What athletes mean when they talk about 'flow state' or being 'in the zone'

There is a state of mind athletes talk about when they are totally absorbed in the moment and the actions of their sport. 

They call it being in "the zone", a "flow state" or simply "flow".

In his seminal 1972 book on sports psychology, The Inner Game of Tennis, author W Timothy Gallwey championed quietening the analytical, critical inner voice to allow one's unconscious mind to take over.

He described how a non-judgemental approach to the game can lead to being in the zone.

"There is a feeling some call harmony, balance, poise, even peace, or contentment," Gallwey wrote.

In his book, Sacred Hoops, legendary Chicago Bulls basketball coach Phil Jackson espoused a similar philosophy. 

"All of us have flashes of oneness," Jackson wrote. 

"When we're completely immersed in the moment, inseparable from what we're doing."

Being in the zone or in flow is that intangible state of total absorption where things just happen often without conscious thought — when what was difficult seemingly becomes easy.

You see it in sport when a tennis player nails every shot, when a cricketer is seeing the ball like a balloon, when a footballer kicking at goal just can't miss or when a runner seemingly floats.

In that moment everything falls into place and performance levels often go to a new plane.

But it's not only sport — flow states can be experienced by anyone undertaking any task. 

You may have experienced flow at work, meditating, or even going for a run.

Sportspeople covet flow, but it's an amorphous state — temporary and often fleeting — a gift bestowed by the gods that can arrive and then disappear like a wisp of smoke.

Flow means different things to different people, let alone how they arrive in flow state or stay there.

Here we find out what flow means to an international cricket captain, a record-breaking marathon runner, an ARIA award-nominated musician, a prize-winning mathematician, and a performance psychologist.

What does flow state feel like?

The cricketer

Heather Knight is one of the most decorated women to have played for the England cricket team. 

She captained the side to the 2017 World Cup victory and was the first woman to score an international century in all three formats of the game. 

"I think it's something that you don't get into too often — that sort of that state where everything just feels like it's clicking," Knight said. 

"It's just real clarity in your thinking and clarity in decision-making.

"You're not thinking too much but you're thinking a little bit; you're thinking the right things.

"For me, as a batter, like your decision-making is really sharp. You almost feel like you know what the bowler's going to bowl and you just feel quite invincible, really.

"You execute the skill exactly how you want to: You middle the ball, hit it where you want to and it just feels quite easy and effortless and quite light."

The musician

Tim Levinson is better known by his stage name, Urthboy. 

He's a founding member of the hip hop group, The Herd, and an acclaimed solo performer, with seven albums to his name. 

He ran a record label, Elefant Traks, and produced and managed other musicians.

"Flow state's just deep work," Urthboy said. 

"It really is just getting into a place where you have clarity, you have focus, you have a sense of some kind of coherent goal even if it's not a tangible thing.

"It's just you're moving and intellectually something about the wiring and the connecting of ideas and themes. 

"There's a sort of fluidity between the steps along the way, so, there's less blockage; there's no second guessing; there's less stopping to think."

The runner

Jessica Stenson broke the Australian women's marathon record in Valencia in December. 

During the race she described being in a flow state. 

Stenson won a Commonwealth Games gold medal and two bronze medals and competed in two Olympic Games.

"It [flow] has a bit of an air of effortlessness about it," Stenson said. 

"So, you're obviously doing something that consumes a lot of energy and it's a difficult task, but at the time it just feels like it's coming really naturally.

"I think it's a state where your mind is very absorbed in the moment, and you obviously feel sensations, but you're not really hanging on to them or judging them.

"You're just experiencing the feelings and feeling at peace."

The mathematician

Professor Geordie Williamson is the director of the Sydney Mathematical Research Institute. 

He's won international mathematical prizes and in 2018 became the youngest living Fellow of the Royal Society.

"You enter this beautiful state that's very fleeting, very difficult to attain, where you don't have a sense of time," Williamson said. 

"You feel a complete kind of freedom within the problem, and it's often at those moments that really beautiful things can happen.

"Calculations are really hard for a while and then at some point you get such an ease with them that it just all fits together. 

"It feels right and you know you're going in the right direction.

"Often I've found what I would kind of identify as flow states not whilst working with a pen and paper — like whilst walking around — and you feel this like very beautiful freedom in your mind, like all the pieces can just assemble as they should.

"It's completely addictive."

The performance psychologist

Caroline Anderson has worked for two decades as a performance psychologist. 

Most recently she was the lead psychologist with the Australian Olympic team in Paris.

"I would describe flow as just that real task absorption and process focus where we're not thinking about consequences," Anderson said. 

"There's less self-referential processing or thinking going on in the brain.

"We stop thinking about the pressure. The pressure is there, it's just that we're not choosing to focus on it, cause we're directing our focus towards other things."

How often do you experience flow?

Heather Knight

Knight scored 157 against Australia in the 2013 Ashes in one of the finest knocks of her career and looks at the innings as a prime example.

 "Maybe a session I think where I really got into that flow," Knight said. 

"Once or twice a season potentially across the whole year. So, that's a lot of cricket games that probably you're not in that state.

"I was able to think really clearly, move really freely. It's just when your body moves exactly how you want it to, you play the shots, you time the ball, you hit the ball where you want to."

Urthboy

Urthboy feels flow most powerfully on stage.

"When you're performing — maybe there's a forgiveness for making mistakes of course — but you don't want to be getting into a spot where you're thinking at all," Urthboy said.

"In the studio you can be slow moving to that zone or you can be clarified in your thinking.

"It took me a long time to understand that you're a vehicle to some extent with the way that ideas flow through.

"It's not really that you have all this control and you have all the answers. It's more that there are things that are floating in the air and you're capturing them and you're able to weave them into your process.

"You're working with it as opposed to having control of it."

Jessica Stenson

Stenson hit a flow state during her 2022 Commonwealth Games gold medal run but it can still elude at key moments.

She didn't find it much at the Paris Olympics, despite still being happy with her performance, and can feel it powerfully away from athletics. 

"Maybe two or three times a year. I would say, you know, maybe in a race maybe there are the odd training sessions, but it's a pretty rare feeling," Stenson said. 

"[In Valencia] I didn't feel exhaustion, it was a pace or an effort I'd practised so often in training, and it felt like I was moving really efficiently, so, it almost felt like I was like floating across the ground.

"I would say I feel flow state more when I'm doing art than I do when I'm running.

"I love painting and drawing and I've always thought when I'm painting and drawing time just flies and I just don't want to stop."

Geordie Williamson

Williamson has found the flow state of mind in the past but has revealed it can be more difficult as time goes by.

"It takes a lot of time to get there. Often I'll spend many weeks or months grappling with a problem and then slowly you start to know its moving parts," Williamson said.

"I would say that in the past it was quite a regular feature in my life.

"I have small children, and small children definitely reduce the amount of time you spend in flow state — I can testify to that."

Can you bring on flow deliberately or does it just happen naturally?

Heather Knight

"There's like little routines that I have to try and get me in the right mind state that I know I need to have to perform," Knight said. 

"Like I'll scrape my guard three times and tap my foot before I take the ball, particularly early in in my innings, cause it sort of resets me after the last ball — it sort of prepares me.

"I might play a shot that I have to commit to — so, playing a reverse sweep actually helps me get into that zone."

Urthboy

"There are all these different ways of which you open up the door and go through it," Urthboy said. 

"A lot of it is time, giving time to something. In the studio definitely.

"On the stage, you don't have time — you've just got to be there.

"In the studio you can be slow moving to that zone or you can be clarified in your thinking.

"If you give time and availability to the idea, you have always a different pathway to how quickly you can get to that spot."

Jessica Stenson

"I think it's more of a 'ooh I'm here now,'" Stenson said.

"But I did try to be intentional [during the Valencia marathon], which I haven't done much in marathons before — to try and switch off my thinking a little.

"There's a blue line that you follow in a lot of marathons, and I remember just looking down at the blue line and listening to my feet and trying to remove any other thoughts and that I feel kind of prompted that state a little."

Geordie Williamson

"You absolutely cannot bring it on deliberately," Williamson said. 

"You can really want it badly and it doesn't happen, and then sometimes it'll happen out of nowhere, like, 'oh, great'.

"It's very, very unpredictable, I would say.

"You can try to encourage it, I think not being busy is critical.

"And also, like a really, really focused engagement with the problem. That very deliberate practise I think is a prerequisite.

"I also feel that kind of meditative aspects can also be helpful. Like paying attention to the wind on your face and that kind of thing can help bring it on."

How important is flow?

Heather Knight

"I think certainly I've learned throughout my career that you don't have to be perfect to perform," Knight said. 

"It's actually when you're not feeling like that and you you're able to put in performances and score runs, that's when you're at your most valuable.

"Certainly, it's something to strive to, and all the athletes are certainly searching for it, but yeah, it doesn't happen very often.

"But I think If you search for that perfection — that flow — all the time and expect to reach it all the time, you're setting yourself unrealistic targets."

Jess Stenson

"I think you don't want to go into a race expecting that you'll feel it, because then you open yourself up to feel disappointed or stressed that you're not there," Stenson said. 

"I go into a race expecting it's going to feel really hard and so if it comes, it's very welcome.

"I think it's fun to acknowledge it while you're in it, but I know that there are so many ups and downs in a marathon and while you can be feeling brilliant one moment, you might not feel great the next."

Caroline Anderson

"I really like the concept of flow. I think it's great to talk about as an interesting piece, I just don't think it's the be all and end all," Anderson said. 

"For the majority of sports, it's not something that we want to have as a goal — it's something that can either happen or doesn't, and that's great either way.

"I believe there's a paradox where the more we want to be in flow and the more expectation that we have that we have to be in flow in order to perform well, probably the less likely we are to get in flow.

"And I think we can get a trap if we think that the only way to get high performance or a gold medal result is through flow."

Some final words from performance psychologist, Caroline Anderson, on how she helps athletes create a mindset that could lead to flow state.

"I think one of the barriers that people have is normal nervousness, performance anxiety, anticipatory anxiety, pressure, whatever you want to call it leading into an event," Anderson said. 

"When you have a good understanding of what your body's doing and why it's doing it — and this is a normal phenomenon — we can kind of stop battling it and we just work with what we have.

"I think learning how to be more present-moment focused in your training [is important].

"We're just not very good at this in our modern lives, right? 

"And athletes describe this all the time — they're doing something, but their mind is somewhere else.

"So, the present moment focus, and then being really clear about task or process related cues.

"A basketballer knows how to shoot a basket without thinking about it. When they're at the club or when they're training, they can do it completely automatically.

"In a high pressure moment that automation doesn't exist, because our mind wants to go to the threat, it wants to go to the crowds, the consequence — what if I lose?

"We need to give our minds really clear process, technical related cues, even if it sounds simple.

"So, what's my body stance? What arm position do I want to have? What do I want to do with the release of the ball? It sounds simple, but we need to give our mind these anchor points because otherwise it's just going to go in different directions.

"And the more that we train those, the more likelihood we are to go into flow."