Is Playing Chess Exercise?

There’s no argument in whether chess is good mental exercise but is chess actually physical exercise as well?

Recent studies show that playing chess actually burns calories!When I say this to non-chess players they laugh and often times say: “well everything burns calories, even breathing.”

Stanford Professor of Neurology Robert Sapolsky proved that playing chess actually burns a lot of calories, that relative to running a marathon! Thinking is hard work and when players really push themselves to use higher order thinking skills is takes us a lot of energy, and burns calories.