Achieving Flow State And What It Means For Athletes
When Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali faced each other at Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971, the fight was billed as The Fight of the Century. Frazier was the unbeaten heavyweight champion and Ali had fought his way back to the top after being banned from boxing for more than three years after refusing to be drafted into the Vietnam war.
The occasion was full of stars and was played in 370 closed-circuit locations in the United States. Everyone from Frank Sinatra and the Kennedys to Diana Ross and the astronauts of the Apollo 14 Space Mission were there. In the buildup to the fight, the two athletes traded insults, with the more explosive comments naturally coming from Ali. These poetic and stinging barbs worked up his opponent so much that by the time the day of the fight arrived, Frazier was as concerned with winning the bout as he was in getting revenge. The world was watching and Frazier was determined to win and punish Ali in the process.
The fight went for 15 rounds with Ali winning the first few rounds, with Frazier, bullish on his mission, attacking with big hooks and winning rounds by forcing Ali to stand and fight him, rather than dodge as Ali was accustomed to. Yet, even though Frazier was in the ascendency towards the end, Ali won the 14th round and seemed on pace to win the 15th as well until, to the surprise and shock of thousands of people at the stadium and to the millions watching, Frazier caught Ali with a devastating left hook which put the boastful man on the canvas. Though Frazier was winning on all three cards of the judges, that knockdown was the moment that Ali lost the fight.
Both fighters were badly bruised by the fight. Ali’s face was swollen and his face had to be X-rayed, with Frazier being hospitalized for his wounds. After knocking Ali down, Frazier, basking in his glory, repeatedly asked his down opponent who the champ was. In describing the force of nature that Frazier was during the fight, Gene Kilroy, Ali’s long-term business partner said, “Nobody would have beaten Joe Frazier that night. Joe was in the zone.”
“The zone,” or being “in the zone” is the phrase that’s often used to describe what the late Hungarian-American psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and many scientists and researchers have referred to as being in flow. Or achieving flow-state.
In his book Flow Csikszentmihalyi describes the conditions and characteristics of what it means to be in flow:
“When all a person’s relevant skills are needed to cope with the challenges of a situation, that person’s attention is completely absorbed by the activity. There is no excess psychic energy left over to process any information but what the activity offers. All the attention is concentrated on the relevant stimuli.
“Time seems to stop. You exist in the present, in the instant. The only thing before you is the next move. The turn, the jab, the strike, the wave”
As a result, one of the most universal and distinctive features of optimal experience takes place: people become so involved in what they are doing that the activity becomes spontaneous, almost automatic; they stop being aware of themselves as separate from the actions they are performing.”
Further investigating the research from Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Matthew Hernon of Oxford Brookes University, found in his own study titled A Study Investigating The Experience Of Flow In Sports Participation through his interviews with several athletes that there were a few themes which were consistent with Csikszentmihalyi’s theory.
The athletes said that a characteristic of their time being in the zone was a feeling of absorption in their individual sport. A surfer, for example, felt that they were “one with the sea.” Lewis Hamilton, the Formula One racer, describes it as his mind switching to a different capacity, where “everything shuts off, and your senses are heightened.” When in the zone, Olympic climber Alannah Yip says that she is thinking about “nothing except how I feel on the wall and what the next move is.”
The second theme is that of perception of time. When an athlete is in the zone, time feels distorted to them. They perceive time passing very quickly, so that a half in a 90 minute soccer match can feel like it only lasted a handful of minutes. On the opposing end, when an athlete is struggling, time drags for them. Time becomes torturous and two minutes then feels like an eternity.
The third theme was that of positive emotions towards their sport. It is much easier to attain the flow state when an athlete actively enjoys what they do. The condition necessary for being able to access that absorbed state consistently is a desire to do the activity and an attitude that remains not only positive but optimistic about one’s improvement and ability. This emotion is intrinsic, and doesn’t seem that it can be replicated with external rewards.
Though most of the research about the flow state has been focused on elite athletes, entering the zone is a privilege that is available to not only athletes at all levels, but human beings in general. Sports of course make it easier to enter that state, considering that the task ahead of each individual and the path toward success is often clear, the athlete has an awareness of their ability and has been conditioned through their lives in order to perform well, and they are in a space where positive feedback and instruction is available from coaches and teammates. By being removed from the distractions inherent in everyday life, and through the structure of sports, the state of flow is made more accessible for an athlete. The higher the level, the easier it is for them to consistently reach it.
Reaching the state of flow, getting into the zone, is important for every athlete in their chase for peak performance. When you reach the zone, the outside world is shut off. Thoughts about the past and the future disappear. Your anxieties are gone. Everything calms down. Your breathing slows. Time seems to stop. You exist in the present, in the instant. The only thing before you is the next move. The turn, the jab, the strike, the wave. You’re floating, in air, in space, in time. Your senses are heightened. You hear the rumbling of the car engine as if it’s the beating of your own heart. You feel your feet hitting the ground and the vibrations running through your body. You become one with the water, the car, the bicycle, the moment, and with the world around you. In the zone, you can simply be, rather than trying to do so.
This flow state is not robotic. It’s art. It is the epitome of human creativity. The body is in sync with the mind in a combined effort to achieve a goal. The two parts of the whole, so aligned in accomplishing a task, that information is processed at a superhuman level and relayed to the body which adapts to conquer the new conditions. Joe Frazier did not fight like a robot when he beat Ali. He was more like a heavyweight dancer, a tightly wound body of muscle and rage, sliding across the ring and delivering blows that rippled through his opponent’s body. The match lasted 15 rounds, but for Frazier, it must have passed in the blink of an eye. That night he was in the zone, and like the other athletes who are able to access that state, he knew that nothing and no one could stop him from reaching victory.
