How to make your chess training effective

What is training?

Here the most important thing is to differentiate between studying and training.

Studying is about gaining new knowledge. Acquiring new information. It is mostly a passive form of improvement.

Training is working on your skills and abilities to improve them. It is an active form of improvement. You don’t necessarily learn anything new.

The definitions above might not be dictionary-level, so feel free to improve on them for your personal use if you wish. Also, studying and training can overlap sometimes - that is, a certain activity might have both study and training value. Still, I hope you do get the difference, because it has great practical importance.

Training is the great difference maker

During my coaching career, I have coached more then hundred people individually. In my experience, this is one of the biggest differences between professionals and amateurs: professionals train, amateurs don’t. With few exceptions, amateurs are only willing to study.

Now, don’t get me wrong - I am not saying that studying is not important. Of course it is. But so is training, and lack of training can hold you back big time, or make you get stuck completely.

Have you ever heard people complaining that they have reached their natural ceiling in chess?

In my experience, it just means they have reached the point where they should start training.

Why amateurs don’t train

Well, there are a few reasons for that. Let's see the most common ones.

Training is harder than studying

Training is an active form of improving, not a passive one, so you have to put in a lot of effort from your side. It is not just sitting back and listening to a video, with a beer in hand.

Training is repetitive

There is no escape from that - if you do regular training, you will find it somewhat monotonous. It is like a tennis player or a pianist practising the same thing over and over again.

Training involves unpleasant feedback

It will show you how weak you are in certain areas. Which is actually a good thing, the first step towards improvement - but not everybody likes to face that.

Improvement is harder to measure

Say, if you study a certain opening variation, you can learn the main ideas in a few hours. The result of your study session is immediate and obvious.

But can you notice what you have gained from solving studies for a few hours? You might be wondering whether it had any positive effect at all. You will experience the benefits only on the long run. Meanwhile, it takes some faith to stick to your training.

Chess marketing focuses on study materials

Authors know very well that amateurs don’t like to train, so they tend to produce much more material for studying (especially openings). That can be rather misleading. If you look around at the chess market, it gives you the impression that it is all about studying.

Training can feel very old-fashioned

We have witnessed revolutionary changes in chess: engines, online chess, databases, and the like. Still, training methods haven't changed a lot. Sure, you can solve tactics online, check the solutions with an engine, but the core activity is pretty much the same as it was 50 years ago.

For some people, this seems to be a big turn off. It raises suspicion - surely there is a more modern, improved way to do it?!

What if you are willing to train?

If you are really bitten by the chess improvement bug (and I did not manage to discourage you :) ), it is important that you get into the right mindset.

The first and most important thing: don’t fool yourself. Also, don’t let chess marketers fool you. Effective training is not fun. It must be intense and hard. It will feel more like work, especially at the beginning.

As you keep doing it, you will develop a certain tolerance to training, meaning that you are OK with it. It might become such an ingrained habit that you can actually miss it. Still, it will never become pure joy.

I happen to know a few retired professionals who are still very much into chess. They play a lot, especially blitz. They follow the big tournaments. They talk and write about chess. The only thing they have dropped completely is training. And this is not an accident.

You also need to develop a high tolerance to failures. Effective training should always target your weakest areas, which can be a humbling experience.

In fact, chess has a certain humbling nature in general - that is, puzzle solutions and blunders always look so obvious in retrospect, that they make you feel like an idiot.

Everybody experiences this feeling, regardless of their level. It is something you have to learn to cope with.

For that, you should buy into a growth mindset. You should not see your failures as proofs that you are hopelessly crap. Try to see them as useful clues, showing where you need to improve. And if you stick to hard training, improvement is practically guaranteed.

Why you should go for it

It might sound that I am some kind training fanatic. I am certainly not. In fact, I haven’t done any serious training for years.

I don’t have a particular reason to do it. I am a coach, not an active tournament player. I also have other interests in my life, just like everybody else. (And I also have my fair share of lazyness, just like everybody else. :) )

But I have done hard training a few times in my life, and I can testify that it can be a very, very rewarding experience. And it is not just about the chess-related things - it can help to feel better about yourself. It can give you an improved self-image, a higher level of self-esteem.

Also, the skills and mindset you develop during chess training are immensely useful in other areas of life, like learning languages, playing musical instruments, programming, or whatever.

All right, that is what I wanted to say about training generally. In the next posts, we will talk about the specific training methods - how to do them correctly to get the most out of your training.

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I hope you enjoyed the post. If you are looking for no-nonsense coaching with a professional coach, feel free to send me a private message here or on hogata11@gmail.com, and we can arrange a non-committal video call to discuss your goals and get to know each other.