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Reminiscing, reliving and loving the road traveled

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Potential is not a matter of where you start, but of how far you travel. As we have explored, the original usage of the word coach was a means of transportation. Back then—and still today—a good coach is supposed to get you to your destination.

My first coach was my dad. As a kid, I had lots of different balls and we played a lot of catch. By the time I was 8 years old, I was dreaming of Major League Baseball and playing for the Chicago Cubs. I’d watch their games during the hot Atlanta summers. Then, I would go outside and hit rocks as if I was really at Wrigley Field.

My first coaches at eight years old on an organized baseball team were Emmett Johnson, Joshua Butler and Gus Burns. I played for them on the Cascade Youth Organization (CYO) Braves in Southwest Atlanta.

I remember seeing Hank Aaron at our games along with Maynard Jackson, Andrew Young, Hosea Williams, Ralph David Abernathy, and many other greats because they lived in the Southwest Atlanta community where we played our games.

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” — Isaac Newton

We moved to College Park when I was 11, where I started playing for the Old National Athletic Association (ONAA) A’s and Yankees for Coach Zach Davis. I was the new kid in town and he took care of me.

Next, I was able to play for the ONAA Pirates for Coach Godfrey Milliner, and then for Coach James Holliday on the ONAA Yankees. They knew the game and they loved us.

I met Coach T.J. Wilson my freshman year at Westlake High School. He believed in me. Within a few weeks of knowing him, he was financially investing in me to train with Denny Pritchett. I wasn’t training for fun. Coach T.J. advocated for me to have my first professional tryout with the Chicago Cubs when I was 14 years old.

Coach Dave Whitfield was my high school baseball coach at Westlake High School. I remember he made us clean our cleats and bring our uniforms to school on hangers.

Coach Hudson, my history teacher, JV football and varsity basketball coach, encouraged me to focus on baseball my high school season to help my chances of getting drafted.

Coach Derrick Stafford is an Atlanta native. We both grew up in Zone 1 Northwest Atlanta. He was a standout athlete at Morehouse College, eventually becoming one of the best referees in the NBA. He created a team called the Chico’s All-Stars in honor of “Chico” Renfroe, where I was able to play for him. He taught me how to be punctual and the importance of being prepared to play.

I was drafted by the Cubs right out of high school in 1994, but chose to attend Georgia State University (GSU) to play for legendary Coach Mike Hurst.

Saying yes to Coach Hurst meant I had to say no to another legend, Roger Cador, who has developed so many great men and baseball players at Southern University.

While I played well on the field at GSU, I was academically ineligible after my freshman year. I was able to transfer to Dekalb Junior College to play for another legend, Coach Tom Cantrell. I performed at a high level at Dekalb College, but was academically ineligible again.

I was drafted again by the Cubs. A dream fulfilled.

Sandy Alomar was my first manager at the professional level. He liked me a lot and we still stay in touch today. My professional playing career was short because I lacked the core values required to be elite.

I met Joe Logan in my early 20s. He was a former professional baseball player and had become a sought after professional baseball swing coach. He mentored me to become a professional baseball coach—not just in title, but in intentional repeatable actions. This was the start of the first business with my wife, Kelli. We called it Diamond Directors with the mission to provide the blueprint of success for diamond sport athletes.

As a teenager, I was able to get batting lessons from former Atlanta Braves starter, Terry Harper. He mentored me on being a great coach training kids of varying ages and skills levels in the East Cobb community.

Brandon Smith was another trainer I looked up to. He showed me how to convert my passion to a career.

Ed Hartwell taught me how to scout and challenged me to step out on faith and start a sports management group. I was able to advise 10 clients for the amateur draft. Six of them played in the Majors, with Charlie Culberson being my first client.

For several years, I was journaling so that I could do what was in my head in writing. My hope was that one day I could create a methodology to explain how I was able to do all that I was successfully doing. Bill Mclellan took my content and gave it a name, A.T.B.A.T.S.

Pat Alacqua helped me create a suite of services, including my Hitting Lab, which separated me from my competition. This was important because my business was dying as I tried to compete with others based on price. I had to learn that the good stuff always costs more.

Stan Conway challenged me to be more than an accomplished coach for middle class suburban youth. He challenged me to come back home to the inner city of Atlanta to serve Black boys who wanted to grow up to be me. So, in 2007, LEAD Center For Youth was established.

Thanksgiving is a time of reflection. I am indeed living a blessed life and it is because of a lot of great people that have poured into me.

I am excited about my future as well as for the game of baseball.

My prayer is that everyone is able to convert their passion into a career because it is life giving.

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.

Getting to the core of excellence

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Will Durant once said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

I define excellence as meeting expectations. I cannot make it any simpler than that. In order for me to be an excellent coach to my hitters, I must first ask them what they expect from me.

Most times, they struggle to put their expectations into words. When the words come, several have said they expect me to:

  • Be honest with them about how they are doing
  • Communicate with clarity
  • Have a process for them to follow
  • Not to waste time with them if I don’t believe in them

Excellence is a core value for my family. Because I have made it a habit of being excellent starting with the ones I love the most, it allows me to show up with others as my real self.

I am not perfect, but I do make it a habit of living a life of excellence.

Talent is what you do well and a habit is what you do well repeatedly without thought. Habits consist of a cue, routine and a reward.

A cue is a signal for action. Me being honest in love with my hitters is the routine and the reward is me having the feeling of excellence. There are times when my honesty hurts my hitters. There also are times when they have constructive feedback for me that hurts.

Commit to being excellent and building good habits as you complete your winter workouts through the end of January.

Remember, it takes 3,000 reps to build a habit. If you need to build habits for all seven parts, that’s 21,000 reps.

I teach the swing using seven parts that include:

  1. Stance/Load
  2. Timing
  3. Tempo
  4. Tracking
  5. Approach
  6. Contact
  7. Extension/Finish

Here’s a good drill for you to execute 3,000 times to improve your tempo and approach.

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.

Are you ready for the challenge to the best?

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Robert H. Schuller once said, “Tough times never last, but tough people do.”

My hitters spend August through October trying new things to find out what works and what doesn’t. November through January is when they commit and discipline themselves to build habits and strength based on what works.

For example:

Hitter A – August – October

Trying new loads that will allow him to produce power during the spring season.

Varying load types include:

  • High Leg
  • Toe Tap
  • Bat Wrap
  • Hand Drop
Hitter A – November – January

Focusing on:

  • Building a repeatable habit of a high leg load to produce more power.
  • Building hip flexor and core strength in order to repeatedly get and keep his body in position to produce power.
  • Building mental awareness to determine when he is doing things wrong so that he can make quick adjustments.
  • Building emotional capacity to remain patient while it takes 3,000-plus reps to build the habit.

Talent is what you do well. Habits is what you do well reportedly without thought, while skills is what you do well reportedly without thought while under stress.

Habit = Cue + Routine + Reward

The routine part is where most coaches start and spend the most time with hitters. We commit to focusing on making sure that your load is good along with a good approach, etc.

The reward is lots of hits and being able to do it with power.

A cue is a signal for action.

When it comes to hitting, a cue would be the different pitches that are thrown by the opposing pitcher in a game.

Fastballs are fast and change ups are slow. Curve balls have height, tilt and then depth. Each pitch is thrown strategically to prevent hitters from producing power.

So in order for my hitters to develop good habits November through January that will help them compete February through May, we cannot spend all of our time creating great routines without changing the cue—varying pitch types.

I teach the swing using seven parts that include:

  1. Stance/Load
  2. Timing
  3. Tempo
  4. Tracking
  5. Approach
  6. Contact
  7. Extension/Finish

Remember, it takes 3,000 reps to build a habit. If you need to build habits for all seven parts, that’s 21,000 reps.

Toughness is physical or emotional strength that allows someone to endure strain or hardship. It definitely takes toughness to commit and discipline yourself for three months to build habits and strength.

I define discipline as doing the things that need to get done especially when you don’t want to do it. Many people want fame and fortune, but don’t want to be committed and disciplined to get it.

Here’s a load drill that you can commit and discipline yourself to execute to improve your habits and strength.

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.

Why you should be ‘chunking’

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How do you eat an elephant? One piece at a time. This is an example of what coaches say when we are stuck on simplistic. To be simplistic is to treat complex issues and problems as if they are simpler than they really are.

How do you find simple solutions out of complex issues? Chunking.

I believe all things that are simple start out as simplistic. Then, simplistic things must be intentionally challenged, complicated and chunked in order to become simple to do.

Chunking is a process by which small individual pieces of information are bound together to create a meaningful whole later on in memory.

Human perception relies on chunking up lots of information into smaller units to make sense of it. For example, you might use “homes” to remember the names of the Great Lakes (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, etc.) or “Never Eat Soggy Waffles” to remember cardinal directions north, east, south and west.

How many times have you heard a coach say, “Trust the process,” only for him to never tell you what the process is.

Here are a few examples of chunking that helps me coach and lead with excellence.

I have internalized our L.E.A.D. Center For Youth core values and I teach our program participants to remember them as “Every HIL Seems Tall.”

  • Excellence
  • Humility
  • Integrity
  • Loyalty
  • Stewardship
  • Teamwork

The methodology I created for our baseball training business, Diamond Directors  is ATBATS:

  • Assessment
  • Training for strength
  • Basics
  • Approach
  • Training for skill
  • Situational hitting

Systematize your stuff if you want to have success:

  • Identify all the stuff that needs to be considered
  • Make the stuff specific which will remove all the stuff that’s not necessary to do
  • Sequence the specific stuff
  • Make sure that the sequenced specific stuff is simple to do

I didn’t create S.M.A.R.T. Mapping, but I use it a lot because it is so simple. S.M.A.R.T. Goals help ensure your objectives are attainable within a certain time frame.

  • Make your goals Specific
  • Then make ’em Measurable
  • They gotta be Achievable
  • They gotta be Relevant
  • And if they ain’t Time-Bound, you will be relying on hope and chance

A good process will give you:

  • Simplicity
  • Scalability
  • Efficiency
  • Profitability

This may sound like good simple chunking for a business because it is. I challenge you to start treating your baseball and personal development like a business by challenging your coaches to coach you using a tried and true process.

As Alfred, Lord Tennyson once said, “Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.”

Complexity is the state of being complicated.

Chunking is a process by which small individual pieces of a set of information are bound together to create a meaningful whole later on in memory.

Efficiency is about removing wasted actions.

Profitability is to have financial gain.

Methodology is a system of methods used to achieve a goal.

Process is a series of actions taken to achieve a goal.

Scalability is the capacity for something to be changed in size or scale.

Simplicity is when something is easy to understand and do.

Simplistic is to treat complex issues and problems as if they were much simpler than they really are.

Systematize is to create an organized system.

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.

Your guide to ‘Progression To Performance’

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According to ScienceDirect, students with a task orientation feel successful when they apply effort and learn something new. Students with an ego orientation define success in terms of performing better than their classmates and demonstrating their superior ability to others

I created a mental model, “The Progression To Performance,” several years ago to ensure those I coach have an opportunity to become their best where they are task or ego oriented.

“Progression To Performance” starts with the players being protected by me as a professional coach. Being professional means I will:

  • Be prepared
  • Be punctual
  • Make promises
  • Keep promises

Being professional also means I have to continue to study and be trained in the areas of:

  • Learning orientations
  • Learning styles
  • Social emotional learning
  • Trauma informed methods of coaching
  • Systems thinking

Being protected in my “Progression To Performance” is followed by players learning how to participate, learning how to practice, learning how to play and learning how to perform.

Playing and performing are not the same and are as different as talent is to skills.

Talent is what you do well. Habits is what you do well reportedly without thought, while skills is what you do well reportedly without thought while under stress.

My players play games to learn but we perform to win. If you are coaching to win, do you want players that are task oriented or ego oriented? Or both?

I’d rather have both. I definitely want ego oriented players and I will commit to coaching them to use their success to serve others because that’s what significance is all about. Significance is the next level after success.

Talented players will always have a hard time out-competing skilled players. Can you imagine the number one high school baseball team in America beating a Major League team?

As coaches, we have to get our players to levels of skill so that they can perform. We have to also make sure they understand competition is about winning as well as making others better.

We play games during our regular season and perform during tournament season.

When my teams play games, winning doesn’t matter because we are there to learn. However, when we show up to perform, winning is everything.

In practice and games, I want my ego oriented players to compete with our task oriented players so that they will be leveled up to perform.

As Beth Brooke said, “Success is fine, but success is fleeting. Significance is lasting.”

What are your thoughts about this blog?

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.

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