Madness Mindset

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It's one of the most exciting sports events of the year. Brackets are being filled in, friendly wagers placed, and alma mater pride proudly donned in anticipation of a Cinderella story.

March Madness is finally here.

As a psychologist, I've always found March Madness to be one of the more dynamic events we get to see. It's essentially a series of sprints at the end of a marathon. The season has gone on for several months now, over 30 games have been played, and teams have to gear up for one final run to try and win it all.

Here's what I think that final run might need from a performance psychologist's perspective and how I might go about implementing the key principles.

Competition planning

No plan survives first contact, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't make one.

A big part of getting through this tournament is having a plan for how you want to manage:

• Each opponent

• Energy between games

• Travel

• Rest

• The playbook

And several other facets of the game.

This includes having a plan for what you want to fall back on when, inevitably, you encounter some adversity. Maybe the game plan doesn't work as drawn up, or one of your best players gets injured. While it's not always pleasant to dwell on some of these ideas, creating plans for the games themselves and for some reasonable adversities can help you gain a greater sense of control heading into the tournament. The last thing you want to be doing is drawing up big plans on a whiteboard during a timeout or halftime.

How:

• Identify the top 3 challenges you expect to face during the tournament. Then, come up with a plan to address them in practice, with a specific series of steps you'll take if you do encounter that challenge.

• Make sure that the routine you do mimics, as closely as possible, your regular season routine.

• Come up with a plan for rest and recovery, and communicate that to everyone.

• Practice the parts of the system/playbook that you anticipate using most. Simplify - less is better here, since pressure and other novel elements may make executing more challenging.

Stay present

Performance happens in the here and now. Yet during this challenging stretch, our minds are going to go exactly where we don't want or need them to go. They'll be drawn to plans about the future - who you're playing next and the flights you have to take - or what happened in the past - mistakes you made or things you want to correct.

Both of these places hold useful data, but not during performance. This stretch is best taken one day at a time, one game at a time, to the extent possible.

You saw this recently with how NC State approached their ACC Championship run. Their head coach emphasized taking the games one at a time, with a focus on going "1 for 1", meaning winning each game, versus going "4 for 4" and thinking about all 4 games the team had to win.

How:

• Engage in 5-10 minutes of mindfulness training a day. A little bit goes a long way. People who maintain a meditation practice experience no attention decrements when under pressure - those who don't have a harder time maintaining their attention over time (Peak Mind).

• Give your team a target for each game. One thing to focus on (that isn't just "win") that they can anchor to throughout the game.

• Keep conversation and preparation, to the extent possible, for the game at hand.

• Come up with a strategy to redirect attention back to the game at hand if the team gets ahead of itself. For example, make a rule that says we only talk about our current opponent throughout the tournament.

Keep composed

Stress is an inevitable part of this experience. It can either help you or hurt you.

As I've written about before, stress is just your brain and body preparing you to do something effortful. It's not a sign that something is going wrong, that you're falling apart, or that there's even anything you need to do to be less stressed. As long as you allow time for recovery and frame stress correctly, it can be a competitive advantage.

When it isn't framed correctly and recovered from, stress can become overwhelming and debilitating. It can disrupt sleep, communication, and decision-making. Each of these has the potential to disrupt composure.

To stay composed then, we need to:

• Stay present

• Get good sleep

• Set high but realistic expectations

• See stress as a challenge or opportunity

If you can do that, chances are you'll keep your cool and help yourself stay grounded throughout the performance.

Build confidence

One of the reasons it's important to win your conference tournament is it gives you a big boost of confidence heading into the most important stretch of the season. Lose before you plan to, and your confidence takes a hit.

Part of the reason that hit is so significant is we tend to over-index on what's happened most recently when it comes to our confidence and overlook other data points that would be relevant to our performance. To build confidence for the tournament run, it's helpful to take a long view.

How:

• Reflecting on your signature wins during the season. What strengths did the team use? How did you pull that off?

• Talking about the opportunity March Madness presents.

• Having members of the team talk to each other about the successes they've observed in one another. What did your teammates do well, and how? What can they replicate again during March madness?

• Reflect on how much better you are at the end of the season than at the beginning. What did you develop or enhance that you can now use to excel?

In this instance, the main source of confidence we have to draw on is past success. Whatever seed you end up with, you've had some success this year to get into the tournament - and that past success is your source for today's confidence.

There are other things teammates and coaches can do in the moment of competition to compel more confidence. The first is to speak to each other favorably. Use language about challenges and opportunities, support each other, and be encouraging. There will be plenty of temptations to ridicule one another or be critical of something. Resist the urge - it's only going to make performance suffer.

The second is to prepare as well as possible. Preparation is another major source of confidence. If you've put in the work and trust that work was high quality, your confidence in your readiness should be higher and translate into greater confidence in the game.

Prepare for clutch time

It's unlikely that you're going to find flow in every game (though that would be nice). It's inevitable, though, that one of your games will come down to crunch time. Pressure to perform will ramp up, and the consequences of winning and losing as salient as ever. You'll need a formula to deal with that.

What the research suggests is that crunch time performance requires 3 clear steps:

1. Have a clear goal. In some cases, this goal might be "score 2 times and stop them on defense", and other times it might be "give 100% effort for the rest of the game." In either case, the clear goal guides focus and action for the next two steps.

2. See the stress as enhancing. Pressure-packed moments come with additional stress and pressure. That's just your brain and body getting you ready to do something important and effortful. If you see the stress as a challenge or opportunity, as a sign you care and are determined, you can use the additional energy (foreshadowing the final step) to elevate your performance.

3. Consciously increase effort. During these peak moments, you have to choose to give it your all. It's not natural human instinct, despite the pressure, to push as hard as you can. To get into a clutch state, you need to purposely push yourself to give more, almost willing your way into the right headspace to perform.

How:

• When the pressure is on, emphasize these 3 things in how the coach communicates with the team and how the team communicates with each other.

We > Me

The final ingredient here is emphasizing team performance over individual performance. Of course, heroes are born in March - but you don't want that idea detracting and distracting from the team's performance.

That doesn't mean that you won't draw plays for your best players or that you won't want certain players to have the ball in their hands in the toughest moments. It just means that all your language should be about the team and togetherness, versus about one individual contributor. 

The more the team feels that success depends on them being cohesive and together, the better the performance will be.

Of course, this list is not exhaustive or comprehensive, but it does give a glimpse into what would go into a great tournament run based on psychological science. These same principles can be used for any team going through a difficult sprint - a work team releasing a product or a military team conducting a raid - to help the team perform well for a brief, intense period before having prolonged rest and recovery.

By planning, staying present and composed, building confidence, and preparing to perform under pressure, the team has a basic formula for managing the expected ups and downs of the sprint. And, by emphasizing the team over the individual, the team members are put in a position to help regulate and elevate one another to their highest level - hopefully, to a championship.