Abstract
Flow is a mental state characterized by total immersion and focus in an activity; performing it pleasurably. Such a state is considered optimal for performance. The present study analyzed the relationship between dispositional flow and performance in triathletes. The sample consisted of 328 athletes (294 males and 34 females; mean age of 37.42 ± 7.18 years) competing in the Ironman Brazil – Florianópolis – South American Championship 2017. Instruments were an identification sheet, the Dispositional Flow Scale (DFS-2) and athletes’ total race times. Data were analyzed using R, through the Shapiro–Wilk normality test, Mann–Whitney’s U, Spearman Correlation, and Network Analysis [Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO)], using strength, closeness, and betweenness as centrality measurements. Results show a positive correlation between age and practice time (r = 0.34), inverse relationship between practice time and total race time (r = −0.25), and inverse correlations between race time and 05 of the 09 flow dimensions (r between −0.17 and −0.11), suggesting better performances were related to more practice time and higher disposition to flow. Flow conditions, flow characteristics, individual characteristics, and performance were separately grouped in the network structure. Challenge–skill balance was the most influential node, with the highest closeness and betweenness values; challenge–skill balance, clear goals, control, and action-awareness merge directly influenced better race times. Sample’s top 50 performers had significantly higher disposition to challenge-skill balance, clear goals, control and feedback. Practical implications of flow mechanisms are discussed. Dispositional flow was positively related to objective performance in Brazilian triathletes.
Highlights
Sports psychology strives to promote better performance to coaches and athletes within their sport’s context (Weinberg and Gould, 2017)
The three dimensions representing prerequisites to flow state were closely positioned, forming a triangle, which is encompassed by five characteristics of flow state, with only loss of self-consciousness being positioned further to the side
As a way of visualizing our results in a simpler manner, the 50 best performers in our sample were grouped and had their data compared with the other 278 subjects’. We found that these top 50 athletes were younger (p = 0.01), had practiced triathlon for longer (p = 0.02), and had higher levels of dispositional challenge–skill balance (p = 0.02), clear goals (p = 0.02), unambiguous feedback (p = 0.02), and sense of control (p = 0.03)
Summary
Sports psychology strives to promote better performance to coaches and athletes within their sport’s context (Weinberg and Gould, 2017). Flow state is a harmonious, highly positive, pleasurable, and intrinsically rewarding psychological state, characterized by intense focus, deep absorption in an activity, and a sense of things “clicking into place,” despite any challenges (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002). Flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002) describes the experience of flow in nine dimensions, being six characteristics of such a mental state: (1) intense concentration; (2) merging of awareness (what is perceived) and action (how to act/react); (3) decreased awareness of social evaluation or self-judgment (loss of selfconsciousness); (4) sense of control over performing an activity and its outcomes; (5) transformation of time, seeming to either speed up or slow down; (6) the autotelic characteristic of the experience, of being pleasurable and rewarding. The other three dimensions are considered prerequisites for experiencing flow: (I) balance between challenge and skill, where there is a high challenge that the athlete feels capable of overcoming; (II) clear goals, guiding the athletes’ efforts; (III) unambiguous feedback regarding one’s progress toward set goals (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000)
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