How fit do you really need to be to sit still and move pawns around? #TweetOftheDay
Men’s Health, the world’s largest men’s magazine with 35 editions in 59 countries, yesterday published an article giving answers to how fit you really need to be to sit still and move pawns around. (scroll down for the full text)
The Workout Bucket List book featuring a collection of exercises states that you need to be very fit to play chess. “The stress of a chess tournament can have pretty startling effects on the body: Grandmasters like Cristian Chirila can lose as much as 15 pounds during the course of a 10-day tournament – from forgetting to eat, but also just from intense concentration. In one tournament, it was found that a Russian Grandmaster has burned 560 calories in two hours of chess – more than most people burn running five miles.”. The author of the book, Greg Presto, showed how should look the workout for the grandmasters.
“You have to keep focus for five hours at a time. If you lose that focus at any moment, you can blunder something and the game is over.”, explained Romanian grandmaster Christian Chirila.