The first book I remember reading that really explained this idea well was a chess book I picked out during my junior year of college. This book (whose author and title I do not remember) went into great detail about Bobby Fisher's training routine. At the time, I (like I imagine is the case for many) considered chess as the ultimate contest of minds. The body's role in chess was purely administrative – outside of moving the pieces, hitting the clock, and farting strategically to break an opponent's concentration, it was almost entirely unrelated to playing the game well.
Well, eh hem, said Mr. Fisher, the great American chess champion. For the grandmaster, the demands of the body limited the mind. He felt that to sit at a table and focus on an eight by eight square for six uninterrupted hours required a body in top condition. Or to put it another way, a body in less than top condition risked lapses in concentration stemming from a host of physical distractions – a headache, a sore shoulder, a tight muscle. Any of these distractions might prove decisive during intense games. Therefore, Fisher prepared for his matches by training his body with the same intensity he brought to his mental preparation. If I recall correctly, his physical training included a careful diet and a couple of hours in the swimming pool each day.
I have no idea if this approach made the difference when Fisher sat at the chessboard and competed at the highest level of the game. It is entirely plausible that this effort was trivial and that his ascent to the top of his profession was inevitable due to his superior mental skills. He would not be the first highly successful person to misattribute his success to an irrelevant but controllable factor.
But on the other hand, his logic is sound and the results speak for themselves. And who would I be to disagree with the logic of a chess grandmaster! If anything, what his story tells me is that although strength-based approaches to training are preferable, weaknesses left unattended will eventually limit potential.
The story about the grandmaster's approach to maintaining superior physical fitness made a major impression on me. Though I vaguely understood the importance of emphasizing strengths at the time, it was not until this introduction to Fisher's methods that I understood when to switch my focus toward building up a weakness. It left me with something resembling perhaps my earliest attempt at a rule of thumb:
Utilize strengths until I hit a plateau, and then build a weakness until upward progress resumes.I’ll have some more to add in an upcoming post about the ways I apply this rule of thumb today.
Thanks for reading.
Tim
Footnotes / you can’t win if you don’t play, but…well…
1. Director’s cut: bad analogy edition…
I cooked up some good analogies for the opener that didn’t quite make the final cut. Here’s one: is it better to try and win the lottery… OR… to clutch onto every dollar you ever come in contact with?
Maybe this one fits better: should you try to run as fast as you can and maybe fall down once or twice… OR… just stand completely still, secure in the knowledge that you’ll never fall down?
The closest one to getting in was this one: what is the best way to learn how to ride a bike? I suppose one way is to simply avoid falling – you could pedal from here to anywhere that way. But that doesn’t quite feel right, either – these days, it always seems like I do better when I just focus on pedaling and maybe the best way to learn is to do it this way right from the start.
