Months ago, a team of researchers from the athletic apparel company ASICS set out to do a little science experiment. The question they sought to answer was: What's the connection between people's athletic performance and their performance in mind sports?

ASICS dispatched a team of personal trainers to go out in the field and work with a wide range of mind sports competitors, ranging from chess to mahjongg to even street fighting. They helped these individuals ramp up their physical activity, examined their process over time, and ultimately tried to figure out: Would exercising more help them improve their results over the board?

A handful of Scrabblers took part in this study. This week, I sat down with four of them - Sandy Nang, Lindsay Shin, Austin Shin, and Deborah Komatsu - to chat about how it went. Below is our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity.

EVANS: Let's start from the beginning. I think it was almost a year ago now when ASICS first contacted us at the CoCo and said they were looking for players to participate in a study about mind games and their link to physical fitness. What made you all interested in that topic? What made you want to do this study in the first place?

SANDY: I wanted to work with a personal trainer. During COVID, a lot of the gyms were closed, so unless you hired a private trainer to come to your house, you weren't going to get any exercise.

LINDSAY: We were in a similar situation. [Austin and I] were avid weightlifters before the pandemic, but then for two and a half years, we did not do anything. We stayed away from gyms, we had babies, and we did other things.

One of the things that they wanted was people who were essentially sedentary. So we had to make a case for ourselves and say, look, we did use to weightlift, but we haven't done anything for two-plus years, so we promise, we're fresh meat, and we do want to do this, and we'll abide by your rules. So that was our motivation - it was just to get back into it. How many chances do you get to get a personal trainer, right? It gives you some extra accountability, for sure.

SANDY: Yeah. I was part of Orangetheory Fitness for a year or so, right before COVID happened. So I had to explain to them, yeah, I went there 3-5 times a week, but I haven't done anything during COVID.

EVANS: So, they were looking for information on the link between mind sports and physical fitness. What was your hypothesis about that going in? Based on your own life experiences, did you feel like there was a connection there? What were you expecting would happen?

AUSTIN: Well, before I started going to the gym, which was back in my mid-twenties, I used to be much more tired when I would go to long Scrabble tournaments. Especially in England, where they sometimes play 11 games in a day, things like that. Like, at the end of the day, I would be really tired. But then after I started going to the gym, I would actually feel like I could still keep going, even beyond that.

So, going into the study, I kind of knew that this was what the outcome would be. I was like, I think this is what they're aiming toward here. They just want to actually prove it.

LINDSAY: At first, they asked us for our rankings. I think they were looking for our rankings both before and after the six-month trial period. So a lot of my responses were like, look, I'm ranked #207, but that's because it's COVID, and our rankings are all old and outdated, and everyone's dropping off the list.

So I found it very difficult to say that there was going to be a correlation, right? Maybe in other mind sports - I don't know. But in Scrabble, there's so much reliance on studying. And maybe if I'm exercising so much, I'm too tired to cardbox, or whatever. So I didn't think, personally, that there'd be a correlation.

EVANS: So what was their methodology? I've heard little bits here and there about some of the exercises, but overall, what was it that you guys did?

AUSTIN: So I think what they wanted to do was, for the whole duration, they wanted to increase the amount of cardio you did over time, so that toward the end, you're basically doing more than 2 hours of cardio per week, and you're slowly going up all the time.

They were mainly focusing on cardio, but it would depend on what people wanted. So if people wanted to just run, they would tell you how best to do that. Or if you're like us and you don't really run at all, and you wanted to do a little something cardio-wise but stay mostly weight-based, then they could cater toward that as well.

LINDSAY: Multiple times they said to us, we are going to meet you where you are. We're not going to force you to run a marathon at the end. We want to make sure this is enjoyable for you personally.

DEBORAH: I did run a 5K at the end.

LINDSAY: That's amazing!

AUSTIN: Yeah, wow. I'm impressed.

LINDSAY: For us, ASICS gave our trainer the simplest exercises. Like, literally, “This is how to do a crunch.” We felt like we could handle more than that, and we told them so. But our trainer, he said no, no.

We did body weight squats. We did a lot of lunges. A lot of foam rolling. You know - get your heart rate up, that sort of thing. No weights whatsoever. Well, maybe a little bit, but...

AUSTIN: A little bit, yeah. But it was definitely different from what we're normally used to.

DEBORAH: From a science point of view, I wish they had been a bit more controlled about the exercises we were doing, so that we could all be in lockstep - you know?

SANDY: Yeah. There was no control. You came, you showed up for that one hour, and then you were on your own to use Runkeeper or whatever you used.

DEBORAH: Well, there was the running thing. You had to run on the treadmill for a certain amount of minutes.

AUSTIN: 12 minutes, yeah.

LINDSAY: They tested us with a 12-minute run and push-ups at the beginning, the middle, and the end, just to see that we were progressing on those two metrics. But also, every week, we were instructed to do 100 minutes worth of cardio - running, walking, etc. And with them being a running company, I can understand that that's more what they were focused on than running with your personal trainer.

SANDY: What I found strange about the study was that they just did exercise. They didn't even link it to food, which I thought was important.

LINDSAY: We asked them that question too! They only changed our exercise. They did not change our nutrition in any way. They wanted everything else to remain constant, or generally untouched, anyway. So it was really just a study of increased exercise and cognitive ability.

DEBORAH: Right, it was just exercise, and it was how the exercise had an effect, possibly, on our game-playing and also on our mental well-being.

LINDSAY: Then they gave us these three cognitive tests before and after. One was like, you had three rings - a big, medium, and small one - and you had to move one from here to here, two pegs over, but only by putting smaller ones on top of larger ones.

DEBORAH: Right! It's called like, the Tokyo Tower or something. It's a common cognition test.

There was another one where, like, you'd see the word RED, and it was written in green, but you had to say RED, even though it was green.

SANDY: No, you had to say GREEN!

LINDSAY: Yeah, I think you had to say GREEN.

DEBORAH: OK, well, whatever. (laughs) That was one of them.

SANDY: The third test, I thought was interesting. You had to follow a certain sequence of moves they gave you, and then you had to do the moves backwards. And the backwards part was what made it really hard.

LINDSAY: That one was very difficult! Yeah.

EVANS: So how were they connecting all of these exercises to your mind sports skills, then? How were they measuring that?

LINDSAY: In the surveys they did, in the beginning and at the end, they asked us, what is your ranking, what is your rating, and so forth. I think that was pretty much it. That, and, they did those three cognitive tests at the beginning and the end. I think that's what they used for their statistics.

AUSTIN: Yeah, at the end, they asked us, what have you competed in over the last 3-4 months? How have you done? Be very specific - what tournament it was, what position you were.

LINDSAY: Right, so we talked about Word Cup. We talked about SPC. But like, if you did well at those tournaments, was it that you did well at those tournaments because you exercised?

AUSTIN: (shrugs) I dunno!

LINDSAY: Yeah, I dunno! Was it that? Or did you study? Or were there just, like, fewer competitors there? It's just hard to say. There are so many variables involved, so it's very difficult.

EVANS: I was looking at the write-up that ASICS published, with the results of the experiment, and they had this big list of different mental attributes that people improved by exercising. They mentioned, like, a 13% increase in alertness, 15% in calmness, 11% in composure, all these stats like this. Did you guys feel that? Were there any specific attributes that you noticed improving when you exercised more?

(awkward silence)

SANDY: No.

(laughter)

EVANS: Appreciate the honesty!

AUSTIN: Yeah, I'm actually wondering how they even worked all of that out. I don't know how they came up with all those things.

LINDSAY: I think we had a survey at the end that asked us, like, on a scale of 1 to 10, how calm are you, or whatever. So, 13%, I guess that means people went from a 6 or a 7 to a 7 or an 8, or what have you.

DEBORAH: I will say, for me, I had a significant increase in my Scrabble rating.

EVANS: OK! Awesome.

DEBORAH: Yeah! I don't know if I just lucked out, or if everyone else was just stinky after coming out of the pandemic, or whatever. But I think I was like 970 or something before, and then I went up to 1100 or something like that. That's a lot.

So yeah, I noticed a difference! I thought I was able to focus better. I've never studied before, and I didn't study after, and the only thing that was different was the exercise. So I'll credit the exercise.

EVANS: OK, one last question for you - I know ASICS made a movie about this experiment once it was over. For those of you who watched the movie, what did you think? What did you take away from it?

AUSTIN: It was very interesting to see it. We didn't really know who else was involved, so it was cool to see that there was a broad array of people from other mind sports that were actually doing all of this too, unbeknownst to us.

LINDSAY: You should definitely watch it! I enjoyed it.

There was this one old guy in England that I loved. He was the most out of shape in the beginning - and to see him struggle, but then to see him come out on the other side in the end, it was nice.