Mind Games - The Experiment

Watch it, if at all possible, on Prime Video! Then come back here and read all about it from my perspective!

The whole crazy adventure started in March last year, with an email from Etan, the big boss of the Mind Sports Olympiad. He told me, and a lot of other regular MSO competitors, that someone was "producing a documentary about exceptional people which includes the mind sports olympiad and I've recommended you. Might each of you be willing to have a chat with her?"

I said yes, of course, as I always do in this kind of situation. I'd just been thinking it had been ages since anyone asked me to be on TV! But when I'd learned a bit more about the documentary, it was pretty obvious it wasn't going to be my kind of thing.

We are making a feature documentary film where we dive into the ever- expanding world of esports and mind games, witnessing these increasingly popular global events . 

 

Serious players and specialists in their own fields will allow our cameras to follow them in preparation for the biggest tournament of their lives.   But the question is whether they can improve their already amazing game by margins and become even better at what they do. 

 

Funded by a sports company who want to test the ancient proverb (and their own motto), healthy body equals healthy mind, there will be an added layer of preparation for these big competitions. 

By dedicating more time in their diaries to physical exercise & personal training, could this set these competitors apart? 

 

Over our film period we will see how their brain function is affected by more regular physicality.   

 

Behind the film a team of scientists are testing the principal on 100 people around the world and, working this data into our narrative, we’ll finally be able to answer, prove or disprove the ancient principal at the heart of this film.  

Healthy body equals healthy mind, indeed. Exactly the kind of thing I've scoffed at all these years when people like Tony Buzan espoused it. Also, Juvenal didn't even SAY that - he said people should aim to have both, but not that one leads to the other. And also also, it's "principle", not "principal". I laughed.

But I couldn't help thinking it might be fun, and I replied to that effect - perfectly candidly, saying "I'm really not the physical training/exercise type myself - quite apart from being 45 years old with dodgy knees, in fact I'm famous for telling everyone that a junk-food diet is the key to success in mind sports! But on the other hand, I'm quite keen to get back into serious training for memory competitions, and it would be interesting and different to see if a disciplined combined physical and mental training routine could help me catch up with the likes of Andrea (who's already pretty fit and healthy, I think)." And I went on to say that there was no chance at all of me beating him, nor much chance of there being an MSO memory competition that I didn't organise myself. Full disclosure of how unsuitable I was as a subject for the documentary!

So, naturally, they signed me up for the study straight away. And yes, I like making documentaries. Especially when the crew turn out to be as obliging as this one was. I was impressed with them right from the start - they sent me a whole lot of Asics sports gear, and asked me to go into a shop somewhere before filming started to have a 'gait analysis' to determine what kind of running shoes would work best for me. I can't run. Dodgy knees; it's an actual medical condition and not an excuse. But I replied "I'm going to look and feel a complete twit going into a sports shop and asking for a gait analysis, whatever that may be. Do you want to get it on film?" And they did, and it turned out to be one of the best sequences in the finished documentary!

Knowing that the producers had got a handle on my eccentricity right from the start, I was happy to throw myself into whatever they wanted me to do. Some of it worked, some of it didn't, but it was all a bit of a laugh. They did take me to a physio at one point, suspecting the whole dodgy knee thing was all in my head, and he told them it wasn't, so nyah. That bit didn't get into the finished product.

But by then I'd been introduced to my personal trainer, Geoff, and been given my exercise regime! I looked at it and laughed scornfully again [at the regime, not at Geoff; he looks really cool and sporty and impressive], thinking there was no way any of this was going to happen. It was expecting me to walk, several times a week, for gradually increasing lengths of time. In new trainers that felt like I was walking on stilts and liable to fall down at any moment. I was still recovering from a knee injury when we started, and the thought of building up to a 50-minute walk and climactic 5km to finish with seemed very silly.

But the trainers soon started to feel very comfortable, the walking was surprisingly enjoyable, and the 'strength training' exercises too. And like I said in the documentary, I had an app that told me I was getting better at it every time, as well as some good old-fashioned paper printouts on which I could circle every completed session. Before long, what had seemed like something I would simply never do became something I was really enjoying!

So yes, it's true. Ben Pridmore, that denouncer of people who say physical exercise helps you win memory competitions, has changed his mind. I mean, not that it helped me win a memory competition, as such, or improved my mental performance in measurable ways - quite the reverse, actually, since I was so excited by the training regime I couldn't summon up any real enthusiasm for memory stuff - but it unquestionably DID put me in a more positive frame of mind, and in that sense has certainly helped my memory-sports performance going forwards! From now on, it's a nicely balanced physical and mental regime in preparation for tournaments in 2023 and beyond!

Following this post, we'll have a list of "errata" (which I wrote first, because picking holes in things is always the most fun), and "annotations" of interesting points in the documentary, followed by pictures of the very coolest thing I got out of the whole experience, so please stay tuned to this blog in the coming days!