Mongolia's Super Brain on Improving Mental Skills

tableThe battle of brains is waged every day among mental athletes. The fast-paced head to head challenges they're forced to do to demonstrate their ability would have even the most relaxed spectator on the edge.

Against the world's best mental athletes, Mongolian mental athletes have been going strong, achieving incredible feats in mental tournaments. They're now a fixture at international memory competitions.

19-year-old E.Enkhmunkh is one of the most talented mental athletes of Mongolia.

He may be young but he is an international grandmaster of memory who won the World Junior Memory Championship and Junior Indian Open Champion in 2014. He was banned from casinos after becoming the ultimate winner of China's popular television show "Super Brain", also known as "The Brain", last year. Now, he's a freshman at the Business School of the National University of Mongolia.

E.Enkhmunkh gave an extensive interview about mental sports and his motivation to become a mental athlete.

When did you become interested in mental sports?I started training in mental sports in 2013. Before that, I attended a lecture by Kh.Khatanbaatar, an international master of memory, international second-rank judge and the president of the Intellectual Academy of Mongolia.

He shared how he uses his memory skills in his daily life. We have to use our mental skills every day of our lives, starting from memorizing phone numbers and understanding lessons in a simple way.

He showed that our brains can do so much more than that. Kh.

Khatanbaatar inspired me to keep challenging my mental skills so I joined the Intellectual Academy.There were tons of things I didn't know and couldn't do when I started training in mental sports.

For example, I had to memorize 52 cards in a deck under five minutes, but I couldn't. Even if I thought that I had memorized it, I couldn't remember some of them.

Because of that, I thought I was no good. Numerous times, I wanted to give up because I thought it was impossible to memorize so many digits.

But thanks to encouragement from international masters of memory N.Baasandorj and Kh.

Khatanbaatar, I didn't give up.hr The human mind has no boundarieshr There are different types of mental sports.

Which one did you start doing first?The human mind has no boundaries. Because of that, there are many types of mental sports, including mental calculation, speed readings, and Rubik Cube deciphering.

I challenged my memory skills first. The key method for...