Agreed completely with finding some kind of stress relief outside of the coding world. My martial arts training leans more towards the mental than the physical though. I've found that the need to focus on your body and what you're doing with it works wonders when it comes to calming the mind, and that (for myself) the faster-paced martial arts don't help me as much during the day.

I've practiced Kyudo for just over 10 years (although I've been on a hiatus from my training since January) and the need to be present in the form helps quite a bit with leaving the stress behind. About half of our dojo is in IT and each one of us has come in with stories about how the mental discipline that we learn has kept us from going off on someone after a particularly frustrating day.

I tried Aikido about five years ago, kept at it for about a year, but never got good enough at forward rolls and kept hurting my neck when I tried. I enjoyed the discipline, and loved the weapons work, but I had to give it up when the injuries were interfering with my Kyudo (it's hard to stand sideways to the target and shoot looking over your shoulder when you can't turn your head more than 45 degrees to the left 🙁 ).

I've since started Tai Chi and love it. We do learn some of the practical uses for the forms we're learning, and have been learning weapons forms alongside the weaponless form, and my class is just starting to work on push hands. I find it an extremely satisfying energy expenditure (and it's done very good things for my health), but again, the mental discipline has helped me in my corporate life far beyond the physical work (it's much harder to step away from your desk for five minutes to beat on something than it is to step away for five minutes to meditate until you've calmed down from whatever has pissed you off.)