Exercise as flow

Upperbody and Abs Sydney cummings workout after a long time. Because of a minor inconvenience, I thought I will rest it out with the jumping. Then I felt a great relief that I could do strength training. When you do strength training, you can tell the gains as well as losses very fast, when you stop doing it.

 Dans jumprope workout

This turned out to be great. The side planks and x jumprope feet.

Yesterday, when I came across autonomy in The art of impossible as a flow indicator, I knew it would be relevant to the joy you get in exercise. With today's experience of doing the rightest exercise, it ingrained it even more, how when you do the exercise you want for fun and not as a must, you get into the flow state.

The six core psychologial characteristics of flow according to the book:

Complete Concentration

When you are exercising, you are thinking mostly about how to do the next set, how to breathe, how to give it your all in the present. The bodily engagement anchors you in the present.

Merger of Action and Awareness

Your workout buddy or trainer can give you hints on the engagement, with their insight of where should you feel the impact.

Sense of self vanishes

Now you are a power machine getting strong. You are bigger than your self.

Altered sense of time

This takes us to Einstein's relativity. This also depends on the choice of exercise. If its something you love, then you will see the time pass quickly. If you are struggling at the move, you look at the clock more often.

Paradox of control

Other than AMRAP, the exercises are little compartments or curiosities that you explore and then find something really great, that is novel and think how wonderful the new move is. With Sydney Cummings, I am always amazed at the host of new exercises in each video.

Autotelic Experience

When you like some exercise, you might overdo it, but luckily your body as a system warns you if you exhaust yourself.

spectrum of experiences. Microflow to macroflow. You can feel it when things dont go according to the plan. AMRAP hrows me off a bit.

Deep embodiment which is a flow trigger for flow according to Steven Kotler, physical exercise because it involves you fully, it works as a good flow trigger.