Christina M.G. The 5 Min Flow

The thing with the five minute flow. Uh I loved everything. I love the routine that, that it has and the structure of it because it, it, it was truly also easy to understand. It wasn't like you have to do uh 30 minutes meditation. It was five minutes and just incredible how five minutes a day can make something become so can, can make you grow so much.

I've been doing Muay Thai for seven years uh and submission grappling for 1.5 year. Uh I transitioned like a year ago to MMA uh from the Muay Thai scene. And uh I'm, I, I'm an active competitor or I was an active competitor in Muay Thai. And now I'm an active competitor in both submission wrestling and MMA. And the problems that I faced was that I had really low self esteem when it comes to competition. Uh I got to hear many times. I had an amazing technique and that I was an amazing technician and that I was really good, but I didn't really believe in myself, which resulted in me every time I would go into competition, I would get this panic and I would always, before a fight tell myself that I was going to lose. And oftentimes that was the result. So as a last resort, because I had an MMA fight that went really bad. And I, that was like the, the pinnacle state for me, that was like, OK, maybe I shouldn't do this. So I thought I'm gonna give it one last try.

It impacted me a lot because the low self esteem and the fact that I didn't believe in myself or in my technique was that in training, I would do super well. I would perform really well because I felt I felt safe in training, almost like I felt I had high confidence when I trained. But as soon as I stepped to the competition ground and I got panicked, I, I thought to myself, oh no, I'm, I'm gonna lose and all the, all my confidence just disappeared and that impacted me a lot, not only in the training but outside as well because I started to, you know, get uh even less confident. So uh my self esteem just went down downhill even like outside, you know, even when he came to training, I would be so sad that I lost and I wouldn't feel and, and I would always have these doubts that perhaps I wasn't meant to do this and stuff like that. So it impacted me a lot.

I liked everything I like, especially the routine. The fact that I could have a routine after the training or if I wanted to before the training. And I used a little bit of both. I used to do a little bit before training and after training. But one thing that I also liked the most was the log book that you had because one simple thing as you're saying, something positive about yourself, just completely made everything a lot better because just the fact that you wake up and you say something positive to yourself instead of something negative, it was almost like slowly but surely you, you started to believe in that. You started to notice that, that, you know, you, that you are amazing as a person. Like so the thing with the five minute flow, uh I loved everything. I love the routine that, that it has and the structure of it because it, it, it was truly also easy to understand. It wasn't like you have to do uh 30 minutes meditation. It was five minutes and just incredible how five minutes a day can make something become so can can make you grow so much.

There's a lot of even my coaches have told me that there's changes. I'm a lot confident in my technique when I go in there and when I do something, uh I don't have to be honest, I don't have that many lows anymore when it comes to training. If I don't get it, I'm, I'm not usually always happy after training. And I'm not that, you know, I used to be very serious. I'm like, oh, is this or nothing? But I'm a lot happier, but not only that in competition you can see like a very clear difference. Uh So I came first now in the submission grappling uh championship. The, the first one that they had in Gävle, well, I, I've always been because there's very few girls that do this sport. There are not many people in my weight class. So I have to always do a weight class above and then so I did the weight class above in, in my division and everything. And obviously, since I weigh around 10 kg less than them, it's supposed to be a lot harder for me. Uh But I took myself through the matches with clear dominance. I got one submission and the second one I just dominated on, on all aspects and all. I think that all was because I was so calm. I knew exactly what I needed to do. I focused on what I practice on the five minute flow. And most importantly, I could listen to my coach and actually do all those things without the stress or the anxiety coming between.

It's fun. I see it as something fun. Now before I used to be like, oh, I have to perform and that would take away the joy of competing because if you're only competing to winning, you're essentially like ruining the fun, fun part that you're with people that do the same sport as you, you could get contact. You could, you could even make friends for life if you start to look above the, oh, I have to win all the time and competing. Now, I see it as not only a chance to show what I can do but also a chance to learn from o from other grapplers from other, you know, other fighters like, oh they do this or I can take this to my game. You know, I like that a lot and stuff like that. So you basically, I see competition as like a classroom, a classroom where everyone has different talents and you can learn from all of them.

I haven't tried any mental coaching before. But what I've done is like the, the basic, you know, I've tried to listen to motivational speech before a fight and trying to hype yourself up and, yeah, it doesn't help you just, it's almost like it's artificial. You just like, oh for like one second and then reality kicks in and it just goes away. So I haven't tried mental training before. Uh but all I can say is that I think athletes become so much better when they actually start training their mind more than actually they train their body, like they should be training their mind constantly.

mind that controls everything I would tell them to definitely do it, especially if they want to up their game as an athlete. But not only that if they just wanna up their way of living because I haven't only used the five minute flow for training. Actually, I'm doing math right now and I'm, I used to be really bad at math and I used to fail my exams. So now I did it, but I use the same concept as the five minute flow and I recently passed my exam. So, so it helps that it doesn't just help you in training, it helps you outside as well. It makes you happier because you're not only training for your sport, you can also train your mind with this. Just the fact that you start being more positive and you're gonna, you, you, if you're more positive, you're gonna see more opportunities.