Mr. Sonnon sent me a copy of this tape at his own expense, completely confident in the quality of the material.  He understood, he told me, if the review was negative.  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.