A first-person short podcast episode by Brian Johnson recounting a weekend chess tournament with his son Emerson (March 2, 2024). Brian describes their pre-match routine, celebrates Emerson’s progress (from JV to championship division), and teaches John Wooden’s idea of competitive greatness — emphasizing the two cornerstones: enthusiasm and hard work — concluding with an uplifting call to action.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. I'm typing this at 10:22am Central Time on Saturday, March 2, 2024. Emerson just won his first match in this year's Texas State championship. Last year he won the JV division. This year he's in the championship division. As I've said many times before are just the boys. Weekend trips to his chess tournaments are tied for first as my absolute favorite thing in the world. Nothing beats driving a few hours with him, talking about life, then joyfully unpacking our stuff in the hotel. We move in as we bring all of our own food for the weekend, calling mommy at night so she can read to him with Eleanor before bed, then falling asleep holding hands. Now, this is our 21st tournament since Emerson started playing in them almost exactly a year ago. At this stage, we have a pretty dialed in pre match protocol. We move for 15 minutes, bang out three sets of 11 burpees together, listen to mommy's Rocky theme song, declaration, meditation, then walk in together, chest up, chin down, breathing in through our noses, down into our bellies. Calm, confident, ready to rock. Fun fact. We forgot to bring our ball for our Skippy ball workout. So I pulled off my spartan jacket and we made that the ball in the workout we just did. Then we talked about John Wooden and his pyramid of success. I told Emerson about Coach Wooden and how he's one of my favorite heroes. Then I told him about the summit of his pyramid, competitive greatness. I celebrated Emerson's competitive fire and his ability to show up as his best when it matters most. And I also celebrated his true love of the battle, the two elements Wooden says make up for competitive greatness. Then we talked about the two most important cornerstone blocks to the pyramid of success, hard work and enthusiasm. Technically, Wooden calls hard work industriousness, but when in doubt, and I want to explain it to an 11 year old, I like to simplify it. So we went with hard work. Now I celebrated his incredible enthusiasm and hard work and made the connection on how his consistent joyful effort is what has led to his incredible improvement in performance. Then I quizzed him a few times during our workout to see if we could make it stick. And I just asked him right now, hey, what are the two cornerstones of competitive greatness? He says, enthusiasm and hard work. You asked me like five times, so now I know. Me. Ha. Repetition is what it's all about. Nice work. That's today's plus one. Me to you. What are the two cornerstones to competitive greatness? You enthusiasm and hard work. Me? Exactly. Nice work. Today's the day. It's time to work hard and put our hearts into everything we do. It's day one. We're all in. Let's go.
