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Scot: Troy. Hi, Troy.

Troy: Hi.

Scot: What's going on, Troy? Are you my bro', Troy?

Troy: Yeah.

Scot: Seem to have some sort of an accent all of a sudden. What's up, Troy? Bro.

Troy: I don't know what that accent is.

Scot: I don't either. Not anybody I'd want to meet. "Who Cares About Men's ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½?" providing information, inspiration, and motivation to better understand and engage in your health. So you feel better today and in the future. You know what we're looking for around here? Troy knows what we're looking for around here. We're looking for guys who are proud to say they care about their health and they don't care who hears about it. My name is Scot. I am the manager of thescoperadio.com, and I care about men's health. And I don't care, I'm proud to say that.

Troy: You're proud. I love it. I'm Dr. Troy Madsen. I am an emergency physician at the University of Utah, and I also care about men's health.

Mitch: I'm Mitch Sears. I am a producer at The Scope Radio, and I also care about my health and I'm proud about it.

Scot: How many episodes into this are we and we still haven't convinced Mitch?

Troy: Convinced Mitch. Mitch is back with us though. That's the best part of this, even though Mitch isn't convinced that he cares about his health yet. He's back with us on the show. We've missed you, Mitch.

Mitch: Oh, I'm glad to be back. I've missed you guys.

Scot: Now that he's back, we can have some influence. Maybe that's what it is. It's like prescription medication. He's been off of it for a while and he hasn't been, you know, now that he's back on, maybe he'll start caring again.

Mitch: Sure.

Troy: Yeah, exactly. We got to get this ramped back up again. We'll start low dose with you, Mitch, and then we'll get you excited by the end of this episode.

Scot: All right. On today's episode, we're going to talk about gifts for better fitness, not GIFs like the animated GIFs you see on Facebook and Twitter, but gifts.

Troy: Is it "giff" or is it "jiff"?

Scot: Yeah, that's a different debate for a different time, my friend. Anyway, gifts for better fitness. Each one of us have come up with three things that we think would be good for somebody who is interested in fitness or wellness in your life, or even you, you know, this might be something that you would like. I just want to share this with you guys though, first of all, and I think this kind of highlights a problem. And one of the problems that we face getting other men to care about their health or men caring about their health is because there are two camps it looks like that have been developed. There's not a lot of room for just kind of regular guys.

So I Googled gifts for better fitness. So when I Googled gifts for better fitness, here's what came up, 40 wellness gift ideas for health fanatics. Another one, fitness lovers, gym lovers, and fitness fanatics, health nuts for the person who never skips a workout.

Mitch: Oh my God.

Scot: Five best fitness gifts for anyone who loves working out. Right? So like, as I'm looking at this, I'm like this is not what I want this particular episode to be. You know, it seems like there's a lot of just . . . it's like it's reserved for only certain people. If you're not a fanatic, then there's, you know, no need for you to want to get in your wellness. It's not for a regular person. It's just for a fanatic or a nut. Did anybody else get that or is that just me?

Troy: Oh, I've felt that forever, Scot. It's like we're such a polarized society in so many ways. And it's the same thing in fitness. It's like there are more health spas and fitness centers than there have ever been, yet we have the highest obesity rate in this country that we have ever had. It's like you're either all in or you're not at all. And it drives me crazy that there's that yeah, it's like, okay, you're a fitness nut. Or it's like I can't do that. You know, it's so frustrating, but I totally agree.

Mitch: Well, one of the things that I notice all the time, either doing research for this podcast or when I was working on the 5k and I do care about my health, I'm doing that, but it's the pictures, right? You see these pictures, and it's like you're a fanatic and it's just this huge muscly dude. And it's like, "Oh my God, I'm nowhere near that." You know, it's like it's these beasts of people that over and over again, it's like, this is not for me. It doesn't look like for me. Or it's a super lean runner. It's never, I don't know, a regular guy. You know?

Troy: Yeah, agreed.

Scot: It's like there is no in between ground. Like there just is no middle ground, right? So I think that's lesson number one. We're, I don't know, just minutes into this podcast and already boom, knowledge bomb.

Troy: Knowledge bomb.

Mitch: That's why people tune in.

Troy: That is why, hey, we have over 800,000 listeners.

Scot: Just let off in your ears and knowledge bomb. There is a middle ground. Fitness is for everybody, and that's why we came up with, you know, the core four plus one more. We're not only trying to make it simple, but we're trying to make it accessible for everybody because it should be. Time and time again it has been proven that if you focus on sweating for 30 minutes a day or getting some sort of activity 30 minutes a day, focus on what you eat and try to eat more better food for you than, you know, not as good food, you work on your sleep and your mental health, that that will have benefits today and in the future.

So anyway, that is lesson number one. Let's get to the main part here. We have each picked three things for individuals that are interested in perhaps investing in one of the core four. So whether that's nutrition, exercise, sleep, or stress management, that's either worked for us or that we like. So Troy, do you want to start?

Troy: Yes. Do I just present one or do you want me to present all three of my ideas?

Scot: I think do one at a time, and if there's a reason to discuss, we can discuss. If not, we'll just move on to the next one.

Troy: It's going to be like opening gifts on Christmas morning. Each person gets to open one of their gifts, and then we'll go to the next person. So I'm not going to open all my gifts at once.

Scot: All right. Yeah, I like your idea. You open one, I open one, Mitch opens one. Okay.

Troy: Exactly. But I have tried to spread mine out over the core four. Granted they're only three gifts, but they kind of spread out over the core four. So my first gift, and I've tried to have these all gifts under $30. So pretty reasonably priced if you want to buy one or, you know, recommend or ask for one or buy one for someone else. But my first gift is a hard foam roller. This is a great gift. I think I use a foam roller every day. It's one of those things if someone is just getting into running or working out or biking or whatever it is, it seems like the biggest thing that always stops them from moving forward, as I talk to people, is the aches and pain in their legs. They get hip pain. They get knee pain. They get these super tight IT bands.

I think a hard foam roller is a great thing to do. You can give them a little bit of information about how to use it, you know, how to roll the IT band. And I think it's one of those things that's going to help people get through those initial first couple months of really starting to work out more and, you know, working through a lot of the aches and pains that come with it. I think we work out, and we forget about the stretching. We forget about the foam rolling piece. I think that's great for sustainability.

Scot: Let me jump in with the foam roller. So we have one, and not only does it help when you roll over those sore muscles and you want it to, you want to roll over those sore muscles. It should hurt. It's called sustained compression and it helps out muscle release and it helps kind of, I don't know. What else is it doing in there, Troy? Do you know?

Troy: You know, it's just breaking down a lot of those fibers that just tighten up. That's really it. It's helping with that muscle release. It's helping, you know, with the IT band, which has connective tissue to loosen it up so it's not pulling so hard on the knee and the hips.

Scot: And then the other thing you can use it for too is you can lay on it. So lay on your back on it and then get a couple of light dumbbells or something. And put your arms out at your side with your elbows bent and just it gives you this nice chest stretch, which for me is great because I'm constantly shoulders forward, over my keyboard, over my device. You know? So that really kind of stretches that out and loosens that up and makes you feel better. Good gift. What do you think, Mitch?

Mitch: I like it. I mean, I have it and when I was doing the 5k stuff, I used it almost every day after Troy talked about it all the time.

Scot: All right, Mitch, go ahead. What's your gift? Gift number one for Mitch.

Mitch: So gift number one under $30, it is a fun lunch box. So hear me out. So a lot of times . . .

Troy: I was just going to shut you up, Mitch, and say let's move on. Okay, go on. Explain.

Mitch: So whether it be a bento box or like a cool, like one that has, you know, a roll-out mat or whatever, I think that one of the big things for me, at least, especially a couple of years ago when I was working for my own business at the start is that I ate out all the time. All the time. I would go and you just get busy and you're buzzing around. And what changed for me from eating out to preparing the food and making myself a good, healthy lunch, as kind of dumb as it sounds, was looking forward to stuffing that meal, that lunchbox, right?

It's not just a brown sack. It's not just a Tupperware or a meal prep container that you just throw in a bag and whatever. But it's part of a ritual, right? It's something that you look forward to. You know your food is going to be safe. It's not going to be mush. It's going to be the right temperature, blah, blah, blah. There was something very exciting and, you know, pleasing about finding a really cool lunchbox that worked for me, and it made me excited to make myself healthy lunches.

Scot: And then as a result, you're not eating out as much. So I love that. That was a really good idea. Make it into a ritual. Yeah. You know, one of the things I've realized just off to the side for a moment is with all of these things in the core four, whether it's exercise, nutrition, sleep, what's the other one, mental health, you know, different things work for different people, right? So that lunchbox idea might not work for me, but it worked for Mitch and it might work for you. You know, for me a different way might work to get me to want to take my lunch to work if, you know, you're still going into work. So super good.

All right. There's always one of these guys at the Christmas party. I wasn't aware there was a $30 one.

Mitch: Oh no.

Troy: So you're like the $200 gift, like the GPS watch, the Fitbit.

Scot: Yeah, you bet everybody else feels terrible about it. I also don't have much of a memory apparently, because I, my number one is a kettlebell. I'm still on kettlebells. I love kettlebells.

Troy: So your gift is seriously a kettlebell?

Scot: Yeah, sure.

Troy: Just to be clear, we've now talked about kettlebells on at least six episodes. That's all right. That's all right, Scot.

Scot: So on episode 58, we had Caleb on. He talked about, you know, kettlebells and what weights to get and so forth and so on. And I went to the Bountiful, you know, the parking lot on Walgreens in Bountiful and did the deal that I found in the classified ads, because you can't find kettlebells anywhere else, except for on the used market. It's like a drug deal, except for it's for pounds of cast iron. I have a 10 pound one, and then I have a . . . hold on, about that heavy of a one apparently.

Troy: The grunting, yeah. Was that your 35 pounder?

Scot: It's not the poo. That's a 17 and a half pound.

Troy: That's a half poo.

Scot: I have the heavier ones out in the garage, but I have these two lighter ones in my office. And every hour I get up for five minutes and I do some. It might be a goblet squat. It might be an overhead press. It might be some sort of a one-arm deadlift, could be a back row. And I love it. It forces me to get up. It forces me to get the blood pumping a little bit. Sometimes if I'm working on a work problem and I'm stumped, just getting up for that 5 or 10 minutes and doing a couple exercises with the kettlebell is enough to kind of break me from, you know, getting stuck and getting back into whatever it is that I'm working on. So that is my suggestion is get a lighter kettlebell.

Now Caleb talked about the 35-pound ones for, you know, doing some heavier stuff, but like a 10-pound or a 17-pound, just to do some of those little exercises in your office.

Troy: I like it. Yeah, multitasking especially during Zoom meetings, boring Zoom meetings, pull out the dumbbell. Just keep your arms down.

Scot: Yeah. And be sure you turn the camera off because nobody wants to see you working out with your kettlebell. Although a lot worse has happened on Zoom, but we won't go there.

Troy: Much worse has happened.

Scot: Troy, gift number two.

Troy: Gift number two is a sun lamp. So these are these little sun lamps you can get that sort of simulate sunlight. I always struggle with this transition to winter. Like every year I'm like, ah, I love being outside. I love the sun. I love summertime. And there's this transition just seems to hit November where everything's dark. So now I have a sun lamp I recently purchased and I have it in my office. So it serves multiple purposes. Number one for Zoom meetings, it's good. It gives you some nice light from your sun lamp that actually looks like you've got sunlight coming in through your window instead of just sitting in a dark room.

And number two, there are proven mental health benefits of having that sort of that simulated sunlight. So this gets at the sort of the mental health piece of the core four, but it's something you can get again under 30 bucks and it's something where, you know, you can just say, hey, it's not for depression. Or, you know, I don't think you have seasonal affective disorder or anything like that. It's just great Zoom light and adds a little more light to your day as you're working in the office, going through Zoom meetings.

Scot: Just talking with my wife the other day about how our energy levels have just drastically dropped now, you know, after 5:30 when it's dark. Like we used to be able to work later at night, now not so much. So I think a sun lamp is a great idea because especially in these short, you know, the short day months that we're in. Mitch, unwrap gift number two.

Mitch: Number two, it's like the opposite of what Troy just suggested. It is . . .

Troy: Blackout blinds?

Mitch: It's a really nice sleep mask. So Troy turned me on to sleep . . .

Troy: What happens, Scot, if someone steals our gift? I'll find a new one, Mitch. Go on. It's all right. I'll find a new one.

Mitch: Because, Troy, it was last year. I don't remember if it was on air or not, but you were like, I swear you swore by sleep masks. I'm like, you know, who like my grandma, wears a sleep mask? Like I as a 30-year-old man will not ever wear a sleep mask. I got one.

Troy: I hear that a lot. Don't worry.

Mitch: I got a good one.

Troy: You did? Yeah.

Mitch: And with the $30 budget, you can get some really nice ones. I can't say any like names or anything, but there are some that they look like a brassiere and they keep up off your eyeballs. They're amazing.

Troy: They're great. That's as exactly mine.

Mitch: Right?

Troy: In my eye brassiere.

Mitch: You look like a bug, but like night and day. You know, I have a little Fitbit. I track my sleep, and it just changed everything. I have a dark apartment. It's not like it's, you know, particularly the bed, but just 100% blackout, completely changed the way I slept.

Troy: That's so great to hear, Mitch. I love it. And it's a great gift too. Let's say someone doesn't want to use it every night. Just tell them, "Hey, it's for travel." Like so often when you travel, you know, you just need something else. Just, you know, you don't have great blackout blinds or whatever. It may be wherever you're staying. It's just nice to have on hand. So it's great to hear that. I agree. I think a sleep mask is a great gift.

Scot: That's awesome that you noticed a difference in your Fitbit sleep activity.

Mitch: I did. And then on top of that, like the reason I really like it as a gift is that like it's not something like a guy is going to get themselves. I think that there is a like activation energy for getting involved in like that kind of purchase. And just to be like, here, it's a good one. It's comfortable. Try it. I think that that's really great for something that you can give to someone.

Scot: Yeah, and certain families you might want to somehow figure out how to back channel like your mom or your sister to gift that to you, because then when you open it up, you can look at all the other guys in the family go, "I don't know what this is."

Troy: "I'll never use this."

Scot: "All right. Thanks, mom, I guess."

Troy: Yeah, once you get over that initial embarrassment, it's just like, hey, whatever, I'm using it. This works. That is the point that I am at now.

Scot: All right. My gift number two is a fitness tracker. Here's my advice on this though. If you're getting it for yourself or even somebody else, buy it used. You don't need to go out and buy the fancy, super expensive ones. I feel that steps and sleep are the only two things that this fitness tracker needs to do. Well, I can't use brand names because we can't endorse anything here, but you know what they are. You probably will only be using it for a few months. My fitness tracker that I had I used, I think, for six months, eight months, and then I kind of lost interest in it, but what it did for me was it was a good reality check.

It it's kind of like, you know, weighing your food. You do that for a while and you start getting a better understanding of portion sizes, and then you don't have to do it anymore because you can just eyeball it better. So I used to think I went to bed at 10:00 religiously, my sleep tracker, my fitness tracker told me a totally different story. It told me that I was going to bed at 10:30, 11:00, 11:15. So that was useful information that helped me then put routines then to make sure that I was actually going to bed at 10:00 and not just thinking that I was.

And then it also helped me with my activity. I realized I wasn't up and moving as much as I thought I was. So again, it kind of just dialed in my perception to the reality so I was able to make adjustments. So that's why I would say a fitness tracker. I would say buy it used because, you know, you're probably going to get about six months out of it anyway, or get one and then pass it to another family member for six months. That might be another option.

Mitch: Oh, that's actually interesting because I use my fitness tracker all the time, and when I was quitting smoking, the thing I noticed was my resting heart rate. It dropped by 20, 30 points over the entire experience.

Troy: That's cool. Wow.

Mitch: So being able to see that number really changed, like how I was, you know, my recommitment to the quitting and things like that. It was something very quantitative for, you know, my experience.

Scot: All right, Troy, are you on gift number three?

Troy: I am. So unfortunately the other gift I purchased was already gifted. So I have a new gift I'm going to give, and this is more relevant to those of us who live in colder climates. But this is something I cannot say a brand name, but it's something that attaches, you strap it to the bottom of your shoe. It's kind of like tire chains for your shoe, a little something you just strap on there. It's like this rubberized thing, has these little coils on the bottom of it. It's named after an animal called a yak.

These are super useful. I absolutely love these. And I'll tell you it's multipurpose. Number one, you know, we want to be getting outside every day. Maybe you don't have a treadmill or maybe just don't like treadmills. You just want to be outside, get some fresh air, but with icy roads, snow on the ground, you're just like, hey, it's just like I can't get out there and try and walk in this stuff. Just throw these things on. They give you a great traction. This is what I run in on the winter. If we don't have too much snow and I'm just running on icy roads, they work beautifully.

Number two, it keeps you out of the ER. You know, one of the biggest thing we see so many slips and falls this time of year, especially as we start to get snowstorms, we get ice on the road and on sidewalks, people slip, they fall, they get forearm injuries, hip injuries. So it's multipurpose for your health. It's great to help keep your routine up. So you're getting out, walking every day. Great gift for people just to, you know, like I say, keep them sustaining their routine they already have in place and then keep them safe while they're out there. Scot: We have those as well, Troy. We use them when we got dogs. We'd walk our dogs in the morning and then in the evening and in the wintertime. It doesn't happen a lot here in the Valley, in Salt Lake City. But you know, you'll get packed snow or ice and it is slippery out there. And I fell one time, pretty substantially and it hurt my knee for a good four or five months after that. That was the day I went out and bought some of those. And there are different kinds. You know, there're the kinds that you alluded to, but there are a little bit more heavy dutier ones that might work for you. But they're a game changer like you say it.

Troy: Yeah, they are a game changer. You go from just slipping on roads to just great traction on sidewalks, roads, paths, whatever you're on.

Scot: All right, Mitch, gift number three. I'm so excited. I can't see what you brought to the Christmas party.

Mitch: So the last thing that I brought is, again, a really cool journal. So again, stay with me. So a journal, right, is something that is really hard for people to get into at the beginning, right? Whether it be keeping it as a planner, right? Whether it be using it to write your gratitude, whether it be whatever, it's really hard to get into it. And if someone just hands you like a spiral bound notebook, it's like I don't know if I like this. Scot, you've seen me in all my meetings. I have my little journal that I carry around. That journal is my planner. That journal is my gratitude journal. That journal is where I write my notes in meetings. It's my one thing that has everything in it.

And for me, I occasionally have anxiety. And so being able to write everything down and get it out of my head, I'm not keeping my schedule in my . . . I'm not relying on technology. I'm not looking at a screen. I'm actually writing everything down. It it's like a load off, right. It gets the ideas out of my head. And then it's really easy to start incorporating other things into a literal journal, right? Whether it be leather-bound, get yourself something nice. You know, for 30 bucks you can find yourself a really nice journal. Some of them even come pre-made, whether there are certain systems, you know, they're not a name brand, but there are certain strategies called bullet journaling. There's the five minute journaling. It's these different techniques on how to not only check in with yourself mentally, but also to check in with how your day is doing, time management, gratitude.

And, you know, it's really easy to try these systems out if you have a really cool journal that you pull out all the time, you interact with, it's yours. Again, it helps make the act of checking in with yourself, getting things out of your head, practicing gratitude, easier for me. And that's been a huge help with my mental health over the last year.

Troy: I love it. Yeah, we've made fun of it before, but I have my little planner. So it sounds like, Mitch, you kind of use your journal both as a journal and as a planner and sort of a task list. Yeah, I'm a huge believer in just being able to write stuff down, tasks, write those down so I can just put it out of my mind. I write it down. A week from now I'm going to think about this again. For now I'm not going to worry about it. But, you know, we just had the episode with Dr. Chan as well, where Scot and I talked about journaling and, you know, Dr. Chan talked a lot more about how it's a lot about gratitude and reaching out and expressing that directly to others, but certainly there's value in that act of writing down the things we're grateful for.

And Mitch, I think, as you mentioned as well, just that process of just trying to work through stuff that's on our mind and just being able to write it down and think about it I think really does a lot to relieve anxiety and get a lot of those things off our minds. So love the idea of having a really nice journal. And I think once you get that from someone you think, hey, I really should use this. Why don't I try just jotting a few things down in this?

Scot: And if you want to start journaling yourself. So one of the most valuable things I think you said right there, Mitch, is go out and find out like some sort of a system to journal, what to journal about because where do you start is difficult. I do something called the daily pages, which basically is just a free form. You write for, well, I think it's supposed to be 30 minutes, but I do it for 10. You're supposed to write for 30 minutes and you're not supposed to edit yourself. Think about it. It's not anything in particular. It's just whatever's in your head. It just gives you a chance to dump, you know, any of the toxic-ness out.

Sometimes I get sick and tired of hearing myself with the toxic-ness. So then I go, well, what else can I do? You know, what else can I ponder? And the only rule is you can't stop writing. If you stop writing, then you just start writing, "I don't know what to write," over and over again, until something comes to you.

I'm going to go ahead and give a different kind of take on that. A really nice journal might be, for some people, the thing that really motivates them to do it. For me, that's too much pressure. I would rather have like a cheap composition book that I don't go, "Oh boy, I can only put like golden thoughts in here because this is my $30 beautiful leather bound journal," right?

Mitch: I feel good. I feel good. It's like this is me time. I guess I can say that.

Scot: So, I mean, I totally get it. Like, it goes back. You like the nicer things in life. I understand that. You like nice lunchboxes. You like writing journals.

Troy: Scot, you're writing yours on like paper towels.

Mitch: This is my roll of paper towels.

Troy: Here I go.

Scot: Bar napkins. That might be an indication you've got a problem.

Troy: There's an issue there.

Scot: But yeah, find out, you know, even if it's just writing down gratitude or just getting thoughts external to yourself. I can also vouch, Mitch. I do it a little bit differently. I do it in Evernote, in my computer. They do say that there is a benefit to actually free handwriting, that there is actually an added benefit to that. I don't feel comfortable having a journal out in the world that can be floating around. So that's why I choose to use Evernote, but I can definitely vouch for the process of getting things external out of your head. I agree with you, Mitch. It makes a huge difference. It can reduce anxiety, it can make you feel better about situations, and sometimes it helps you come up with solutions that you didn't see before. So I love it.

All right. Is it my turn for number three?

Troy: This is it. This is the final gift, Scot? I hope it's a good one. I do know it's going to be an expensive one. So go on.

Scot: You're right. It is. So number three for me is something that I'll refer to as bone conduction headphones, bone conduction headphones.

Troy: So this conducts the sound through the bones in your skull.

Scot: Yeah. So instead of putting them in your ears or over your ears, there are these headphones that kind of go on the side of your head. And that way you can hear what's going on outside of your environment. So again, when I walk the dogs or run, I can listen to music or a podcast, but I can also very clearly hear cars and anything else that's out there. So not only it makes me feel safer, but the other thing is I used to have the kind that you put in your ears and every time I'd take a step, they'd make some weird noise in my ear, just from them moving around in my ears. And these bone conduction headphones don't do that. So it's not annoying to me like it used to be when I listened through regular headphones.

I think you can find them for less than a hundred bucks, but yeah.

Troy: Less than a hundred. Like they sit behind your ear or where exactly do they sit?

Scot: Oh, geez. I can't even really tell you. Let's see. So I put them on . . .

Troy: I'm going to guess behind the ear, because this is like the old tuning fork. You know, we use these tuning forks in the ER, like I don't use them. I should not say we use them in the ER. Neurologists use tuning forks, and you'll actually stick it on the forehead. Like you hit a tuning fork, you stick it on this middle of someone's forehead and you stick it behind their ear, and it measures different forms of conductive hearing loss. So I'm guessing these bone conduction headphones use that same sort of pattern where it's just conducting through the bone. As long as you don't have bone conduction hearing loss you're okay. That's cool.

Scot: The other great thing is like, even if you're out hiking and you want to have your music or your podcasts, again, you're able to hear the thing you want to hear, but you can also hear nature as well, which is nice. So they're great because they don't just shut your ears completely off.

Troy: They're wireless, I assume?

Scot: Yeah, they're Bluetooth. Yep, absolutely.

Troy: They have Bluetooth, yeah. Cool.

Scot: Wow. What a great Christmas. I'm looking around at all these gifts. And again, it's just like every Christmas I look around and I just think, oh man, just got too much, but these are all good things to tie into our core four. So I'm a little bit more okay with it.

Troy: Yeah, and who would have thought three guys could be so thoughtful? I mean, look at these very thoughtful gifts. I hope everyone appreciates what we've offered today.

Scot: Hopefully, we gave you an idea, something for yourself or something for somebody in your life that is interested, not necessarily a nut or a fanatic or a freak in, you know, just being healthier.

Time for just going to leave this here, could be something about health, could be just a random observation or thought from our lives. I'm just going to leave this here. We have a brand-new dog. He's a seven-month-old Australian shepherd puppy. And when I say puppy, I mean a 50-pound puppy. He's a big dog already. And we're working really hard with training Murphy. And he responds really well to treats, and amazingly he loves his own dog food. So that's what we use for training treats.

My just going to leave this here is every pocket of every piece of clothing now has either two or three pieces of dog food in it or dog food crumbs. So every time I reach into a pocket, now that's what I'm greeted with and I'm strangely okay with it. So there's my just going to leave this here.

Troy: Sounds like my life. Yeah, all my running shorts, running sweats, everything I reach in, there's some like a piece of a dog treat in there. I always take dog treats when I run just to reward Charlotte when she does a good job and keep her motivated. So I can understand that.

I'm just going to leave this here, Scot. You know, I had an experience recently. Laura and I were back East and were at Virginia Beach, cool place, a fun place to visit. And on Virginia Beach, they have this set-up there. So Virginia Beach, you know, it's near Norfolk. You know, it's got kind of the Navy military piece there. So the Navy, the military set up this kind of workout area there where they have all these things you can climb and different fitness challenges.

Well, there was this 20-foot tall rope there. And I was like, "I've got to climb this rope." I have not climbed a rope in probably 20 years. So I just thought I'm going to jump on and do this. And I just started climbing the rope, and as I got higher, I realized that an audience was gathering. People were actually there to watch me, watching me climb the rope. And at that point I realized I have to go all the way up the rope and I have a fear of heights. So I told myself, I am not looking down. I kept climbing and I made it and I actually made it to the top of the rope, hit the bar at the top, slid back down, got a rope burn on my ankle that lasted for two weeks after that, but it was worth it. It was worth the pride and the accomplishment of climbing a rope on Virginia Beach in front of an audience that had gathered to watch me climb the rope.

Scot: That's outstanding. Congratulations.

Troy: Thank you. That was my fitness accomplishment over the last month, so very proud of it.

Scot: Like you, we used to have a rope in grade school.

Troy: Oh yeah, we too.

Scot: We would climb that rope every once in a while. A lot of kids couldn't do it and that was one thing I was able to do, but I don't know that I could do it now anymore. I'm a little bit of a different build.

Troy: It's so funny. I know, because that's . . . as I thought about it, I thought, I don't know if I've actually climbed a rope since grade school. And it was that exact thought as I started as well. I thought, you know, I'm a different person than I was when I was 10 years old. I don't know if I can do this, but I made it up. So I was excited about that.

Scot: All right, time to say the things that you say at the end of podcasts, because we are at the end of ours. First of all, thank you very much for listening, do appreciate it. Reach out, lots of ways to do that. You can go to . You can email us at hello@thescoperadio.com. What else can you do? You can call us at . . .

Troy: Call us at 601-55SCOPE.

Scot: 601-55SCOPE, yeah.

Troy: Remember it's not 801. It's 601 . . .

Mitch: 55SCOPE.

Troy: Yeah. So be sure and subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts. If you like us, give us five stars and thanks for listening and thanks for caring about men's health.