The Other Kind of Well-Rounded Developer

For people in software development, a great deal of time is spent working and learning in order to increase the quality of your output and make you a more rounded person. Unfortunately, all this time is spend with your body fairly inactive, leading to another kind of more rounded person that you didn’t plan for, i.e. your body does not get the exercise it wants.

This is a problem for many knowledge worker roles, so here are some things you can do to make you a rounded person in mind and not in body.

Exercise your core muscles
Yoga is a great way to stay healthy as it helps strengthen your core muscles. Yoga is also an effective way to deal with stress and tension, as the breathing aspect of yoga helps you really relax and give you much more energy. All this goodness also increasing your metabolism and keeps you in trim.
Boxercising is a fun way to exercise and really works on your core muscles, upper body and back strength and fight cardiovascular disease
Cycling is a great low impact exercise and it helps relax your eyes too by giving you lots of varying scenery to look at. Cycling is especially good for strenghening the legs, calfs and posterior.
Swimming - a low impact exercise which can be enjoyed with family and friends. It works a wide range of muscles in the body and is a good way to relax muscles when floating in the pool.There are of course many other activities and sports you can do, however the above types of exercises are very good at working on your stomach.

Change your working environment

You can also consider getting a standing desk to work at. Several studies have shown that you burn a many more calories when standing up for most of the day, compared to sitting down.

Having a standing desk can also benefit your eyes as it will encourage you to move around more and this naturally alters focus for your eyes giving them a chance to relax.

And finally, standing is a good way to maintain a good posture as its too easy to slouch when you are sitting down. When sitting down at a computer keyboard its also very easy to hunch forward, putting strain on your back in places where muscles are not usually able to manage.

So if you dont want to be a well rounded developer in all the wrong ways, review how you work and see how you can stay healthy as you work through the day (and night).

Thank you.
@jr0cket

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