Scott Sonnon- Flow Fighting

Scott Sonnon - Flow-Fighting™: Mental Toughness for Combat Sports

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The mp3 included is an audioRip of the video material.  I thought some people might find it useful to have.

”Flow Fighting is the second video instructional aid from Scott Sonnon that focuses on how to help coaches, fighters, and martial artists improve the mental aspects of their training and how to enhance their ability to utilize their flow state. Throughout the course of this video, Coach Sonnon discusses the various aspects of training that help to enhance and diminish a person's ability to flow. One of the first points that are covered is the debate between Combat systems and Sport systems in regards to which aspect has the better methodology of training for success. Coach Sonnon goes into detail concerning the pluses and minuses that each faction have and how both are technically correct in their views. He then goes on to discuss how a person can incorporate the best of both factions through competition. Upon bringing up the term competition, Coach Sonnon goes into a thorough explanation of what competition truly entails. We find that competition isn't about purely winning or losing, it's more about training versus active, resisting opponents.

Training in this manner is a key to increasing your abilities, be it for the street or the ring. After discussing the various aspects of competition, Coach Sonnon begins to describe how various drills impact a person's ability to gain skill. Static, fluid, and dynamic drills are introduced and covered in general detail. From here, Coach Sonnon takes each of the three drills and covers them in depth. While breaking the drills down, he gives not only tips that enhance the drills themselves, but also tips that help to further improve the individual's performance in other aspects. A few things that are covered here are: how being told to “relax” actually places a burden on a person’s performance, how time spent on static drills should be limited to a certain quantity, and how one goes about reducing recovery time in order to increase their ability to flow. The next subject covered is that of catastrophic training. This is the method of training where a person focuses on either high percentage moves or worse case scenarios. The viewer is then informed of the hazards of this method. Coach Sonnon details how a person’s training needs to cover the entire range from high percentage moves to worst case scenarios. He states that unless a person is introducing “surprises” into his training, he is merely remaining in his comfort zone and is not enhancing his skill levels.

Also mentioned is the error of depending on a plan to get one through a fight and how a person should keep this in mind while training and actually fighting. The final area that is covered is that of confidence. Coach Sonnon relates some of his personal stories and how they relate to a person’s search for confidence and what confidence truly is. During this time, the viewer is told that it’s an error to have confidence in a collection of techniques. True confidence is one’s ability to mitigate stress that is introduced during moments of adversity. Coach Sonnon also details how the tougher you get through training, the less distracted you become during the stress of real life encounters. In closing, Flow Fighting is an outstanding video source of information. Coach Sonnon has a solid package of sport, combat, and personal psychology principles that anyone, regardless of their goals in training, can readily apply and benefit from. The production qualities of the tape are top notch and the inspirational quotes that appear between each topic serve to keep the viewer constantly motivated and looking forward to the upcoming segment of information. People that are serious about increasing not only their physical skills, but their mental skills as well; would be well served by viewing this material.

It is bound to help them in more ways than is imaginable.” - Chris Clifton “Unsure what to expect, I watched the tape -- and then watched it again because I liked it so much. This is a martial arts video that contains no martial arts. There are no drills, no techniques, no demonstrations. What it does contain is an interview with Scott, broken into segments with frequent inspirational quotes from a vast array of sources. It is, as I said, a chat with Coach Sonnon, in which he imparts his thoughts on flow. What is flow? "Flow's not something you do," Scott tells us, "it's actually something that you get out of the way of." Flow is not achieved or acquired. It's something you don't interrupt. To maintain one's flow is to fight without becoming mentally distracted. Many coaches, Scott tells us, expect their athletes to be able to "go with the flow" automatically, but this is not easy. Like athletic skills, the mental skills necessary to maintain flow should not be developed through trial and error, but through deliberate and systematic training.

The production values and sound quality of the tape are okay. There were intermittent tape lines in my copy, but nothing that prevented me from enjoying the video. Scott is very soft-spoken (which meant I had to turn up the volume to hear him), but he projects a confidence and poise that is immediately engaging. Dressed in a black workout suit that reminded me, for some reason, of the yellow jumpsuit Bruce Lee wore in Game of Death, Scott sits in front of a red curtained background and just chats. He is enthusiastic, articulate, calm, and extremely knowledgeable. They don't call him "Coach" for nothing, either. He's a born motivator with a gift for inspiring students. Just watching the tape made me want to go out and start training more. How does a fighter get in the way of his own flow? He experiences emotional arousal and mental distraction. Scott discusses this briefly before describing what combat systems and sport systems have to say about one another, describing an argument that undermines modern training. Sport systems, say the combat systems adherents, are single, unarmed, and take place in a protected environment, whereas combat is plural, armed, and takes place in a hazardous environment. Sport systems adherents complain that often the techniques of combat systems are not proven in practical application, nor tested against resistance.

Both points of view are wrong, Scott says, because the two camps are both right. Combat systems offer reality to sports -- and sports offer competition, trial against an uncooperative opponent, to combat systems. The two should be combined and integrated to yield effective training for fighters. Scott discusses a lot of concepts that will be useful to anyone who watches his other tapes. He describes the performance diagnostic triangle in which practice (the acquisition of skills), training (the development of attributes) and competition (the developing of toughness through trial against resistance) come together. He explains the difference between "hard" work (effectiveness equals opportunity over risk) and "soft" work (efficiency equals useful work over total work). This may sound complicated, but these equations and concepts are displayed with helpful graphics on the tape. "Hard" work improves your threshold of pain, whereas "soft" work improves your threshold of "fear reactivity." Scott's goal is to make you physically stronger while more capable of coping with fear. When you better cope with fear, you are less easily distracted -- and thus you are better able to get out of the way of your own flow. Scott explains that toughness is resistance to failure.

Degrees of failure consist of the length of your recovery process. And your degree of failure is your "bound flow." Your flow, therefore, "binds" when you experience a lengthy recovery process. You must unblock that binding by reducing your recovery time, which creates toughness. Thus we create toughness through flow drills. Coach Sonnon divides flow drills into three types: static drills (which work on mechanics -- on threat assessment), fluid drills (which work on your recovery time to perceived errors -- hard work and soft work), and dynamic drills (which work on your recovery time when faced with unexpected variables). We must, Scott explains, expose ourselves to perceived errors and mistakes, to unexpected variables, in order to develop toughness. He then explains the three types of flow drills in detail. Flow, Scott cautions, is not the absence of errors or unexpected variables. It is not technical accuracy that keeps the fighter in flow, but resiliency in the face of risk -- the ability to avoid distractions and recover quickly. Scott touches on the idea of catastrophic training and warns us to achieve a proper balance between training for high percentage moves and worst-case scenarios.

The fighter must not become so comfortable with the most likely attacks that he or she is unprepared for the unexpected, but neither must the fighter focus on very unlikely situations to the exclusion of what is more likely to occur. The remainder of the tape, like the preceding material, consists of subtopics on which Scott speaks at length. These include ideas such as "Concept of rote technique is absent," "Do everything for the first time," and "Toughness prepares you to meet opportunities." On the topic of confidence, Scott admits that he started training specifically to develop his own. But too often, he cautions, martial artists believe that technical ability is what inspires this confidence. Focusing on skill in techniques is not the proper definition, he suggests. Rather, the ability to address the stress of failure and not be dampened by it, the ability to recover from mistakes and face risk, is the proper definition of confidence. I thought this was particularly insightful. Because it is a conceptual tape, an interview on theory, Flow Fighting contains a great deal of information. I cannot do all that information justice here. But I believe strongly that the tape should be required viewing for all martial artists. It is both emotionally motivational and technically useful. And Scott, even on a television screen, has a way of challenging you to do more, to reach higher. "If you're constantly comfortable," he says, "You're not growing. ...The tougher you are the less things distract you. ...It's not that things don't surprise you. It's that you're not surprised you're surprised.”
-- Phil Elmore http://www.philelmore.com