A short Heroic Plus One podcast by Brian Johnson reflecting on his daily exercise ritual and the symbolic power of numbers. Brian describes his routine (sun salutations, pull-ups, burpees, rowing, steps), explains why he does 101 burpees in sets of 11 (plus a final 13 to reach 101), connects the number 13 to Tim Grover’s “Relentless” and Michael Jordan’s toughness, and frames luck as something one creates rather than passively receives.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. In our last couple ones, we focused on the fact that some interruptions are actually the reason for our protocols. Today I want to get back to the plus one. I started writing before I got the opportunities to hit some respond to bid and and micro moments of awesome target swipes with the kids. So as you know, if you've been following along, I do one sun salutation, ten pull ups, 100 burpees, a thousand meters of rowing and 10,000 steps every day. I've missed very few days over the last X years since I started doing it and I've always repaid any missed days. It's hard to put into words just how powerful this simple practice is for me. It's really hard to have really bad days when I dominate this simple routine. Now these days I do 101 burpees every day because I'm obsessed with the number 101. But I don't do them all at once. I do them in sets of 10, remembering Henry Ford's wisdom that nothing is particularly hard if you break it down into small enough pieces. Only I don't do sets of 10. I do sets of 11, remembering Jim Afromo's wisdom that champions do more. So every day I do my first eight sets of 11 burpees and I batch swipe them when I'm done. That's like me. Self image forging, celebrating with each target. Swipe, 11 burpees. Swipe. That's like me times eight times through. Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, Boom. That's like me. Now of course at that point I'm at 88 burpees. Then I do my final set of 13 burpees to hit 101. And I laugh every time I hit the 13th burpee as I think of Michael Jordan's mental toughness. Coach Tim Grover. Grover wrote a great book called Relentless. His book has 13 chapters in which he unpacks what he calls the relentless 13 traits of guys like Michael Jordan. Why 13? Because he doesn't believe in luck and definitely not bad luck. And that's today's plus one. Luck. It's what you make of it. Remember, as Epictetus and Harry Potter tells us, check out the plus ones. The wise hero can turn anything into gold. Let's do that today.
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