had a positive reinforcing loop: I started to care more about my food as I saw it had a direct impact on my performance.

I started sleeping better.

I started getting lots of energy from lifting weights. Sort of like coffee.

I have two young children. I can now lift and carry them around. Throw them in the air, run around and play rough with them, and I don't get tired. This has brought so much joy to them, and to me.

If one of my kids falls a sleep somewhere random, it's never a problem. I can just carry him.

If one of my kids is tired of sitting on the stroller I can carry them on my back. It makes long walks more enjoyable for both and Its a huge help for my wife.

Strength training has changed my health and life for the better and I'm grateful I found this sport relatively early in life.

I want to finish this post with another story. About my grandmother, who lived to 99.

She was a very active woman. Her husband died very young so she raised five children by herself. She spoke English, French, Spanish and learned to read Greek later in life. She loved plants, wrote a few non-published books about them. She drove a Volkswagen beetle far into her 80s and didn't take shit from anyone.

She was hard, disciplined, wise caring and loving.

And she was strong. She loved working the garden, carrying dirt around, planting and taking care of plants. And that kept her alive.

But then doctors (and family) decided it was time for her to take it slow. She was too old to live such an active lifestyle, and so she moved to a small apartment in the city, near one of her children.

And so she stopped moving. Started watching lots of TV too. A few years later she was diagnosed with dementia. She became overweight and so soon couldn't walk anymore. It was all downhill from there. She lived probably 8 years with increasing dementia and overweight until she died at the age of 99.

Ageing is difficult, and I'm no expert but if you ask me, it was the sedentary life that killed her.

I think the lesson to be learnt from her experience is that the sedentary life is killing us all. We didn't evolve to sit in chairs all day, but that's the world we got. Instead of complaining, we need to do something about it.

Four years ago I discovered strength training and it changed my life. I hope this story inspires you to move more and get stronger.

In loving memory of Tunchis. Thank you. For everything you did for us.

If you found this article useful, consider following me on twitter. I write about once a month about software engineering practices and programming in general.

I'm also developing SynthQL. A type-safe HTTP client for PostgreSQL and I would love to get your feedback.

Other posts you may like...

© Fernando Hurtado Cardenas.RSS