Flow State: Finding Your Inherent Creativity On Two Wheels
One from last Summer’s print edition of SPOKE magazine.
The feeling is usually brief, lasting seconds or minutes, sometimes even hours under the right circumstances. You might know it as being “in the zone” or finding your “zen”. What you’re actually experiencing is the ever illusive Flow State. After all, your bike is one of the places it’s most accessible.
Coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - a researcher and Professor of Psychology in California - Flow can be described as the inherently creative phenomenon that occurs when we hit the sweet spot between challenge and skill. That place where action and awareness merge. So, when you’re totally immersed in an activity, blinkered to anything that isn’t you or your progress? That’s Flow. Or when you feel at one with your bike or the trail, losing your sense of self and only have that intense unconditional focus towards the task at hand? Yup, that’s Flow too.
By definition, Flow occurs when psychological and physiological conditions line up and we achieve optimal experience. It’s the difference between a great ride and an unforgettable ride. Maybe you’re more familiar with the idea of Peak Performance, a result of this coalescence. And yes, it explains why Rheeder can pull a world first, or Seagrave can mack ten down a wet course and be totally unfazed. They’re in their Flow State.
This optimal experience, Csikszentmihalyi states, happens when the ratio of challenge to skill is just right; when what you’re engaged in is challenging but not quite terrifying. In that moment, your nervous system has slightly more stimuli than your conscious brain can process, so your subconscious starts to run the show.
When you enter that euphoric state, it forces your brain’s pre-frontal cortex to shut down. Overriding cognitive skills like judgement, decision making and planning, we process information without consciously thinking about it. Railing that berm a little faster, taking that drop off a bit deeper, hitting that booter a little more confidently. Each time we do this, we’re lobbying for Flow, chasing that high.
When this happens, your creativity, intuition and instinct go through the roof. Things “just work”. For every single Flow occurrence, we perform better and improve for doing so. You don’t think about what happens if you take the wrong line or if you’ll get injured when you make a mistake. You stop criticising yourself for the stupid concentration face or how you compare to others. No wonder we hunt that feeling, pushing ourselves just a little more with every ride, searching for that sweet spot.
Moving in three-dimensions as we negotiate different factors of speed, direction, elevation change, obstacles and technical sections, mountain biking is a prime way of generating and finding Flow. In comparison to riding a flat straight road, the heightened sense of perception from hurtling down trails makes mountain biking an ideal facilitator.
So why does it feel so damn good? The answer is the heady mix of performance enhancing chemicals and neurotransmitters that are released when we move into Flow. This includes all the good stuff you’ve heard of (dopamine, endorphins and serotonin) as well as lesser known anandamide which enhances your ability for creativity and produce novel solutions to challenges.
Some riders describe Flow as being in an almost trance like state, staying centred and increasing clarity as they move through adrenalin to a place of effortless control. So what follows? Well, the afterglow you’re feeling down the pub post ride is down to Flow too.
Serotonin gives you that elated top-of-the-world feeling at the end of the trail, and your total engagement translates to accomplishment and progression in your riding. No wonder we’re so addicted to going downhill fast. We’re evolutionary wired to ride.
