Boston Red Sox

‘Engraving’ your style for the long haul

October 11, 2023 by C.J. Stewart

In his book, “Mental Toughness for Young Athletes (Parent’s Guide),” Troy Horne talks about engraving techniques.

When I was eight, I fell in love with baseball. I’d watch Chicago Cubs baseball games on WGN, and then I would go outside and mimic my favorite player, Gary “The Sarge” Matthews. I copied his stance with every rock that I hit over the fence using a broomstick. I really thought I was playing in Wrigley Field.

In my teens, I wanted to “Be Like Mike.” I learned how to walk like Michael Jordan. I shaved my head bald like him and shot jumpers for hours trying to play like him.

This is what engraving is all about. It is a missing important part of development for a lot of baseball players today.

There are three major learning styles that includes:

Visual – I need to see it being done
Auditory – I need to hear it and discuss it to get it
Kinesthetic – I need to do it

My dominant learning style is visual and I struggle the most with auditory.

As an adult, I’m not much of a golfer, but put me on a foursome with some ballers, and I regularly find success as I imitate my way to being able to play.

Here are a couple excerpts from an “Andscape” article by Hank Aaron, who I believe speaks to what engraving is:

“When I was growing up in Mobile, Alabama, I taught myself how to hit by swinging at bottle caps with a broomstick. When you don’t have a lot, you take it upon yourself to learn how to do things, to discover what you are capable of. But I never thought I was developing some kind of special talent by learning how to hit bottle caps. It’s just what we had available. My friend, Cornelius Giles, who is no longer with us, would pitch the bottle caps to me. Or I would toss them up myself. We would do this all day long.”

“The first professional baseball game I saw was when the Clowns came to Mobile when I was fourteen, in 1948. They were playing against little scrap teams that were put together from players in Mobile. I was excited by what I saw on the field, but I also had an important realization that day. I knew I could play on the same level as those guys. I could compete on a professional level.”

Engraving is not about seeing something and simply saying that you want to do it. It is sacrificially studying the techniques and tactics, and then tapping into your kinesthetic learning style for execution which requires commitment and discipline.

If I was eight years old today, here are the hitters I would mimic so that I could become great:

Ronald Acuña is extremely athletic as a hitter. Being athletic doesn’t mean that you lack technique. For me it means that you can get things if/when you don’t have enough technique.
Mookie Betts has a cool, calm and calculated mental and physical approach at the plate. His confidence makes him a viable threat to hit a lot of balls over the fence.
Bryce Harper hits with passion. He’s like a Ferrari that seems to always be tuned up and has a full tank of gas.

These men have the tactical and the technical skills.

There are seven parts to the swing and it takes 3,000 reps per part to build a habit.

Stance/Load
Timing
Tempo
Tracking
Approach
Contact
Extension/Finish

Which parts of your swing are habits that you can depend on?
How much fuel is in your athletic tank like Acuna?
Cool, calm and calculated like Mookie?
Passion like Bryce?

TUNE IN to study these men during the MLB Postseason.

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

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.

Hitting happens in the blink of an eye. Are you ready?

October 4, 2023 by C.J. Stewart

Did you know that it takes .5 of a second for an average fastball to leave the pitcher’s hand and cross the plate? That’s faster than the blink of an eye.

This means you cannot watch the bat hit the ball.

Tracking pitches is what I teach. Tracking is determining how, when and where the ball will cross the plate.

The process of tracking is a result of rapping: R.A.P.

Reaction
Anticipation
Prediction

As my hitters know, there are seven parts to the swing, which include:

Stance/Load
Timing
Tempo
Tracking
Approach
Contact
Extension/Finish

Major League Baseball players have developed skills to track. You can watch them do it this month during the MLB playoffs.

Talent is what you do well, while habits are things you do well repeatedly without thought. Skills are things you do well repeatedly without thought while under stress.

Remember: It takes 3,000 reps to create a habit and another 3,000 to convert it to a skill.

Here’s a drill to get you going.

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

The 6 core values you need to be coachable

September 27, 2023 by C.J. Stewart

Talent, habits and skills are not the same thing. When I was young, people talked about how much talent I had. Hearing it so much made me stop working as hard as I should have because I thought that talent was the ceiling. It’s important for young athletes to understand that talent is the floor and skill is the ceiling.

Talent will earn you some cheers but skills pay the bills.

There are three things that athletes should focus on developing in order to go from talent to skill:

How you get along with other players
How you handle life’s temptations
Coachability

How you get along with other players

Nobody likes being around toxic people. You know the toxic players I’m talking about. They always complain and blame. There’s always an excuse for their failure. They will always do the least amount of work in practice and games.

Being a good teammate means you will get the benefit of the doubt, care and concern on days when you are not at your best from your teammates and coaches.

As Mark Twain once said, “Don’t walk away from negative people – run.”

How you handle life’s temptations

In this social media age for youth, you can become rich and famous really quick without ever signing a professional sports contract. And the decline of mental health among our millions of youth in the US is causing many of them to make unhealthy choices.

When people are experiencing stress, being active can cause a sense of calm. After a long day of stress at work, I love to go for a jog. I have friends who play in basketball leagues and others who play golf to calm their nerves.

In a sense, playing sports can be an anti-drug for those experiencing stress, depression and trauma that choose to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol.

Skills are getting things done repeatedly without thought while under stress. That’s why it is very important that we, as coaches, are committed to being professional and helping our players level up.

Coachability

Coachability is simply the ability to learn from a coach. Before the word coach was used in sports, it was strictly used as a means of transportation. There was a horse, a coachman to stir the reins used to direct the horse, and the coach was where the passenger rested until they reached their destination.

Good coaching is about getting people where they need to be.

Being coachable means you must have at least these six core values:

Excellence – meeting expectations
Humility – not thinking of yourself less so that you can serve others more
Integrity – doing the right thing even when you can do the wrong thing
Loyalty – doing the right thing for the right reasons, even if they’re not popular
Stewardship – protector of your values and people
Teamwork – being your best within a group of people that are being their best for a specific purpose

If you do not have all six of these, you will not have a significant career as a Major League Baseball Player and you will not be a Major League Citizen either.

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

Do you want to buy the ticket or be the ticket?

September 20, 2023 by C.J. Stewart

I am a strong believer in teaching people how to think so they can teach themselves how to hit.

That was the case in my coaching relationship with New York Mets’ slugger Peter Alonso. He and I worked together during his junior and senior year of high school. He was and still is very knowledgeable about hitting.

My job was to help him to be knowledgeable about what to do next when he was not having success. My Focus Box falls under the tactical part of development.

Tactical skills deal with the mental side of things and the technical skills are the physical things.

Did you know that we are conscious of only about 5% of our cognitive activity, so most of our decisions, actions, emotions and behavior depends on the 95% of brain activity that goes beyond our conscious awareness?

This is important because based on my experience:

25% of what you do is based on what you know.
20% of what you do is based on what you don’t know.
55% of what you do is based on what you don’t know that you don’t know.

Hitters find a coach for the 20%. My hitters come to me for 55%.

Baseball players spend countless hours developing the technical parts of hitting only to never reach their full potential because their tactical cup is extremely low at best and completely empty at worst.

Here are the seven technical things that I teach my hitters:

Stance/Load
Timing
Tempo
Tracking
Approach
Contact
Extension/Finish

Here are the five tactical things my hitters must learn in order to go from having talent to skills that pay the bills:

Attitude
Awareness
Adjustments
Aptitude
Athleticism

Having good timing is a technical skill that hitters need. Having the ability to be on time with the bases loaded with two outs and your team down by three runs requires either luck or tactical skills.

The alchemy of an athlete is as important as the transformation of a tree becoming a bat. And a lot of contact with the bat can allow an athlete to have a lot of impact.

Deion Sanders building a nationally ranked football team at the University of Colorado with 86 new players is more tactical than technical.
CoCo Gauff winning the US Open at age 19 is more tactical than technical.
Steph Curry shooting jumping shots from the NBA logo and turning his back to head to set up to play defense before the ball swishes the net is more tactical than technical.
Shohei Ohtani dominating in the MLB as a starting pitcher and a top of the order hitter is more tactical than technical.

Don’t get it twisted: Tactical training can and should start early in age. It requires commitment and discipline.

Whether it is on the playing field or off of it, you will either buy a ticket or be the ticket. You decide.

He who owns the definition owns the movement.

Adjustments – the ability to do something different that will lead to success
Alchemy – transformation
Aptitude – the ability to learn and apply
Attitude – how you act
Athleticism – being able to achieve success when you don’t know how to technically do it
Awareness – how you interpret
Commitment – a promise made starting with yourself and for yourself.
Discipline – doing things that need to be done especially when you do not want to do it
Habits – things that you do well repeatedly without thought
Impact – to have a strong effect or influence on a situation or person
Knowledge – information plus experience
Skills – things that you do well repeatedly without thought while under stress.
Talent – what you do well.

What should be taught first to develop elite baseball players, technical or tactical skills?
What should be taught first to successful people in non-athletic careers, technical or tactical skills?
What are examples of tactical skills that elite players should possess?
What tactical skills did you lack as an athlete that if you had it, you would have become elite?

For more information, visit L.E.A.D. Center for Youth today. Also, check out our Digital Magazine.

If you ain’t failing, you ain’t excelling

September 13, 2023 by C.J. Stewart

Vincent Van Gogh once said, “What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?”

I am most afraid of heights and snakes. I used to be afraid of public speaking. However, lots of speaking opportunities has allowed me to embrace and enjoy it, and become effective.

The months of August, September and October are known as fall baseball months. This is when travel baseball coaches advertise that their players get to work on things for the sake of development.

It sounds like a great plan, but often is never implemented because we don’t have an understanding of development.

I’ve been coaching players for more than 25 year. In the beginning, failing to get players to reach their full potential on purpose forced me to become an avid reader and get a coaching mentor of my own.

I’ve grown to understand that development has a starting and ending point—one rooted in a mission and vision that has an evaluable outcome.

Mission – A mission is a short statement of why you are doing what you are doing, as well as the overall goal(s).
Vision – A vision is what happens when the mission is accomplished.
Evaluable Outcome – Outcome evaluation is used to identify the results of a program’s effort.

For some, the word development can be like air. You know it is there and why it is needed, but you don’t completely understand how it works.

Courage is what we do in response to our feelings of fear.

Most hitters are afraid to try new things because they are afraid to fail. I get it. But if you ain’t failing, you ain’t excelling.

Under my leadership, my hitters are committed to trying new things to determine what works and what doesn’t August through October.

I challenged them to try different stances and different loads to improve their approach to the ball, and in an effort to try to produce more power.

If they cannot be allowed three months to be innovative and to tap into their athleticism, how will they ever be able to compete at the collegiate and/or professional levels.

“The hallmark of successful people is that they are always stretching themselves to learn new things.” — Carol S. Dweck

For more information, visit L.E.A.D. Center for Youth today. Also, check out our Digital Magazine.

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How you get along with other players

How you handle life’s temptations

Coachability

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