Why you should be ‘chunking’

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’

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.

Where does your work ethic rank?

“Problem is, y’all got league dreams with a backyard work ethic. And your parents applaud it.”

This may be one of the most convicting quotes I’ve ever read. Convicting people hurts. But being made to feel guilty is worse. Conviction empowers people and guilt paralyzes.

How does this quote land on you?

It made me say ouch.

As early as 8 years old, I began dreaming of playing professional baseball as a Chicago Cubbie. I was drafted twice by the Cubs and eventually signed. I did not have the long lasting and significant career I dreamed of because my work ethic tank was not full.

There are six core values you must have in order to be a Major League player as well as a Major League Citizen.

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

When it comes to coaching, many people refer to me as a maven, and I humbly and unapologetically accept this because I have put in the work.

Let’s talk about participation, performance and parenting.

Participation does not require skill. To participate, you simply show up as you. In sports, participation is all about having fun.

Performance requires people to get things done repeatedly without thought while under stress.

According to verywell family, there are four types of parenting:

  1. Authoritarian
  2. Authoritative
  3. Permissive
  4. Uninvolved

My wife, Kelli, and I have two daughters, Mackenzi and Mackenna. Both are awesome tennis players. Mackenzi, 22, is a grad student at Georgia State University playing on the tennis team.

Mackenna, 16, and aspires to become a professional tennis player.

Both were introduced to tennis at an early age and began receiving professional coaching as early as age 5 and competing in matches as early as age 7.

I believe Kelli and I parent with an authoritative style. We realize we are privileged enough to have the emotional and mental bandwidth to choose this style due to our financial and social capital.

And that’s why it is important for parents to join the right sports based youth organization or Travel program because support must extend outside of the household in order for kids’ dreams to become a reality.

With that said, participation earns you trophies and performance pays bills.

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.

 

‘Engraving’ your style for the long haul

Ronald Acuña

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:

  1. Visual – I need to see it being done
  2. Auditory – I need to hear it and discuss it to get it
  3. 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.

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

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:

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

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.