Flow-state thinking: The secret to shaving off seconds
This is an article written by Craig Muirhead, a 1:1 Neuro-Performance Coach at Camino Coaching. Craig has worked with drivers in British F4 and GB3 as well as riders in British Superbikes and MotoGP for the past five seasons.
In 2020 Camino Coaching went online, helping even more championship drivers and riders worldwide to improve their performance through transformational mindset coaching. By focusing on the flow state you can achieve faster times and peak performance.
Source: Stuart Seeger under CC
Are you as fast as you think?
Alain Prost perfectly describes what’s really going on when we think we are going fast. When we are late on the brakes and hard on the steering, making the car squirm around underneath us, it feels like it should be quick, right? But more often than not, the timing sheets don't reflect it and we are actually going slower, making more mistakes than speed.
This is commonplace for drivers who overthink, landing themselves firmly in the ‘trying too hard’ category. It's hard to escape, too, as the worse our performance gets, the harder we try. It's a downward spiral.
When you find yourself in this situation, you have to change the pattern of over-pushing and instead fall into a rhythm where you drive subconsciously. You might know it as The Zone; I call it the ‘flow state’.
Everything starts in the mind and is then turned into reality by the body's movements. When you focus your thinking entirely on where you want to go, your mind will make it happen subconsciously without you having to process thoughts and think about what to do.
When you are overthinking and trying too hard to go fast, your conscious brain is in control, which is the wrong part of the brain for performance. You actually go slower, because your conscious brain simply cannot process information fast enough.
Try this
Try this simple exercise as a demonstration of conscious and subconscious thinking. Time how long it takes you to say the sentence below out loud:
Off the apex, start to straighten the wheel, feel for grip on the throttle, adjust steering, aim for the exit rumble strip, accelerate harder as the steering wheel straightens, counter steer, change gear, hard acceleration, adjust steering, use all of the track.
Drivers and riders know this sequence well. But stop for a minute and think: how long did it take to say it out loud, describing the exit of just one corner?
When you are driving in that same trying-too-hard, process-by-process mode, you slow everything down to this level. You simply cannot think of what to do and also be quick. You need to be the action.
The drunken monkey
Your conscious brain is your first filter on every piece of incoming information. I call it the drunken monkey. It jumps to conclusions all the time, tries to predict the future, and gets it wrong all the time. The drunken monkey has limits, it tries to make sense of it all but always in an immediate and simplistic way.
The conscious mind can only process 110 bits of information a second. So, for example, if one person is talking to you, that takes up 60 bits of information a second. When another person starts talking at the same time, you immediately hit overload, saying: "Hold on, one at a time". If you feel overloaded by two people talking, how on earth does that translate to your conscious mind being in charge of what's happening during a race?
What about when you’re trying to go faster? Your 110 bits per second is at capacity already; where is the brain space for knowing how and where to get that time advantage? You can feel bewildered how anyone can be a second (or more) faster than you are, saying to yourself: "If I go any faster, I will crash". This is a clear sign the drunken monkey is driving. You feel limited operating at 110 bits of information a second.
To perform at your best, you need to move into the subconscious part of the brain. I call it the wizard mind. It operates at four billion bits of information a second.
As you are reading these words, it’s running your nervous system, adjusting your temperature, and seamlessly controlling all of your organs to function at optimum levels for your ongoing health. It's the home of your imagination, creativity, and intuition. All of these things happen without conscious thought. They are managed without you having to spend a nanosecond of effort to make them happen. There are no limits in this subconscious, wizard state.
When you are driving well, you don't think about your driving; you don't think, “I need 50 bars of pressure on the brake pedal to bring me into the hairpin”. You instinctively use the right amount of pressure, and if you need a little more, you intuitively get the right amount.
To drive quickly, there is no time for conscious thought; you have to be instinctive and be in a flow state to drive at your best. Flow is when everything clicks, your car feels like it’s on rails, it feels easy to be fast, everything is manageable, time gets distorted, and it feels like you have been out on track for five minutes when in actual fact you have been out for 40. It is the best place to be — where your performance skyrockets without any controlled or conscious effort.
The problem with flow is it can feel elusive. One day you’re on fire and feeling untouchable, the next you can’t find it at all. The frustration sets in, leaving you trying too hard once again, going slower, overthinking, and pushing the limits on what only the day before felt limitless.
So what is flow?
With the advent of EEG to measure brain activity over the last 25 years, we have started to learn what is going on when you are in the flow state. The adrenaline-fueled action-adventure athletes of the ‘90s became the first case studies. Anyone that was sponsored by RedBull, basically; surfers, snowboarders, mountain bikers, and skateboarders were identified as being the planet's best at getting into flow. Why? For most of them, if they didn't get into that subconscious flow state, they weren't going home that day.
Flow is the result of a unique cocktail of chemicals released in the brain, which in turn creates a specific brain wave signature we would typically only get in REM sleep as well as heightened brain processing, all combining to put you in flow. There are a number of now-identified triggers and conditions needed to get into the flow, and with these in place, you can access flow more readily and repeatedly.
One of the biggest elements of flow is correct goal setting. In my work as a mindset performance coach, I have noticed that quite a lot of riders and drivers have given up setting their own goals. Instead, they connect their goals to outside forces. This is what I hear:
“I want to see how I feel on the day first”
“Let me see who else is racing this weekend”
“I want to drive the track first, see how it feels, then I’ll know what I’m capable of”
When I push them on why they dropped goal setting, they most often say that it felt like added pressure. But for reaching a flow state, this is poison.
Flow is created by you working towards a meaningful goal and being focused long enough to achieve it. Most have given up goal setting because they set too big a goal and became despondent when they didn't achieve it. In the flow state, there is a sweet spot that gets you working at the right level each time to experience goal achievement.
The believability stretch is where you find that sweet spot; if the goal is too low you meet immediate boredom or apathy as your skills are too high for the task. But if the goal is too high, you risk activating a feeling of stress and anxiety, believing you are not in fact up to the task.
So for flow to be activated, we have to create your believable stretch goal, something that is just out of reach, but if you work hard, you do believe you can attain it. This very specific place keeps you focused and working repetitively in the flow sweet spot.
The correct goals, plus those other conditions and triggers, are the basis of my training with drivers. They take them from conscious thinking and zero flow, through to being a flow guru on track, tapping into the state each time they are behind the wheel.
What's your state?
To start on your own path to more flow, take the Flow Profile quiz. It gives a quick snapshot of who you feel is driving your car; is it the wizard or the drunken monkey?
As a bonus, you will then receive a free gift from Camino Coaching and Racing Mentor. This video training module will help you to unlock the beginnings of the flow state, as you learn to quiet down the drunken monkey and move towards driving in a subconscious flow state. If you want to find an extra second the next time you are on track, this is where it could be.
Find out more: Camino Coaching