Michigan did something unusual before the championship. Did it help them win a title?

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Brett Wilhelm / NCAA Photos via Getty Images Share full articleThis story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak’s newsletter here. Six days before the NCAA championship game, a group of staffers from the University of Michigan rolled a portable basketball goal onto the field at Michigan Stadium and set up a makeshift practice lab in the center of one of the world’s largest outdoor stadiums.  The basket looked like one plucked from any driveway, weighted down by sandbags. There, on the turf in the middle of a football field, Will Tschetter, a senior power forward, removed his shirt, grabbed a basketball and started hoisting jump shots in the sun. “I was vibing out there, man,” Tschetter said. “Felt like I was back home on the farm shooting hoops.” The mini shootaround was the brainchild of Michigan coach Dusty May, who wanted his players to get comfortable with the extreme depth perception that would await them on a basketball floor in the middle of Lucas Oil Stadium, the home of the Indianapolis Colts and the site of this year’s Final Four. As word spread through a group chat, Tschetter was joined by a group of teammates. Not everyone was sold on the idea. “We were all like, I don’t think we’re going to do that,” Michigan senior Nimari Burnett said. We can all safely assume that the session in the Big House wasn’t the only reason Michigan took Connecticut in the NCAA championship game on Monday. After a dominating performance against Arizona in the national semifinals, the Wolverines made just two three-pointers against UConn, their length and defense carrying the day. But it did make me think about the power of visualization.  May’s idea to have his players shoot in a giant stadium might sound like the corny inverse of the famous scene in Hoosiers with Gene Hackman and the tape measure, but that actually misses something deeper.  As Michigan rolled to its first NCAA championship since 1989, I thought about Jason Myers, the kicker for the Seattle Seahawks, who in February set a record with five field goals in the Super Bowl.  In the days after the performance, Myers told us about his weekly routine, which included one of the most deliberate forms of mental imagery and visualization I’ve ever encountered.  When Myers was a young kicker, he would seek out photos of unfamiliar stadiums to aid in his mental imagery practice, imagining himself kicking inside a venue in which he had never stepped foot.  “I have a rhythm for how I want to kick,” Myers said, “and I run through the same rhythm.” What Michigan was doing in the Big House, in other words, was not about its few physical reps on Tuesday. It was about creating an environment that might aid in their mental imagery until they arrived on site in Indianapolis. It was a simple way to produce a few more useful mental reps.  “That’s what makes being a player for Coach Dusty so much fun,” Burnett said, “because he thinks of the little nuances of the game, the things that you don’t really think about.” Most athletes are familiar with the use of mental imagery or visualization. Research has shown that the practice can boost an athlete’s confidence and reduce anxiety before a game. But the science behind it goes deeper than a mere psychological boost.   When an athlete creates a mental image of themselves shooting a three-pointer or kicking a field goal, it engages many of the same neural pathways used during performance, activating the motor cortex in the frontal lobe of the brain — a process known as functional equivalence.  “You’re still activating those neural pathways that you would in the real world,” Alan Chu, an associate professor of applied sport psychology at the UNC Greensboro, told me last year.  I was talking to Chu for a story about mental imagery in a tennis context. But basketball has been ground zero for some of the most interesting studies on the subject.  In 1997, a group of sports scientists and researchers in Greece published a study that investigated the effect of a “simulated mental practice technique,” or an SMPT, on a group of basketball players.  In the study, 36 high-skilled basketball players were divided into three groups and each asked to shoot two rounds of 10 free throws. In between the rounds, the first group was allowed to physically practice, shooting 30 free throws per day for a week, while the second group used a form of mental imagery; they sat in a dark room and visualized themselves shooting 30 shots per day while listening to an audio recording of their shooting ritual. The third group — a control – was allowed no practice.  The sample size was small, but the result was still surprising: the group that used visualization and mental imagery actually improved more than those who actually engaged in physical practice. The third group saw no improvement.   Nobody would argue that visualization could replace real practice in the long term. But its benefits caused researchers to look further. The construction of a “mental model” for practice was that potent.  When May arrived at Michigan before last season, he had a reputation as an innovative and curious coach, always seeking out different perspectives. One of those belonged to Doug Lemov, a former high school principal and education expert who had authored the book, “The Coach’s Guide to Teaching.” Lemov told May about the importance of perception to athletes.  To understand how an athlete thinks, it’s usually best to start with what they see. Half of the human brain is dedicated to vision. As Lemov wrote in a chapter dedicated to perception, “the brain perceives more of what it perceives often, and an early advantage in perception—a better mental representation—compounds over time.” But when it comes to creating models for mental imagery, Chu, the professor, said the most effective are vivid recreations that include multiple senses. If you are a basketball player, for example, you might imagine the smell of popcorn in the air as you visualize yourself shooting from the corner of Lucas Oil Stadium. The more detailed the image, the more useful the mental imagery.  In other words, shooting a few shots in Michigan Stadium might be a useful endeavour. The experience should offer a piece of information that could aid in a mental imagery of what it’s like to play in the Final Four. If nothing else, May said, it would be quite the memory.  So it was on Monday night. Michigan was prepared for the moment, confident, talented, and embracing the nuances, the things they hadn’t thought about before. They hoisted the national championship trophy, confetti dropped and the celebration raged.  That, too, was exactly how they imagined it. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Rustin Dodd is a senior writer for Peak, The Athletic's new vertical covering sports leadership, personal development and success. He joined The Athletic in 2018 after nine years at The Kansas City Star. Follow Rustin on Twitter @rustindodd