Main Topic: Flow: What it means for runners

What is flow?

According to Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 

• “Flow  corresponds  to  a  state  of  optimal experience and maximal concentration, when people act at the peak of their capacity. It may lead to high levels of  performance,  creativity  and  pleasure.  Encompassing  specificities  of  various  domains,  a  large  variety  of enjoyable human activities share the same flow characteristics.”
• A “fulfilling, absorbing experience of merging action and awareness.”

According to Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi: goals met by challenges and skills to address them with feedback; concentration; reduction in self-consciousness, producing gratification in the activity itself, not its rewards our results

What are the ingredients of flow?

According to Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi emphasizing the development of the autotelic self

• Set goals (and feedback)
• Immersion in the activity–”Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant or to worry about problems”
• Attention to what is happening–”Self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted” 
• Enjoying immediate experience (outcome)–”An activity that is so gratifying that people are willing to do it for its own sake”

(1) balance between perceived challenges and perceived skills,

(2) clear proximal goals,

(3) immediate feedback,

(4) intrinsic motivation,

(5) hyper focus,

(6) temporary loss of reflective self- awareness,

(7) distortion of time-perception,

(8) feeling of control, and

(9) merging  of  action  and  awareness

(10) attentional-involvement 

• The Flow Engine Framework was developed because of the vagueness of the topic. Here is the outline of the framework  
  • (1) the skill-challenge balance, 
  • (2) clear proximal goals and immediate feedback. 
• Core processes rely on two key cognitive processes that are: (1) attention, and (2) motivation. 
  • The  attentional component  is  composed  of  two  sub-components:  automatic  attention  –referring to implicit investment in the task, and executive attention – referring to explicit intervention of executive control.
  • The automatic attention in running is developed through our neuromuscular work. We rehearse race day in time trials. 
  • Executive attention would be inserting your will on a race. Perhaps this is when your body is hurting and you are intuitive enough about your abilities to continue to apply  pressure.
• Finally, outputs consist of three  sets  of  flow  outcomes:  (1)  subjective  experience  of  absorption,  (2)  task  achievements,  the  fruits  of invested effort, and (3) positive affects

verywellmind.com , “Imagine for a moment that you are running a race. Your attention is focused on the movements of your body, the power of your muscles, the force of your lungs, and the feel of the street beneath your feet. You are living in the moment, utterly absorbed in the present activity. Time seems to fall away. You are tired, but you barely notice. This is an example of a flow state.”

Why is this hard to achieve?

In general:

Presently, it is progressively harder than ever before

• Overstimulation–
• Immediate gratification
• Constant comparison (real self vs. artificial other)

Long term goals that are not proximal and not within our control. 

• “Clear proximal goals allow certain cognitive and conative unburdening to the person so that his or her emergent long-term goals do not encumber her or his consciousness while doing the  task. Ergo, these small proximal goals are indirectly related to the motivational process as well.”
• Advice: Have proximal goals.
• Intrinsic motivation means being motivated for an activity purely for the sake of that activity itself. Extrinsic- outside results based (time, qualifications, place…).

For Runners specifically:

• Exercise: “If I get hurt 3 weeks before my goal race, does it make my season a waste of time?”
• Often unstructured  and unproductive feedback
• Focus on self and not the activity
• Looking to enjoy associated facets not the thing itself (I run to be with friends, or I like the alone time, or to get fit or to be healthy… but what about running itself?)