The Three Protocols: Bubble Wrap, Out in the Wild, Paying the Price (Heroic +1 #1,975)
17 Dec 2025 · 6 min
Brian Johnson presents a podcast episode describing three protocols for elite performance used in the Heroic Elite program: the Bubble Wrap protocol (highly controlled, restorative days), the Out in the Wild protocol (how to perform within everyday constraints), and the Paying the Price protocol (deliberately pushing limits to serve others). He uses anecdotes (living in Bali, serving sailors on the Dwight D. Eisenhower) and Oura/Aura sleep and cardiovascular metrics to illustrate trade-offs, and closes with a call-to-action to join Heroic Elite and explore Heroic.us resources. Michael (Heroic president/head coach) provides brief praise and promotion of additional resources.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. This morning I woke up, put my oura ring on the charger and brushed my teeth. I worked about 13 plus hours yesterday and didn't shut down until 8pm, which is late for me. So I expected to see some paying the price data. But I was pleasantly surprised to see some bubble wrap data. And that's what we're going to talk about today. More specifically, I want to chat about the three protocols we're going to help you define and dominate in our new heroic elite training program. The Bubble wrap Protocol, the out in the Wild protocol, and the Paying the Price protocol. First, we have what I like to call the bubble wrap protocol, where nearly every variable is nearly perfectly controlled and you can pretty much crush your equivalent of a masterpiece day. For example, when I'm in pure philosopher's mode and the team is running the bizarre and wifey is running the fam, I can pretty much execute a perfect day of seven hours of deep work, 10 hours in bed, an hour of zone two, an hour of meditation, etc. And my aura and sleep numbers reflect that, by the way. You want to know something Alexander and I laugh about all the time. The year we spent living in Bali before we had kids. You know how many massages we got in the first six months? 180? Yep. One a day. Our joke. You know what our skin looked like, like we were 10 years old. That's the ultimate bubble wrap. Now, we could still be living in Bali or the equivalent of that. You know why we aren't to be blunt? Because that's not heroic. To adapt George Bernard Shaw's immortal quote, which we'll talk about tomorrow. I. I don't want to be saved. I want to be spent longer. Chat about my allergy to how some longevity gurus, including one with my name, overplay the radiant skin game and miss the fact that no one cares what your skin looks like or how long you live. At the end of the day, of course, we want to increase your lifespan and health span. But ultimately the question isn't about how young you look. It's about how useful you you've been. It's about figuring out how we can get your energy to heroically elite levels so we can focus it on what's important now and you can show up most fully in your work and your love period. Which leads us to the next two protocols. Out in the Wild and Paying the Price. Your out in the wild protocol is what you're going to live in the vast majority of the time. It's when things aren't perfectly bubble wrapped and life is happening in real time. We need to know how to flex our protocols and show up within the constraints of our reality. Note one of the common comments in the intake form we had for Heroic Elite. Thanks again was how does a normal person with an 8 to 5 job and a family etc. Crush it? Well, we'll show you how. And then beyond the out in the wild protocol where you do your best to architect masterpiece days within the challenges of your everyday life, there's another protocol. We call that paying the price. This is where you deliberately redline it a bit and do what you need to do to give your greatest gifts to the world. Now I got goosebumps typing that as I thought of Alexandra sacrificing her sleep for the kids while I swept to do my best serving you. That's heroic. No one will ever know she didn't collect 1 million Instagram followers doing it. And that's heroic. Now for me, for example, I'm in my pay the price mode when I say yes to flying out to the Red Sea to serve the 5000 heroic warrior sailors on the Dwight D. Eisenhower. My sleep sucked on the red eye out, my aura readiness sucked. And that was perfect. I was more concerned about being of service than making sure my numbers or my skin looked good. Note my typical cardiovascular age according to Aura is nine years below my biological age and that will go down to seven or seven and a half in a week of paying the price living. In other words, I get older cardiovascular. Just a week of paying the price. Perfect. Then what do I do? I try to get back into as close to a bubble wrap recovery mode as I can when I get back and repay the sleep debt and repay the HRV debt, etc. Why? So I can do it all over again. That's what we think it means to be Elite. We decide what we want and how we want to serve. We decide what price we're going to need to pay. Then we embrace the idiosyncratic constraints of our lives and get big busy. Pan it all day, every day. Especially today. Little P.S. here. If you haven't learned more about Heroic Elite, check it out. Heroic US Elite. You can sign up and join us. We're kicking off class cohort one of Heroic Elite soon.
What's up? This is Michael, president and head coach at Heroic. One quick note before we go A I just think it's so amazing that Brian keeps reading all these books and distilling them into more wisdom in less time. By the way, thank you Brian for continuing to read the books distill them for us. I love not having to read the book, just getting them more wisdom in less time through the plus ones of Philosopher's Notes. And if you're into this kind of thing, expressing the best version of yourself and using your greatest gifts make a positive impact on the world. Make sure you head to Heroic Us to check out all the other resources that we have available to you. You can download a bunch of free goodies including Philosopher's Notes, masterclasses and our scientifically proven Heroic app. You can also explore advanced resources to help you go next level, including live and virtual workshops, working one on one with a Heroic Performance coach, or even becoming a certified coach yourself as you master heroic performance, the fundamentals of Coaching Excellence and Heroic Coaching prosperity. Again, head to Heroic Us to get the ancient wisdom, modern science and practical tools you need to activate your heroic potential and and change the world together. And please do hit subscribe, Appreciate you have a fantastic day and see you again soon.
More from Brian


What's THE Most Creative Act in the Universe?: Turning Around Glitches (Heroic +1 #2024)









