PROGRAMS 4: FLOW WALKING

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Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

BASIC: Do you remember the seven checkpoints of breathing in flow:

1. Keep your mouth closed.

2. Breathe in through the nose and out through the nose. The focus is on your nostrils.
3. Use your diaphragm without tension.
4. Use the pendulum principle on the transition of in-breath and out-breath, so there is no stop,
only a smooth transition like the movement of a pendulum.
5. Ensure you have full body breathing awareness.
6. Tune into your rhythm.
7. Use three gears when needed.

ADVANCED: This is how the seven points are applied with tape:

1. Keep your mouth TAPED.

2. Breathe in through the nose and out through the nose. The focus is on your nostrils.
3. Use your diaphragm without tension.
4. Use the pendulum principle on the transition of in-breath and out-breath, so there is no stop,
only a smooth transition like the movement of a pendulum.
 5. Ensure you have full body breathing awareness.
6. Tune into your rhythm.

THE THREE GEARS

When the intensity of the task pushes you out of breathing in flow, you will need to access the three
gears. Flow is an optimal skill-based state, where you focus and pay attention to your task until it is at its
optimal level. When you become tired, or are on the brink of fatigue, your focus and attention lowers.
It’s in this point that skill levels also diminish, opening you up to a greater potential risk.

If you are training to improve your breathing for your sport, you will and must go into the second and
third gears to help your body improve its familiarity with these states. However, your ability to recover
back into breathing in flow is critical for optimal success. For example, a boxer who has his opponent on
the ropes will most likely push out of nasal breathing to finish the fight. A last-minute flurry of punches…
ding, ding… but if the bell rings and he didn’t manage to finish the fight, then he must quickly recover
back to nasal breathing for the next round.

Standard interval training which you will have seen before is where people will run for an intensive
period of time, then walk to recover. There is where Gear 2 and 3 are most common. However, the
purpose of this book and training is to get you into the flow state while optimally improving your blood
oxygen flow, CO2 tolerance, health, etc. Therefore, we are looking to increase your familiarity and
ability to maintain breathing in flow (Gear 1) while at rest and under pressure, using Gear 2 and 3 as
your indication that you've pushed out of flow.

Gear 1: Breathing in flow. GREEN LIGHT

Gear 2: Nose to mouth. AMBER LIGHT
Gear 3: Mouth to mouth. RED LIGHT

If you fall into Gear 2 or 3, your job is to calmly, effectively flow back into Gear 1 – the green light of
flow. :)