I remember vividly the first time I attended my first ever bootcamp. It was an outdoor group fitness bootcamp in a beautiful serene park on a hot and still summers day (although not as hot as recent heatwaves).
I am not quite sure what I was expecting, but 20 minutes into the 1 hour session and my lungs were in my throat and my heart rate had taken up outerspace exploration! I was breathing so hard, I thought I’d collapse there and then and be in need of a hospital! But you know something? I was enjoying it!
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As the team of fitness instructors mercilessly took a group of 20–30 of us through our paces, I joked with them about being real life drill sergeants, not disimilar to the ones found in military bootcamps — where of course, such groups derive their name!
Rising to the challenge, I returned week after week and as I pushed myself under the bark of our friendly instructors, something amazing happened! I was able to run faster for longer, and push the physical capabilities of my body to extremes it had never seen before. Sure every fibre of newly torn muscle screamed expletives at me, but I was being sharpened into a leaner, stronger, faster, fitter and ever more dynamic version of myself — and I loved it. My gait was taller, my movements more agile, effortless and precise and my mind also sharper!
Meeting new people of similar and varying fitness levels and from all walks of life, and rising to those challenges together, I learnt so much. I learnt from others and their personal stories. We would often go to brunch afterward and bond over the fitness challenges and targets we’d achieved together that day, other lifestyle changes we were adapting, and witnessing our growth in personal resilience. Once you’ve met and achieved one challenge you become pretty keen to take on many more.
It was fun to tackle circuit challenges of the bootcamp and see what I could do with practice, learn new exercises I’d never heard of before and I’m sure my legs wish I never did — such as seemingly endless, team relay laps of a fast paced frog-crawl — and watch as I became a better version of myself for it.
Tech bootcamps are very similar in that respect. Much like the weekly 1 hour jam-packed fitness bootcamps. You learn so much in a short space of time and it can get pretty intense, especially if like me you are also working full time and life events continue to happen regardless.
However, you are exposed to so much and your mind and capabilities are sharpened because of it. You pass your first professional tech certification, just as I have achieved my AZ-900 Microsoft Fundamentals. You become amazed by how much new knowledge you have retained in such a short space of time. Now you can understand and explain several tech processes which were previously a mystery. Such as how to develop, deploy and implement a variety of Azure storage, security and compute solutions, and identify which solution is appropriate and when. How to monitor, troubleshoot and optimise cloud solutions and which Azure tools are suitable for different scenarios. How to connect to and consume both Azure and third party services. Knowledge of Azure key concepts, architecture, management and governance, and Azures almost limitless capabilities and services. You become enthused, sharpened and primed for the next challenge! Which in my case will be AZ-204 Microsoft Developer Associate and then programming language Python!
You’ll meet and network with some pretty amazing people who will help shape and invigorate your journey. You’ll be able to envision a life, community and version of you never conceived before, all while shaping and honing it. A more agile, laser-focused you with increased capabilities, technical know-how and the thirst and capacity to learn and do more — continuously improving, while rising to one challenge after the next and enjoying every step of the way!
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