Setting your sights on success in the new year

In the world of baseball, success isn’t merely a product of talent; it’s a culmination of talent, habit,  and skills meticulously crafted through dedication and repetition. Let’s dissect these components and explore the journey from raw ability to refined expertise.

Talent is the foundation. It’s the innate ability; the gift that sets you apart. But talent alone is not enough; it’s the starting point. In the realm of baseball, it could be the natural swing or an instinct for timing. Recognize your talents, embrace them, but understand they’re just the seeds waiting to sprout.

From November through January, baseball hitters engage in a ritual of repetition, building habits through tens of thousands of reps. Habits are what you do well repeatedly without conscious thought. Whether it’s perfecting the stance, mastering timing or honing the approach, each repetition contributes to the formation of habits.

February through April marks the transition from habits to skills. Training introduces positive stress or eustress, replicating the pressure of a game. Skills are the culmination of doing things well repeatedly without conscious thought, even under stress. It’s the refined execution of a perfect swing in the bottom of the ninth with the game on the line.

Reflecting on the journey, there is a profound irony in the compensation of skilled players. In the past, they had to wait until reaching the Major Leagues to get paid. Now, high school and college players in Georgia can earn from their name, image and likeness. A stark contrast to my own experience as a 14-year-old cutting grass and washing cars to afford the latest Michael Jordan shoes and Cross Colours Hip Hop gear.

Breaking down the swing into seven parts—Stance/Load, Timing, Tempo, Tracking, Approach, Contact, and Extension/Finish—reveals the intricacies. It takes 3,000 reps per part to build a habit, totaling 21,000 reps. Another 21,000 reps are then invested to transform that habit into a refined skill.

Lack of commitment and discipline is the Achilles’ heel. On and off the field, skill demands unwavering dedication. It’s the commitment to those 42,000 reps, the discipline to persevere through setbacks and the resilience to evolve into a skilled player.

In the end, the journey from talent to skill is a process, not an event. Embrace your talents, cultivate habits with diligence and elevate them into skills through intentional training. It’s not just about swinging a bat; it’s about mastering the art with a commitment that transcends talent and transforms habits into skills, both on and off the field.

Hitters, gear up for a transformative challenge.

In the days left this month, dive into my decade-old bat control drill. Aim for 500-1,000 reps to solidify those habits.

February to May – Take It Up a Notch

Ramp it up to 1,000 reps monthly. Challenge yourself to hit between the cones with your eyes closed, aiming for a 70% success rate.

Document your progress, share the highs and lows. Let the community witness your evolution from habit to skill.

The ball is in your court. Are you up for the challenge? Swing for the fences and let’s master this together.

For more information, visit L.E.A.D. Center for Youth today.

If you found this inspiring and thought-provoking, or if you have any questions, comments or concerns, add me on Discord and let’s go deeper.

C.J. Stewart has built a reputation as one of the leading professional hitting instructors in the country. He is a former professional baseball player in the Chicago Cubs organization and has also served as an associate scout for the Cincinnati Reds. As founder and CEO of Diamond Directors Player Development, C.J. has more than 22 years of player development experience and has built an impressive list of clients, including some of the top young prospects in baseball today. If your desire is to change your game for the better, C.J. Stewart has a proven system of development and a track record of success that can work for you.

Finding (and keeping) a tried and true routine

When I was a kid, I thought talent was the ceiling. And when I became a man, I realized it was the floor. Talent is what you do well. Habits are what you do well repeatedly without thought. Skills are what you do well repeatedly without thought while under stress.

In 2024, we need millions of boys in America to develop good habits.

A habit is divided into three parts:

  1. Cue – a signal for action
  2. Routine – a sequence of actions regularly followed
  3. Reward – a thing received for achievement

We have a generation of boys in America who can easily determine their value by their baseball ranking, Instagram likes and YouTube views. I get it because I was the same way back in the day.

Abhijit Naskar once said, “Those who focus on attention never attain ascension, those who live for ascension don’t have time for attention.” Boys seeking attention is the cue and they need a tried and true routine.

  • Excellence – meeting expectations
  • Humility – not thinking less of yourself while thinking of others more than yourself
  • Integrity – doing the right thing even when you can do the wrong thing
  • Loyalty – unwavering commitment
  • Stewardship – protection of values and beliefs
  • Teamwork – individuals working at a level of excellence for a specific goal

The reward for having these sacred six means you are not arrogant, selfish, greedy, egotistic, self-centered and self-regarding, and can be on track to becoming a benevolent Major League Baseball Player and/or a Major League Citizen.

Here are five questions you should answer each day using your written or voice memos on your mobile phone that can help you be the best you:

  1. How does it feel to be me?
  2. What do I need to do today?
  3. How will it help others?
  4. What is the negative voice in my head telling me about what I need to do today?
  5. Why won’t I give into that negative voice today?

In the words of former NFL wide receiver and Hall of Famer Jerry Rice, “Today I will do what others won’t do so tomorrow I can do what others can’t.”

For more information, visit L.E.A.D. Center for Youth today.

If you found this inspiring and thought-provoking, or if you have any questions, comments or concerns, add me on Discord and let’s go deeper.

C.J. Stewart has built a reputation as one of the leading professional hitting instructors in the country. He is a former professional baseball player in the Chicago Cubs organization and has also served as an associate scout for the Cincinnati Reds. As founder and CEO of Diamond Directors Player Development, C.J. has more than 22 years of player development experience and has built an impressive list of clients, including some of the top young prospects in baseball today. If your desire is to change your game for the better, C.J. Stewart has a proven system of development and a track record of success that can work for you.

The power of making each day count

(L-R) Kelli, Mackenzi, Mackenna and C.J. Stewart at the Dec. 12, 2023, inaugural evening with Michael Vick to kickoff the Achieving Vicktory Foundation.

Michael Josephson once said, “Approach the new year with resolve to find the opportunities hidden in each new day.”

This past year has been really good to me. I have accomplished a lot with the support of so many people. Success, plus a commitment to serving others equals significance. Success is so important because you cannot give what you don’t have.

My life mission is to be significant by serving millions and bringing them into a relationship with Christ, starting with my wife, Kelli, and our daughters, Mackenzi and Mackenna.

There are 11 days until the new year hits, so that means there are at least 11 things I am in prayer about for 2024:

  1. Launch a worldwide baseball coaching certification with an emphasis on the development of Black boys and Black coaches in baseball
  2. Run my first Atlanta Track Club PNC Atlanta 10 Miler
  3. Raise more than $3 million for LEAD Center For Youth
  4. Travel to more than 25 of the 159 Georgia counties to be inspired for the innovative work required of me
  5. Witness our youngest daughter, Mackenna, sign a collegiate tennis scholarship
  6. Witness our oldest daughter, Mackenzi, lead our inaugural cohort of “LEAD Center For Youth Lady Ambassador Tennis Program” participants
  7. Purchase a home in the Atlanta city limits
  8. Vacation on the continent of Africa with my wife, Kelli, and daughters
  9. Watch the Atlanta Braves win the World Series
  10. Journal daily
  11. Be a committed and faithful spiritual agriculturalist by way of Elizabeth Baptist Church

This is just a short list of things I want to do. The key is it getting done because God has ordained it.

If it is His will, it is His bill.

I know that it is from God if it passes the fruit of the Spirit test: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

When all nine of these things are in place, I know that I am in the right place for the right purpose and the right people. Then I need to make sure that I am competent and care about and have the capacity for the task at hand.

All things and all people are important, but nobody and, I mean nobody, has the capacity to care about everybody and everything to the point of making things happen.

In the end, whatever I do, I want the credit so that my God can get the glory.

“I want the credit if I’m losing or I’m winning.” — Kendrick Lamar

  • What are you in prayer about for 2024?
  • What do you care about to the point that you feel the need to make sacrifices of your time, talent and treasure?
  • Who do you care about to the point that you feel the need to make sacrifices of your time, talent and treasure?

For more information, visit L.E.A.D. Center for Youth today.

If you found this inspiring and thought-provoking, or if you have any questions, comments or concerns, add me on Discord and let’s go deeper.

C.J. Stewart has built a reputation as one of the leading professional hitting instructors in the country. He is a former professional baseball player in the Chicago Cubs organization and has also served as an associate scout for the Cincinnati Reds. As founder and CEO of Diamond Directors Player Development, C.J. has more than 22 years of player development experience and has built an impressive list of clients, including some of the top young prospects in baseball today. If your desire is to change your game for the better, C.J. Stewart has a proven system of development and a track record of success that can work for you.

The transformation from good to great

L-R: André Paris, Roy Cogdell and Tre’ Hampton

Iris Murdoch once said, “We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.”

I have been coaching for more than 25 years and can attest, like millions of others, that coaching is rewarding. It often starts with helping players discover reality through hard work, success, failure and sacrifice.

Coaching is about being transformed, and transformation doesn’t always feel good to me as an adult. And I know it doesn’t always feel good to my young hitters.

I have discovered that when transformation leads to triumph for those I have coached, it is because I have accepted the task, and I have the tools and the time.

I recently fulfilled a task of cleaning the yard and putting up Christmas lights for an Atlanta Grove Park Community resident. I had the help of L.E.A.D. coaches Andre Paris and Tre’ Hampton, Grove Park Foundation Executive Director Gavin McGuire, and Grove Park Foundation Volunteer and Community Engagement Manager, Roy Cogdell.

The yard had more leaves than I’ve seen in a long time. It took us three hours. We needed three leaf blowers, two push brooms, one leaf vacuum and several bags.

What if the task allotted three-hours, but we only had a couple rakes, two people, love in our hearts and a don’t quit attitude.

Task. Tools. Time.

Transformation takes time. November through January is the time of year my hitters commit and discipline themselves to build habits and strength.

Talent is what you do well. Habits are what you do well repeatedly without thought. Skills are what you do well repeatedly without thought while under stress.

There are seven parts of the swing and it takes 3,000 reps to build a habit. That’s 21,000 reps to build a habit each year and another 21,000 reps to convert the habit to a skill.

  1. Stance/Load
  2. Timing
  3. Tempo
  4. Tracking
  5. Approach
  6. Contact
  7. Extension/Finish
Do you want to be elite?

February through April is the time we convert habits to skills, while May through July is the time to maintain skills during national/international competition.

Here are a few tools that I use to develop my hitters.

Tanner Tees 
Duraband 
Dartfish 

As Jeff Duntemann says, “A good tool improves the way you work. A great tool improves the way you think.”

For more information, visit L.E.A.D. Center for Youth today.

If you found this inspiring and thought-provoking, or if you have any questions, comments or concerns, add me on Discord and let’s go deeper.

C.J. Stewart has built a reputation as one of the leading professional hitting instructors in the country. He is a former professional baseball player in the Chicago Cubs organization and has also served as an associate scout for the Cincinnati Reds. As founder and CEO of Diamond Directors Player Development, C.J. has more than 22 years of player development experience and has built an impressive list of clients, including some of the top young prospects in baseball today. If your desire is to change your game for the better, C.J. Stewart has a proven system of development and a track record of success that can work for you.

 

Providing direction for marginalized youth

A compass provides direction, but not directions.

I am a coach, and the players I am responsible for depend on me to provide direction. Providing direction for marginalized youth can be challenging. Thus the need for sports-based youth development (SBYD).

SBYD is a theory and practice model for direct youth services. SBYD’s counterpart is Travel Ball. A difference between the two comes down to who can pay to play.

At age 8 in 1984, I started playing organized baseball with the CYO Braves at Cascade Youth Organization (CYO), which is located in southwest Atlanta.

We had a really good team of athletic players. When I say athletic, I am defining players who have high levels of both physical and critical thinking abilities. Combined, we were able to execute and compete without having all of the fundamental habits.

While our coaches were good men, they were not former professional baseball players or professional coaches. My coaches consisted of Coach Emmett Johnson, the Chairman for the Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education; Coach Joshua Butler, an art teacher at Benjamin Elijah Mays High School; and Gus Burns, a diligent working class family man.

I remember paying about $100 to play a three- to four-month season each year that extended through the summer.

We would sell world’s finest chocolates or $1 raffle tickets for a microwave, television or stereo system. These were hot commodities back in the day.

This was the way of life for Black and white boys in Georgia during that time. White boys didn’t have private professional baseball coaches back in the 80s when I was a kid. They didn’t have indoor batting facilities.

But things started to change in the early 90s, which caused the playing field to become unleveled. Baseball was becoming a country club sport for the haves, making it close to impossible for the have nots, which were Black boys like me from the inner city of Atlanta.

I believe the Travel ball was started in 1985 with the establishment of East Cobb Baseball by Guerry Baldwin. This was two years after his East Marietta National Little League of Marietta, Georgia defeated the Liquito Hernandez Little League of Barahona, Dominican Republic, in the championship game of the 37th Little League World Series.

Travel baseball needed to be created because Guerry had a team of winners from a community that wanted to keep winning on a national and global stage.

I cannot tell my success story of playing and coaching without East Cobb Baseball. I played at ECB in the 90s trekking from my inner city Atlanta home to to the suburbs. I also coached there in the early 2000s.

My wife, Kelli, and I are owners of Diamond Directors, a baseball development company that has been providing the blueprint of success for diamond sport athletes since 1998. Our clients pay us on the high end for results. We have been a part of the travel ball tsunami, which has been crushing recreation baseball.

In 2007, Kelli, and I established LEAD Center For Youth, where I serve as co-founder and Chief Visionary Officer. We are a SBYD organization. We use the sport of baseball to help Black boys from Atlanta Public Schools grades 3rd through 12th overcome what we call the “three curve balls” that threaten their success: crime, poverty and racism.

Since 2007, LEAD has invested more than $8 million and has served more than 5,000 middle and high school Black boys, proving that Black boys living in the inner city of Atlanta do want to play baseball and use it to become Major League Citizens.

If LEAD existed during the time that I played at ECB, I would have never played at ECB. LEAD is a methodology that allows us to serve both as a compass and a directional app that helps Black boys win on and off the baseball field in their own community.

For more information, visit L.E.A.D. Center for Youth today.

If you found this inspiring and thought-provoking, or if you have any questions, comments or concerns, add me on Discord and let’s go deeper.

C.J. Stewart has built a reputation as one of the leading professional hitting instructors in the country. He is a former professional baseball player in the Chicago Cubs organization and has also served as an associate scout for the Cincinnati Reds. As founder and CEO of Diamond Directors Player Development, C.J. has more than 22 years of player development experience and has built an impressive list of clients, including some of the top young prospects in baseball today. If your desire is to change your game for the better, C.J. Stewart has a proven system of development and a track record of success that can work for you.