TFS#10: Find Your Flow Channel

I hope you had a great week.

I myself spent a few days off traveling for much needed rest.

On the business side of things, I have something planned this week. I reserved one full day of this week to just think.

Think about my training, on this newsletter, my life... Let's see how that goes.

Now, let's start rolling...

Find your flow channel

You know when you're on a streak...and you're making amazing gains.

Then that tapers off...and you feel like you hit a plateau.

Those plateaus are extremely frustrating and you'll wonder why those gains stopped.

If you want to get back to making gains, you'll have to do this one trick.

Cut the good times short

If you do the right amount of exercise, cut it there.

Don't go into the phase where your body is tired and beat up.

Now, pushing your body the extra mile is good for competition and can be effective for a small period of time.

But in the long run, you'll over-tax your body.

Instead, you want to cut the workout short so you'll body and recover and you'll be ready for the next workout.

The flow channel

Training should be addictive. It should pull you in.

What if you kill yourself in one session and I told you, you had to do it again four times this week.

You would dread it.

You want to look forward to training.

I really like the way the graph below depicts the idea of the flow channel.

You want to live in the flow channel as much as possible.

Being in the flow channel is commonly known as "being in the zone."

And what makes successful CEOs and professional athletes so good at what they do is they know how to keep themselves in the flow channel when they need to.

Too stressed with training? Focus on increasing your skill or decreasing the challenge.

Too bored with training? Focus on increasing the challenge. (You can't really decrease your skill here.)

Here's what you can do

1. Monitor yourself and pay attention to how you're feeling week-by-week.

2. Make adjustments and steer yourself into the flow channel if you're feeling bored or anxious.

The best way to make progress in Jiu-Jitsu is consistency.

Technique For The Week

Let's revisit some guard passing again.

Guard passing is something everyone can improve on especially considering how dynamic the modern game is.

Let's pull some ideas from this: How To NOT Get Your Guard Passed.

This video goes over both gi and no gi, and covers all the most common positions.

I would recommend getting a handful of buddies and run a king of the hill session on each example that this video goes over.

"King of the hill" sparring rounds (there are many names for it) are rounds in which you start in a specific position with your opponent.

Typically, one person is trying to pass while the other person is trying to sweep or submit.

Each round is 1:00 minute. Loser waits in line, winner stays in. If no one wins, both people switch out.

(This drill can easily be done with one training partner for multiple rounds.)

Word On The Tweet

This past week, many folks competed in Jiu-Jitsu tournaments and shared their experiences and thoughts.

Many emotions came out. Nervousness, excitement, and general confusion.

I wanted people to remember one thing when they train:

Everyday you're just adding another entry into a book, and eventually you'll have a library to reference different skills that you've developed.

...And a general shoutout to all the upper belts who help the lower belts.

If you're currently a white belt, you'll have multiple chances to pay it forward.

Closing Thoughts

Work smarter, not harder. This also applies to your Jiu-Jitsu training.

You want to be on the mats as much as possible.

Enough blabbering from me, I wanted to keep this week short so you have time to think!