The Chess Grandmaster's Extreme Workout

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2019

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chess grandmasters need incredible amounts of brain power, but also extreme physical endurance. Major tournaments can run for six hours a day, 10 to 12 days in a row. Players might burn up to 6,000 calories and lose two pounds a day during these grueling matches. To prepare, today's chess world champions endure physical training that would tire out any pro athlete: hours a day of running, swimming or playing tennis while maintaining a strict diet. ESPN's Aishwarya Kumar joins Mina Kimes to break down how top chess players meld mind and body training in more sophisticated and extreme ways, all to best their fierce rivals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	So at 7.30 a.m., Fabiana Coruana heads out for a run.
0:08.4	He's about around five miles with his training partner, Christian Chirilla.
0:12.4	They jog up and down the hills.
0:14.4	His legs look so toned.
0:15.8	You might think that he's a soccer player.
0:18.2	And then he's going to have an hour of tennis later on, and then basketball,
0:22.1	and then he's going to jump into the pool for an hour of swimming.
0:25.8	He's getting in shape.
0:28.1	People would be surprised to hear this because Fabiano isn't a football player or a runner.
0:34.5	He's a chess grandmaster.
0:42.3	The game of chess is incredibly taxing on the brain, but it's also harder on the body than you'd ever guess.
0:46.3	Today, inside the physically grueling world of elite chess,
0:51.3	where becoming king is much tougher than it looks.
0:56.0	I'm Mina Kimes.
0:57.3	It's Wednesday, December 18th.
0:59.8	This is ESPN Daily, presented by Indy.
1:08.4	Isha, how did you get on the chess beat in the first place?
1:13.7	So I get really interested in these really niche sports that people are super invested in.
1:20.9	Ashwarya Kumar is an international features writer for ESPN.
1:24.7	Like if you go on Twitch, millions of people are watching these chess tournaments that
1:28.4	you wouldn't even like know where that's happening. It might be like in Iceland or Finland.
1:34.3	And so I had this curiosity. So I was thinking, so Bobby Fisher was such a huge part of chess in the US.
	...

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