What Elite Chess Players Can Teach Us About Mental Stamina (and What Actually Supports It)

Anyone who's sat through a five-hour classical chess game — playing or watching — knows that chess is not the sedentary activity it looks like from the outside. Studies on tournament players have recorded heart rates and calorie burn rivalling light physical exercise, almost entirely driven by sustained mental exertion. By the fourth hour of a tight middlegame, players aren't just thinking harder — they're running their brain's energy systems at near-constant load, for hours at a stretch.

That raises an interesting question: what actually supports that kind of extended cognitive performance, beyond just "getting enough sleep" and "staying hydrated"?

The Biology of Running Out of Steam

Mental fatigue, much like physical fatigue, isn't just a vague feeling — it has a real metabolic basis. Your brain is an extremely energy-hungry organ, and sustained concentration draws heavily on your body's ability to keep converting fuel into usable cellular energy. When that process slows down — through dehydration, poor sleep, or simply hours of sustained cognitive load — the result is the familiar fog that makes move 40 feel a lot harder than move 4.

This is where a coenzyme called NAD+ (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) comes into the conversation. NAD+ is present in every cell in your body and plays a central role in exactly this process: converting food into usable cellular energy. It's part of why NAD+ has become a point of interest not just in anti-ageing circles, but among people curious about sustained energy and mental performance more broadly — chess players included, at least anecdotally.

What the Evidence Actually Says (and Doesn't)

It's worth being precise here, because wellness marketing often isn't. Preclinical and animal research on NAD+ and cellular energy metabolism is genuinely promising. Human clinical evidence — particularly around specific outcomes like sustained cognitive performance over long periods — is still developing, and nowhere near as conclusive as some marketing suggests. Nobody should walk away from this assuming NAD+ is a proven performance hack for chess, or anything else.

What can be said more confidently is this: the basic building blocks of sustained mental performance — hydration, core nutrients, adequate rest — have a much stronger evidence base than any single "boost" ingredient, however promising the early research on it looks.

A More Honest Approach to the Topic

This is exactly the kind of nuance that a properly run wellness provider should be upfront about, rather than overselling. Origin of Wellness, a nurse-led IV therapy clinic based in South Perth, Australia, takes this evidence-informed approach specifically with NAD+ — discussing what's known, what's still being researched, and whether it's a sensible fit for an individual client's goals, rather than presenting it as a guaranteed performance enhancer. You can read more about their approach to NAD+ at origin of wellness.

Back to the Board

None of this means chess players — or anyone doing sustained mental work — should be chasing the latest IV therapy trend as a shortcut. The fundamentals still do most of the heavy lifting: sleep, hydration, consistent nutrition, and pacing yourself through a long game rather than burning out by round three.

But it's a useful reminder that the fog you feel deep into a long game isn't just "being tired" in some abstract sense — there's real biology behind it. And whatever you choose to support that biology with, the same rule applies as it does at the board: know what you're actually working with before you commit to it.