I'll preface this by saying that I am brand loyal to Asics; their shoes got me through my first marathon 5 years ago and since then I've only purchased Asics clothing. The fact that this documentary was produced by Asics was the main reason I watched it so I was prepared for a glorified advert, which is not my issue with the film.

Mind Games sets out to show the correlation between exercise and mental ability which is already a clearly established fact evidenced by countless scientific journals. Filming it for an audience could be a more entertaining and accessible format, but the point is lost because we barely see any improvement in our 4 competitors. One competitor wasn't even able to compete at the end because they contracted Covid-19 making their entire section feel pointless, why not just edit this out?

In the epilogue they show statistics suggesting mental capacity has increased, probably since they couldn't show it in the competitions, but this is also questionable because the results are self reported. The improvement is likely a placebo effect since exercise is great for mental health. If they were able to test mental ability beforehand why couldn't they repeat the test after the 4 months of exercise? And if it is an experiment, 4 people is too small a sample size, and what were the control variables?

Perhaps I'm being too harsh. All of the competitors were really likable people and it was interesting to see their fields of expertise. It's nice to see people exercising on TV who aren't Olympic standards which can be motivational for new comers. Lastly, the film is well produced and has a positive message, people should get more exercise because you will feel better.