Is the constant boundary pushing in extreme sports a dangerous manifestation of a crisis of masculinity, or something much more interesting?
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It’s no secret to anyone that has followed the world of extreme sports over the last few decades that the boundaries of what is possible have been relentlessly tested and dispelled on an almost daily basis. The feats of Evel Knievel back in the seventies would barely elicit a yawn from crowds nowadays that expect jumps on snowboards, skis, snowmobiles, dirtbikes and anything else that moves to be higher, longer, faster and with more tricks. A few decades ago jumping a motorbike over a dozen cars would be considered an insane feat, now we have guys surfing waves the height of skyscrapers and Felix Baumgartner skydiving from the edge of space in a purpose built balloon.
It would be very easy, perhaps even logical, to conclude that this pushing of boundaries is some sort of manifestation of the crisis of masculinity. That with the traditional man’s place in the world being eroded since the 60s and 70s, men have flocked to extreme sports to feel like men again, to exert some kind of power and dominance over their environment and feel that masculine spirit again. After all, the time when the second wave of feminism hit seems to coincide with the beginning stages of extreme sports and daredevils such as Evel Knievel.
The truth is actually far less dramatic and far more interesting than you might expect.
This phenomenon has nothing to do with masculinity and everything to do with a term that most people in the world are unfamiliar with: flow. Many of you will, however, know it as being in “the zone.”
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What is flow?
Likely almost everyone has experienced it in its lower levels at some point in their lives. Think back to a time when you were doing an activity and time seemed to disappear because you became so absorbed in your work. You lost all sense of where you were in the world and of any distractions, and many hours later you looked up at a clock and thought “holy crap, where did the time go!?”
That right there is flow, at least a lower level of it. You no doubt remember it, but it likely doesn’t hold a special place for you.
When the stakes get upped, however, the effects of flow rise dramatically. I’ve had two instances of flow in what would be called the higher state, and the memories will stay with me forever. The most dramatic was during judo training when I was sparring with my partner. From the second we started, it was like I was on autopilot. Whatever attack my partner (who was the same rank but 6 years more experienced than me) came at me with I countered it automatically, effortlessly. It was almost as though he was a 10 year old child. There was no thought, no strategy, no sense of what was going on, I just spent the better part of a minute giving him a clinic in being a rag doll. And then I heard someone off the mat say to the coach “who the hell is that?” (because I hadn’t trained there for several years). I became conscious of what was going on and the effect wore off in an instant. Suddenly I felt slow, rusty, as though I’d gone from running on a well paved road to trudging through knee deep snow. Throwing him now felt insanely difficult and I felt slow and clumsy.
That is what flow is like, but it doesn’t even begin to approximate it. Describing flow is like describing having sex with someone you really love—there just aren’t enough words in any vocabulary. Phrases often pop up such as “I felt like God”, “I lost all sense of myself”, “I just knew what to do”, “time didn’t exist” and so on.
All of those are true and so much more. Consider that when this happened to me I’d been doing judo for 10 years and while I competed with some of the best in my country, I’m no Olympian or anything even remotely special in the judo world.
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Now imagine you’re Cody Townsend, standing at the top of a near vertical chute in a mountain of Alaska. Vertical walls of rock are on either side and the total width at certain points is too narrow to drive a Cooper Mini through. How does one accomplish the incredible feat of even coming out the other end of this? The second a twinge of doubt, a fear of death or any thought enters his mind he is dead because the margin of error in certain parts of that chute can be measured in centimetres and he is moving at a fatal speed. How is this even possible?
The answer of course, is flow. Not only does it feel incredible, it allows you to actually be incredible. When the stakes are so high, the flow state is immensely powerful. When I went through it, it was the most incredible experience of my life and I would do anything to feel it again. I was in a judo room in a university. These guys are on the edge of life and death, so their experience of it is as powerful as it gets.
In his recent book The Rise of Superman, Steven Kotler outlines why flow essentially turns people superhuman and why it is so incredibly addictive. If we think of the effects a drug user gets by taking heroin, cocaine, marijuana and such, and how addictive the effects of those substances can be, they pale in comparison to the tidal wave of effects that the state of flow produces.
During flow, 5 neurochemicals are released in perhaps the most potent physiological response humans can have:
Norepinephrine: Speeds heart rate, respiration, increases arousal, attention, neural efficiency. The pleasure inducing effects are similar to speed.
Dopamine: Increases attention, information flow, pattern recognition, muscle timing – it essentially acts as a massive temporary skill booster. It feels similar to taking cocaine.
Endorphins: A potent endogenous (made inside the body) opiate. 100 times more powerful than medical morphine.
Anandamide: An endogenous cannabinoid that produces similar feelings to marijuana. Amongst other effects, it amplifies lateral thinking and inhibits our ability to feel fear.
Serotonin: Aids the person in coping with adversity. Essentially, it prevents you from “losing it” during a difficult period, and provides a hefty afterglow as it is one of the last neurochemicals produced from a flow state.
So we have a neurochemical response that allows people to simultaneously (and at a massively increased level): Increase their brain efficiency, attention, physical skill, problem solving ability, and ability to piece together new solutions on the fly, inhibit their fears, predict the immediate future (like a skier knowing which line to take on a previously unseen run), and keep themselves under control
And all that comes with a side of pleasure that is tens or hundreds of orders of magnitude stronger than what a drug user feels.
This is why in the last 15 years, we have gone from guys doing things that made us say “wow”, to guys doing things that make us think they are batshit insane. They are able to do things that the general population genuinely believe to be impossible, because when they attempt it they are functioning on a completely different level to what most people have ever or will ever experience.
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Naturally, there is a dark side to this. When flow wears off (as I described in my experience), things all of a sudden seem much more difficult. The world becomes duller for a period of time and it is incredibly difficult to adjust back to being a mere mortal again. In the world of extreme sports this can manifest in people pushing the boundaries too far, because while the flow state is incredibly powerful and allows us to do what seems to be impossible, sometimes it actually is impossible and death is the result.
It would be easy to write these men off as skilled junkies always looking for a bigger hit, unable to be satisfied. The reality is that we can and should be following their lead. Flow isn’t just an amazing experience that anyone can attain, it’s key to making large leaps in our ability in any pursuit we deem worthy.
For more information I highly recommend you check out The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler and Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the pioneer of the subject.
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Photo: Flickr/Joshua M.