I was winning then I got careless during one move and lost my queen!
I was looking at a couple candidate moves, but then that blond walked by...
Do any of these thoughts sound familiar? Many players, even masters I'm sure have a moment or two during games where they're not fully concentrating on the position at hand. Recently, I have been doing some personal research into concentration and learning and how it relates to chess training. I've discovered a few interesting applications that I will use in my chess training and games and I'd like to share them with you.
Concentration, like tactics, openings, and endgames, can be trained and should be (unless it is not a weakness for you). Mainly, this involves being fully engaged at the moment of your training. I recently read a book called The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr (a sports psychologists who works with high-level athletes as well as corporate executives and other high-performance individuals). In his book, he talks about time management being secondary to energy management in terms of reaching our potential. Basically, if you do not manage your energy (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual) your time management skills will not help you achieve your potential in any field, be that basketball or in our case chess.
How did this apply to my purpose? I realized that I could get more from a focused 30 minutes of training (e.g. tactics) than from an hour if I was not fully engaged during that full hour. So I have broken down my daily training into modules where I know I can fully concentrate.
Ultimately, by being focused during your training periods, you train yourself to think this way during your games. For example, every day I do sets of 5 tactical problems on the excellent program CT-ART 3.0. Each session takes about 15-20 minutes. So if I have extra time in the day, I may do 2 sessions. One day, I had some extra time, so I decided to do 20 problems at once. Now when I do these problems, I calculate the solution in my head, then I write down all of the variations as well as the time spent, so this is not just moving pieces and looking for the right answer. With that explaination, you can see that doing 20 problems at once would be time intensive. I noticed that the second half of my training problems, I had many errors, and I did not write out full variations to the end, in many cases, just putting evaluation symbols such as (+-) or (+/-) after just a couple moves. I hope you can see how this laziness in effort can spill over into your tournament games.
Of course, training for several hours at a time is good, but my advice is to be aware of your energy levels--since our tournament games will sometimes be several hours long. When you sense that your mind is wandering, stand up and walk around the room, perhaps get a drink of water or tea, and take a few deep breaths before resuming your training. This advice goes for your games as well. By doing this, you will keep your mental energy at a steady level throughout your training or match.
This does not refer to getting every move or problem perfect, because that would be quite a feat! Instead, this is referring to your mental effort during your training and games. Just like a golfer who's poor swing practiced over and over will only learn to repeat their bad habits, a chess player who casually plays much blitz (I have fallen victim to this trap) or reads through chess theory without trying to understand the moves will develop bad habits during their games.
How does one get the full benefit from training (perfect practice)? I think it is first defining what your commitment will be to your specific training. Because we read chess books for both enjoyment and improvement, I think you must decide whether your are training or just enjoying solving problems. When you commit to solving some problems--in my case at least 5 a day--then during that time you must solve the problems as if you are playing in the World Championship. It is important to try to reduce distractions as you would during a game (e.g. close the door to your study room or turn off the television).
By doing this, you are training your mind to concentrate at specific times. Of course, there are times when you want to read through a game or do a Composed Problem for fun. In these cases, by all means, enjoy and don't worry as much about my advice. The point is that in order to concentrate during your most important games, you have to develop the habit of concentration at home. By mentally saying to yourself, "Okay, now I am training," you train yourself to be able to focus on demand, which is what Perfect Practice is meant to train.
Finally, in our discussion of concentration, I would like to talk about the use of rituals. Rituals do several things for us in our lives. They signal a transition. For example, the ritual of high school or college graduation is a signal of transition from childhood to adulthood. Another example is marriage as a ritual signally a transition of life as a single person to sharing a life with a spouse. A more everyday ritual is the punching out on a time card--a transition from the responsibility of the work day to the responsibility of home life.
Secondly, rituals make certain actions effortless. Let's use the example of logging onto your e-mail. Turning on the program and typing in your password have become a ritual of sorts. Most of the readers probably don't think consciously of doing it at all. If we had to, it would waste a lot of time and energy.
In chess, if we can create rituals to signal the transition from not playing to playing as well as making this process effortless and automatic, it would be very beneficial in our efforts to being fully engaged and focused during our games.
I first noticed this several years ago when watching International Master Calvin Blocker at a tournament in Cleveland, OH. At the beginning of a game, he stood at his chair and with a quick and deliberate move, sat and pulled his chair in to be seated at the board. Those who have seen IM Blocker in action knows that he is fully engaged when he plays, as anyone will find out if they make any noise in the playing hall. Over the next few tournaments I saw him, I watched carefully as he started his games, and each time, he went through the exact same motions. Did he plan this? I don't know, but whether deliberate or not, it is a ritual he uses when he plays games which helps to put him in the right mindset.
What makes up a ritual? Anything really that you do consistently to prepare yourself to play. For example, I have started taking 5 deep breaths before each of my training sessions and games. During these breaths, I remind myself to focus during each move and to play Real Chess on every move--Real Chess is a concept I learned from Dan Heisman (for more info, check out www.danheisman.com). After the breathing, I shake my hands and legs a little to loosen up and then proceed to play. I've only developed this recently, so the results are inconclusive, but I feel a little more focused during my games and in training when I do this.
In closing, I want to emphasize the point of this article very simply. How you train is how you will play. Habits such as distractibility and lazy calculation or playing fast moves carry over into your play. Habits such as deep calculation, clear visualization of board positions, and calmness during complicated positions are habits that can carry over as well if they are practiced during your study and training sessions.
Here's a quick list for those wanting to apply some of this to your training:
1. Be aware of your energy levels. Take breaks during your training when you notice you are getting mental or physically tired.
2. Keep a journal of your training and your concentration. Note outside forces such as stress at work and how it affects your ability to study effectively.
3. Be honest with yourself when you want to train. Do you practice 'perfectly' or do you just go through the motions? Assess your situation and adapt your mindset.
4. Set goals for your training. This will help you focus when you do get distracted.
5. Create pre-game rituals if you don't have any. Remind yourself when you do this ritual that after it is finished you will be focused for your training or your game.
Good luck in your training and your chess improvement!
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