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“You can’t separate body from mind,” chess legend Bobby Fischer once told biographer Frank Brady. “Your chess deteriorates as your body does,” he added.
In her new book, “The Right Call: What Sports Teach Us About Work and Life,” Sally Jenkins uses chess to remind desk-bound professionals of the essential link between cognitive performance (including decision making) and physical conditioning.
World-class chess players sit for very long periods of time, as do professionals in many settings. Still, because of the extraordinary cognitive and emotional demands of the game, chess stars’ bodies are severely taxed.
According to Jenkins, reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen once told The Wall Street Journal, “Games are lost and won in the final hours due to mistakes caused by fatigue.” Heart rates can triple in the heat of competition and, Jenkins writes, “top chess players can lose ten pounds or more in tournament play with a metabolic burn rate approaching 6,000 calories a day.” All while sitting still over a chess board. It’s no wonder that Carlsen, as sculpted as many pro athletes, follows a strict conditioning regimen at Norway’s Olympic Training Center.
Physical fitness is essential for achieving and sustaining mental acuity and for limiting and otherwise channelling fatigue in all desk-bound professions. Making unfit decisions when you or your people are fatigued and stressed - or just not sharp enough - can create even bigger problems down the road.
Are we desk-set warriors getting enough exercise to ensure more effective thinking and performance? Generally, no. I’d only give myself a B/B- in this regard. Still, there is no question that our mental faculties (including mental health) are inextricably linked to our physical hygiene.
Image courtesy of Hands on Health Clinic