How Muay Thai and Powerlifting Made Me a Better Programmer Hacktoberfest Wrap-up!

This is a blog post I wanted to write about for the longest time. Muay Thai and powerlifting taught me a lot of important lessons that I apply in many aspects of my life. I understand mixed martial arts and powerlifting is not for everyone and this is just my experience I am sharing with you. I am not a professional Muay Thai boxer or an elite powerlifting competitor. But I do take my practice very very seriously and envision myself as a real athlete while training. They are for me, a mental escape, representing calm and serenity in my busy schedule. I believe most tech people have non-tech hobbies where we learn lessons that can be applied in different areas of life.

Reflection

As we are approaching the end of Hacktoberfest and I watched my most difficult pull request get merged, I wanted to reflect on a few things in my life that made me, well, me. Muay Thai and powerlifting have been a part of my life long before I ever thought of getting into coding. Most people call them introverts sports. Well, I guess which is why I am so drawn to them. Also, it feels good to throw around some serious weights. Muay Thai and powerlifting require intense discipline and consistency. After following such patterns of structure, routine, and discipline for years, I discovered that their impacts were far-reaching, shaping me as a person, whose influence pours over to other areas of my life. There is a lot of math and science involved in this sport, which is another reason I love them so much! As I entered Hacktoberfest, I found myself reflecting on many of the disciplines I learned from mixed martial arts and powerlifting and how they allowed me to face and embrace Hacktoberfest fearlessly.

Community support

The very first time I entered a powerlifting gym in Oregon, I was flabbergasted. There were all these big strong people lifting ungodly weights. I was paranoid, constantly looking around, looking for anyone staring at me from the corners of the gym. That could not be further from the truth. No one was staring and laughing. Everyone was busy pushing themselves to become the best version of themselves. The community support was crazy. People cheered each other on, helped fix each others forms and shouted words of encouragement. It is amazing how profound such words of encouragement were for me, ingrained in my mind even until today, I often find them silently repeating in my mind while struggling on a lift.

Coming into Hacktoberfest, I felt the same way. Initially, I was so worried about being a beginner. I did not expect to find a single issue I could fix or have as many meaningful conversations or networking as I had with maintainers throughout the month. I asked a lot of silly questions to maintainers and made a lot of mistakes related to CI/CD runs. But no one laughed at me. They were so helpful, so kind, and so detailed in giving me feedback. My small contributions no longer felt insignificant but a monumental part of a large whole. This experience took me back to those first powerlifting days when I questioned my worth but soon made me realize that the community is always there to support me. It was me vs me. I learned that everyone's journey looks different, what is important is that I stay in my lane and improve.

Matters of passion

I was not the most athletic person in high school. I was more into reading science books and solving math problems and questioning why sunsets were blue on Mars. Or what laws of physics governed galactic and intergalactic magnetism or what would happen if two galaxies collide? Although I was physically on planet Earth and my mind floating somewhere in another dimension, I soon realized that I had to take action for improving my declining health. In conjunction with my love for astronomy, I found my love for fitness somewhat accidentally. I was really on a quest to cure my health problems with more physical activity, not realizing combat sports would grow roots so deep in me, forming an important part of my identity. I felt strong mentally and physically.

As outlined in my first and second blog posts, I took my time to find repositories I cared about and contributed to them. I did not just pick issues for the sake of getting my 4/4 pull requests. I wanted each of them to be meaningful. I felt accomplished through my small contributions because each of the organizations I contributed to was not random but had a special meaning to me. I spent years writing grant proposals for NGOs working for a good cause in Asia and the Pacific region. Similarly, I narrowed down my focus on contributing to digital public goods created by NGOs that were taking part in Hacktoberfest

Mastering the fundamentals

Optimal technique is the most crucial aspect of developing strength. It is more important to lift with proper form than ego lift with poor form.

Similarly, learning the basics of any programming language is crucial to get good at it. I made the mistake of not spending enough time mastering the fundamentals when starting. I wanted to dive right into the advanced stuff, ignoring my deficiency in the basics.

Coming into Hacktoberfest, I knew I had to start small and then slowly build my way up instead of picking issues so hard that I set myself up for failure.

Getting comfortable with the uncomfortable

I practiced Muay Thai for two years in different parts of the world Oregon, Bangkok, and Yangon. Although my current focus is more powerlifting and not so much Muay Thai, I learned a lot about getting comfortable with the uncomfortable through practicing both sports.

Yes, mastering that roundhouse kick is going to take months of practice and I am going to get uncomfortable; I mean, whoever grew in their comfort zone anyway?

Hacktoberfest was way out of my comfort zone as a beginner programmer. But I opened that door of uncertainty and discomfort and embraced the challenge. Even though most of the contributions I made were small, I ended up building good relationships with the maintainers and I will keep contributing even after Hacktoberfest. When I informed some of the maintainers about my blogging journey they shared my blogs within their slack channels too!

Falling in love with boredom

Powerlifting is repetitive and often boring. I dont switch up my training every week because guess what getting strong on certain lifts requires performing the same moves over and over again. Yes, it looks boring, and people are often questioning why I am deadlifting so much. Arent you supposed to switch up the training frequently to shock your muscles? No. You dont.

Just like that I can relate to this being very similar to debugging. Which requires hours of sitting down with a problem, analyzing it, often breaking the application further to identify what went wrong. Yes, it gets boring sometimes. But we need to love the process in its entirety to get good at it- through its excitement and its boredom, its highs, and lows. Also, think about it this way, most lasting relationships are couples who have mastered the art of getting bored together, not having fun all the time together.

Similarly, I spent a significant amount of time setting up the ruby on rails project of if-me for Hacktoberfest. It was hard and I wanted to give up in the middle, but every time I wanted to quit there was this invisible force inside me that would kick in and make me go on.

Implementing strategic breaks

One of the best pieces of advice for dealing with a difficult bug in my code was to sleep on it. Sounds counterintuitive, I know. How am I going to sleep over this bug thats bugging my mind? Well, our brains need rest and after working on the computer for hours it is important to integrate strategic breaks for that much-desired aha moment to solve a problem. This strategy worked well for me over the years and for increasing my productivity.

Similarly, powerlifting incorporates strategic rests implemented through its many stages of training for giving our central nervous systems a break to function optimally.

Going forward

There are so many more important lessons I learned through mixed martial arts and powerlifting that it is hard to cover in one blog. In my next blog, I will go over in detail about the final two pull requests and how I plan on continuing my open-source development journey.

Thank you for reading!