It should be hard
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[00:00:00] Welcome back to Next Level Chess Podcast. I'm Grandmaster Noel Studer, and today I wanna talk about something so important. It will be a quick episode, but it is really an important message, which is: real growth happens through discomfort.

Because I keep getting the same question from Real Chess Training students. So they get these six positions, 45 minutes, and I promote it as something really hard. And they are basically saying something along the lines of, "Hey, these six positions in 45 minutes really push me. Can I adjust it just a little bit to make it easier?"

Some are saying, "Can I just spend a little bit more time on them?" Some are saying, "Can I do it in two blocks?" Others are saying, "Can you please make a [00:01:00] little bit easier puzzles," whatever it is. And my answer is, and always will be, no. The difficulty is the whole point of Real Chess Training.

And we're living in a world of comfort where this message is so important because we've confused comfort with success and discomfort with failure.

The message is everywhere if you think about it, especially in tech. If something is hard, optimize it or delete it. And that's nonsense. Growth lives in discomfort. As long as you're not drowning in something that you have no chance of understanding, the struggle is the real signal that you're doing the right thing.

And some of the best feedback I get for Real Chess Training are students that are telling me, "I'm struggling, but this is so useful."

I [00:02:00] often get an email saying like something like, "Hey, you're kicking my ass every week, but I'm looking forward to it." That's the right spirit. That's the intention of Real Chess Training. And if you feel that urge to make it easier, that's okay. That's human. But it is just an urge to escape the discomfort and to try to make what is uncomfortable a little bit more comfortable. And that's the same urge that keeps so many players stuck.

So here is what I recommend, and this goes out for Real Chess Training students or if you're doing anything else in chess that is hard. Solving difficult positions, whatever material you use, do it this way. Don't fight discomfort. Commit to solving this resource, for example, Real Chess Training, properly for a fixed period.

So say, "Okay, I give this three months. I do it every week, and then I'll [00:03:00] see how it works." Don't try to soften. And then after these three months, look at your chess. Compare the different tests that you did. For most, the improvement will be obvious over time. You will probably still not do extremely well on these tests, but hopefully you will do better. You will not get all the positions correct, but your thought process will be better.

And that's how improvement works. It's not like we resolve everything and our chess is beautiful and nothing ever feels difficult anymore. But it's just we are a little bit better when it gets difficult. So when this is the case, then double down. You know that this way of solving helps you, so do more of it. Do it consistently.

And if you feel like, well, this is not hard anymore, I get six out of six every single week. I don't even need the 45 minutes. Then you've probably outgrown Real Chess Training. [00:04:00] Move on to something harder.

And let me just clarify shortly what would mean that Real Chess Training is too hard for you, right? So there is this concept of training just a little bit above your current capabilities. That's really what is stretching you. That is really what is helping you. And for that reason, Real Chess Training has a recommended rating range.

It is 1500 to 2000 on both chess.com Rapid and FIDE. And on Lichess, that would be roughly 1700 to 2200 Rapid.

So if you are way lower rated than that, the problem is it's not only going to be hard, but very likely you're not even close to getting the solution. And when I talk about the solution in the video, right, that's one of the biggest helps in Real Chess Training. You're not just reading solution, you're actually getting me to [00:05:00] talk about how I want you to think about this, what would be decent moves.

When you're watching this, you're so far away from the solution that probably you're also not getting what I talk about in the video. So if you're outside of the rating range and after watching the video, you're still like, "Huh? What's going on? I don't get it," then this might be too hard. This is not in a reasonable distance, but that's why exactly I have a rating range.

But if you're struggling, if it's really difficult, and if you're even getting five positions wrong, but then you're watching the video and you're like, "Oh, yeah, no, that makes sense. I feel like I can do that a little bit better next time," then this is really useful. And obviously, you will not sit down next time and you will have everything correct.

That's not the idea. That's not how improvement works. If you're, let's say, at a lower rating range of this, if you're 1,500 on Chess.com Rapid, you can do this for a year and [00:06:00] hopefully you will win a lot of rating points. But you still will struggle because the point is, the goal is that Real Chess Training is even not super easy for somebody 2,000.

Because it should still stretch them. And as you will realize as a student, most positions I pick have like these, okay, this would be fine, this would be even better, and this would be best. So don't expect yourself in every position to see what's best, but just think, "Okay, did I manage to find something that's decent? Okay, that's fine for my level."

So it is also that expectation that I believe some students have of like, "Okay, if I solve this, I wanna get everything right," or, "I wanna get close to get everything right." Well, then you're in the wrong place. The whole point is that you're not going to have that, and that's where the learning happens.

And that will be like this over months. It's so important to get into this with the right kind of mindset, to not expect that [00:07:00] everything is going to go to plan, and to just expect that difficulty. And that difficulty will not go away. It will slowly feel a little bit less difficult because you're getting used to it.

That's all there is. And the huge benefit is that once you're doing this hard training, you will then go into your games and you will feel like, "Okay, I'm used to doing hard stuff," so hopefully the game feels a little bit easier even than Real Chess Training. That's really the benefit of this.

Enough of this. Go do the hard thing. Don't try and make it any, it easier. You got this.

Hey, guys, just two quick things before you take off. If you enjoyed this episode and want more structured chess improvement tips from myself, check out my newsletter at nextlevelchess.com/newsletter. It's totally free. It will always remain free, and it goes out every single Friday [00:08:00] with the best, latest chess improvement tips that I have.

Most of the podcast episodes that I record are based on a previous newsletter. So getting the newsletter, you'll get the advice earlier, and you'll get it directly into your inbox every single Friday. It's totally free, as I mentioned, and you can unsubscribe any time. So go to nextlevelchess.com/newsletter to sign up.

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That's super helpful. Podcast growth is really just working through mouth by mouth recommendations. So thank you, thank you so much for listening, and thank you for spreading the word about the Next Level Chess Podcast. Now, that's all from me. Thank you for listening, and see you next time