The greatest factor on your road to greatness - regardless of your endeavor is your MINDSET.
In order to be great at something, you need to give extraordinary effort for a sustained period of time. Constantly training when others are not.
To that end, one former Hard 90 player who just signed his letter of intent to play at Stanford in 2020 started training in baseball at the age of 9. This player has been training his hit/hit for power tool 5 days a week 48 to 50 weeks a year for the last 9 years - that is 2,250 hours of hitting practice. (Not to mention the work he put in on the other 3 tools of baseball.)
You need to build a team of coaches, teammates and supporters that know your dream and consistently support you in your effort to achieve it.
Our former player headed to Stanford sought out a team of world class coaches that put forth a winning regimen of training and provided the encouragement and accountability necessary to achieve greatness. All the while his parents supported this effort through incredible dedication of time and money for baseball training, strength and conditioning workouts and travel team play that included several national trips each year to play the best competition.
You need to willingly tackle obstacles that seem insurmountable that few would dare to put in the work to overcome.
Spend 5 minutes with our Stanford bound athlete and you know he thrives in adversity. This mindset was developed over years of training and playing under pressure surrounded by a team that did not make excuses - you were either going to win or you were going to get better.
You need to have the humility to own your setbacks and learn from your mistakes.
Finally, the road of our Stanford player was paved with learning through losses. Early days our players game was fraught with fielding errors. Never was an excuse made regarding the competition, field conditions, etc. - each error was met with an insatiable work ethic to get better.
In early 2019, the team at Hard 90 Baseball came across The Young Champion's Mind written by former SF Giants Sports Psychologist Jim Afremow. This book provides great detail in developing a mindset that allows athletes to accomplish great things. The team at Hard 90 Baseball recommends this book to all athletes (and their parents) that aspire to be great.
Today - athletes at Hard 90 Baseball will start their review of The Young Champion's Mind. These athletes will articulate their personal baseball dream in writing and review Chapter 1 of the book including knowing where you are going and setting up an environment where you achieve daily tasks consistent with achieving your goal.