Offensive lineman Zen Michalski rewires his game — and his brain — in new role for Indiana

To prepare for his first season with Indiana, Zen Michalski has spent the offseason doing something most football players wouldn’t even think about: eating with the wrong hand.

The Ohio State transfer offensive lineman, a natural left tackle from Floyds Knobs, Ind., has been tasked with a full football identity shift. Instead of protecting the quarterback’s blind side, as he’s done his entire career, he’s been asked to flip to right tackle — a move he compares to teaching yourself to write with your non-dominant hand.

“After a certain amount of time your body is programmed a certain way. Your hips, your hands, eyes — just the way that you set, walk and do everything,” Michalski said Thursday after practice. “The best way to describe it is trying to write with your non-dominant hand.”

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For Michalski, that has meant an offseason of literal rewiring. Once he learned from offensive line coach Bob Bostad that Indiana wanted him at right tackle, he started intentionally shifting daily habits to his right side.

That meant picking up his phone with his right hand. Eating with his right hand. Even attempting to scribble a few words with it. The little things became part of a larger effort to train his body and mind for the other side of the offensive line.

“I really tried to active the other side of my brain,” Michalski said. “That stuff sounds dumb, but I think it helped me out a lot.”

The 6-foot-6, 310-pound redshirt senior didn’t see much action in four years at Ohio State, where his time was largely spent on special teams. A change of scenery in Bloomington gave him the opportunity for a bigger role, but it also came with the challenge of mastering an entirely different stance, rhythm and muscle memory.

Michalski admitted he had only dabbled at right tackle before, briefly in the spring of 2023 at Ohio State. Otherwise, his football life — from Floyd Central High School through his Buckeyes tenure — was built on the left side. Spring practices with the Hoosiers became a crash course in flipping that instinct.

And early on, the switch didn’t come easy. Every set, every first step, every hand placement felt unnatural. But repetition wore down the awkwardness.

“Towards the end of spring ball, it started make more sense and feel more natural,” Michalski said. “It’s about getting out there and doing it as many times as possible against real guys.”

That daily grind, combined with Bostad’s detail-oriented coaching, helped ease the transition.

“With Coach Bostad’s coaching and the way that he goes about stuff has made it very easy,” Michalski said. “It’s been a better transition than I thought it would be.”

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By the end of spring, the lefty who joked that he was “getting there” at actually writing with his right hand had gained confidence in the switch.

The reward for all the rewiring is opportunity. Entering the 2025 season, Michalski is expected to play a pivotal role on Indiana’s offensive line — protecting quarterback Fernando Mendoza and carving space for a backfield full of options.

It’s a role that required Michalski to break years of habit, to think differently and even to live differently. Now, after months of forcing himself into right-handed life, the Hoosiers’ new tackle looks ready to make the other side of the line his home.

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