Intro🔗

I've tried a lot of different sports activities and want to share my experience with them.
Also my goal is to highlight those which are more appropriate for the programmer.

Reflection🔗

There are different kinds of sports and they have different requirements from you:

• concentration
• explosion
• release a lot of energy for a short period of time
• monotonous work with low energy consumption
• equipment
• commute
• recovery
• variety

All these bullets influence the choice.

Based on my experience when you have a lot of brainwork it's hard to do explosion work, work when you need to release a lot of energy for a short period of time, work when you need to keep the high concentration level.
The basic idea is that all those factors don't allow you to relax. Instead they unwind the psyche and as the result I come from such trainings more tired + I need more time for recovery.
Examples:

• gym
• martial arts(boxing gym, wrestling, mma)

Instead of being "aggresive" lets consider other:

• swimming
• running
• cycling

At such work you can do useful job and at the same time think about life, admire the surroundings(not with swimming =)). Also it's a good opportunity for travelling. There are a lot of marathons, cycling competitins over the world. Additionally I found that it improves your psyche, because for the first time it's really hard to run 20km for example. And not because of high physical load, but because it's a long period of time. You need some time to learn how to look forward and abstract from the outside world, otherwise you can "eat" yourself from the inside by your thoughts. So yes this is some sort of meditation skill which you will develop with time.
A small tip: try to train without music because it doesn't allow you to relax, most of the time you listen music and its give you a mental power for work on the training, so you don't control the training, you do training just because of music. You should find a way of control such things on your own, just with your mind, without any factors from the outside.

So I run a couple of times in the week and started to look for the same activities. I found swimming, cycling and even the dedicated kind of sport - triathlon. I begun to swim, spin cycle and it gave me even more satisfaction. Because after that my sports activities are very varied. With such schedule really hard to be busy mentally.
Drawbacks:

• for cycling need a cycle + bike station -> $$$
• for swimming need to go to a dedicated place and spend much time before and after a swimming pool

Conclusion🔗

For programmers from my point of view suitable sports activities are:

• swimming
• running
• cycling
• football
• volleyball
• basketball
• tennis
• yoga
• gym(only light)
• rock climbing

But not:

• powerlifting,
• weightlifting
• martial arts
• boxing
• wrestling
• mma