The Say Chess Podcast

Hi!This week I talked with GM Noël Studer. Besides being a grandmaster Noël has specialized himself in helping adult chess players with breaking bad training habits and getting into shape. He writes an excellent newsletter with weekly chess advice. If you decide to sign up you get a free eBook from Noël with training advice: https://nextlevelchess.blog/

It seemed natural for me to invite him to talk about how I get back on track with my training and improve my habits. We talk about common difficulties for many adult improvers. Time, energy, how to deal with the downfall after a rating peak, and common bad habits. Something I of course also struggle with. Noël has also challenged me to do a 4-week training challenge.

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The Training Challenge

From Monday I will do 6 weekly training sessions. Week 1: 30 min. sessionsWeek 2: 45 min. sessionsWeek 3: 60 min. sessionsWeek 4: 60 min sessions

My main focus will be calculation training, but I will also have sessions with rapid games/analysis and some strategy or opening work (I have not yet decided). I was advised to schedule the sessions in my calendar, take notes about how the sessions go, and rate them from 1-10 in regard to focus.

Noël has promised to check in on me after 4 weeks for a follow-up podcast, so I better follow his directions!

If you want to join the challenge feel free to do so. You can adjust the number of days and sessions length to fit into your life situation. Leave a comment if you are doing it! The main idea is to get some high quality training sessions vs many low quality sessions.

Things That Came Up..

At the beginning of the year, Noëls course inspired me to set up a special corner for my chess training. We talked about how I need to work on keeping distractions away since it is something that I have been struggling with when I sit down at my chess study corner.

We also talked about how to find time for chess training when you are a busy adult with (4) kids. Noël mentioned the idea of tracking your time for a week to find out what you actually spend time on and what you want to cut away. I actually did this experiment some years ago, so if you are interested you can find the video here:

I hope you will find the podcast interesting and useful, maybe you can relate to some of my problems too.

/Martin