My fellow ADHDers understand how obsessions will POUNCE on you from NOWHERE and then you CANNOT SHAKE THEM even though you have a CLASS to teach today and also you're supposed to be REFEREEING A CHILDREN'S BASKETBALL GAME this evening but all your brain wants to do is OBSESS OVER THE OBSESSION (which is not PORTABLE and also not BASKETBALL).
Friends, my brain has learned what chess boxing is.
My brain learned this yesterday, when I read the first couple pages of Stephen Davies's YA novel CHESSBOXER just to see what was up:
Goodreads: Chessboxer, by Stephen Davies
I read it in one sitting. (Slow day in the library.) And then I went to the gym and watched a chessboxing match on YouTube while also nailing a PR on the elliptical. Yes, I think those two things were related.
YouTube: If you're wondering, this is the match I watched while at the gym
Chessboxer (the novel) I liked for its pacing and because I found it relatable, which always feels like an odd thing for my 40+yo self to say when I'm reviewing YA lit. The plot involves a young chess prodigy prone to self-destruction after the death of her father, who finds a way to channel her grief into chess boxing. I relate because I too found a way through grief via maximum exertion - physical and mental. (I often refer to the elliptical as "running from my problems" and the weight room as "picking my problems up and putting them down repeatedly").
This is all very human, by the way. There's a mounting body of evidence that physical exertion helps reset the brain's stress cycle, which still operates on a Neanderthal level. To our survival brains (the same bit responsible for PTSD), stress levels mean an immediate physical threat, like a lion stalking us on the savannah. Survival brain only knows two ways to deal with lionstalking: fight or flight. Resistance exercise (fight) or aerobic exercise (flight), followed by a nice round of eating a meal, relaxing at home, or hanging with loved ones, convince our survival brains that we successfully either kicked the lion's ass or outran it, and now we are safe and can relax.
Giving our brains an outlet from the stress cycle especially matters in grief, because A LOT of neurons get remapped while we're grieving. Our brains have to figure out how to navigate a world where someone essential to our being is Just Gone. They do this by *literally* remapping themselves around the Impossible Absence That Cannot Possibly Be Here But It Is. Exercise provides the oxygen, blood flow, and endorphins brains need to do that well.
The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss, Mary-Frances O'Connor
Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, Mary and Amelia Nagoski
So I *really* understood where Davies is going in Chessboxer. I also really wanted to see chess boxing in action. Because grief aside, I am and always have been a proponent of maximum exertion - physical and mental.
Before discovering chessboxing, my all-time favorite sport was biathlon. I never competed, but I grew up in the woods; combining cross-country skiing and target shooting was just a family pastime. Biathlon and chessboxing both alternate physical demands with mental ones. All-out body effort, total concentration, repeat.
Fam, I LOVED watching chess boxing.
I love how the crowd gets every bit as excited about the chess as it does about the boxing. I love how much DRAMA there is in both the chess and the boxing. I love how it made me excited about chess for the first time since I was five.
I love how each round influences the other. If you know you're about to be mated in three moves, you're going to come out like a demon to try to win by KO or at least make your opponent hurt enough to forget what those three moves need to be. If you get clocked hard enough, you're going to have trouble focusing on the board. And so on. The longer it goes, the wilder it gets.
It's fast. It's intense. And (I learned this morning) it can in fact be watched 90 seconds at a time if you're too obsessed not to do that while getting ready for work.
I have no plans to learn to chess box. I am too arthritic to enjoy the boxing end of it. I would not be opposed to joining a league for "round the house chess," however (a variation invented by Alan Turing in which one plays a piece, then takes a lap; one's opponent has to finish their turn before one returns). And I am interested in learning more about boxing.
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