Yet another reason I need to play in more tournaments (or at least more tournaments not adjacent to Reading Terminal Market):
I guess we are back to relearning what was known 40 years ago and more about the physical effects of playing chess on the human body. This is something well known to older players who are now discovering that you can do all of this exercising and dieting when you are young, but find it more difficult to do as aging bodies do not react the same way while playing, training, or in recovery. Younger players handle the physical effects of stress when they are fit. An older body, even when fit, struggles to overcome that same stress. Recovery times are longer, and never long enough, for the older player. I would imagine if you asked Kasparov and Kramnik about these issues, they would nod knowingly. They were taught this when they were kids.
In many ways age is just a mental construct. The physical decline can be stemmed, but, or course, not stopped. Take yur Geritol lads and lassies…
The article isn’t about age, it’s about fitness (and diet in particular). I read it to my wife, who was fascinated. What had drawn my attention was the subtitle, “How to lose weight while barely moving.” I had wondered about that for years. I’m so sedentary, particularly since both my job and my hobby (chess) involve sitting down, how come I’m not fat? (No, I’m not Mr. Fitness either.) So maybe there’s an explanation.