Our number one, maybe correct me if I'm wrong, Adam, is our number one downloaded free guide, how to get big arms. I think that's one of our top ones, right? It's a top one, it's not the number one. Number one is butt, dude.  Everybody wants to have to compete. I think he goes butt, abs, arms. That's what he goes. Okay. So, yeah, that's what everybody... Build your perfect man. Yeah. Butt, abs, arms. But it's definitely a popular one. It's one I get comments on all the time. Well, I think... I just got one, in fact, yesterday. I also find that it attracts both sexes. Sometimes you think... The title, I think, is not ideal, right?  But when I think back to training clients, I got equally as many women that were asking about building their arms. They just don't use... They don't use words like, Adam, I want to get big arms. I want to tone and define my arms. Exactly. I want Michelle Obama arms. You get statements like that, but they're wanting to... Which essentially build their arms. So, like, you wouldn't use the term big. So... But when you look actually at the analytics of the guide, it's a pretty even split of both male and female that are downloading and reading. That's who I got the message from. It was a female listener, and she said she downloaded the Big Arms Guide and had been using it. It's like, I wish I knew this before. Now my arms are finally responding, because I think, especially, workouts directed towards women, they tend to take certain effective elements out. But it could be frustrating for men, too. When you are working out, one of the main areas, I think, when you're saying is developing your arms, and if they're not, insert whatever word. Building, sculpting, shaping, toning. By the way, there's all those words mean building. Same thing. All of those words mean building. If you build the muscles of your arms, they tone, they shape, they sculpt.  All those things mean building, but it can be very frustrating for a lot of people, because they follow popular workout advice, train their arms, and they make a lot of mistakes, and so it becomes a stubborn body part. It's like, my arms aren't really responding the way I want to, so I thought, why don't we create a whole topic episode on just the arms, and cover the most important things you could do to get the arms to finally respond. When I first started working out, this was definitely a focus of mine, was training my biceps and triceps, and getting there to look at, and I definitely made a lot of mistakes, I think, with my training early on. Well, I think it's really easy for bigger muscles to take over movements. When you do exercises that are for small muscle groups, the bicep and tricep would be considered small, relatively small in comparison to some of your bigger muscles, like your back, and your legs, and your chest, and so these smaller muscles are actually sometimes harder to target, because the body doesn't think this way, like if you perform a movement or an exercise, the body wants to do it with as little effort as possible, which means it would ideally recruit these bigger muscles to help the movement out, and so if you don't go into exercising knowing that, that, hey, I'm just going to perform this curl, or perform this push down, not knowing that the body will naturally want to cheat the exercise, and by cheat, I mean get help and recruit the bigger muscles to actually take it over, and this is what I, in my experience, what I found most common when I was addressing this with both male and female, when they struggle with building, sculpting, shaping whatever term you want to use, the arms, many times it's, you know, one of the four things that I know that we're going to cover in today's topic, and one of the main ones that I would see is that, you know, they were allowing the bigger muscle groups to take over the movement. Yeah, I mean it is a bit of a skill to be able to really concentrate on a specific area of your body, be able to put your body in the right position to make that effective, and I'd struggle with that a bit, too, with clients where just immediately they would have these sort of hardwired patterns of being able to move the weight, and I'd have to check them and, you know, try to get them to remain in good, tight posture and be able to hold and sustain that while they're moving the weight. That's like a foreign concept to a lot of people when, you know, what they've done before that was just I need to move this weight from here up to here, and really not considering, you know, what needs to transpire and where I need to feel that specifically. Yeah, and there's also a misconception around exercises and angles and, you know, a misunderstanding of the muscles of the arm to begin with. Like, for example, the bicep, you know, when we flex our bicep, what you're looking at is the bicep, you're looking at the brachialis, which is a muscle underneath. The bicep has two heads. Each head works a little bit differently with different exercises. The brachialis works a little bit differently with different exercises. You can train all of them and sometimes place more focus on some parts and less focus on other parts. The other thing to consider is, with angles of exercises is, where's the tension highest in a particular exercise? Is it in the squeeze or the stretch or the mid-range? Training each of those gives you more full and balanced development. The triceps has three heads to it. One of the heads is way more active at some angles than other angles. So you might be changing your hand position with your tricep exercises, but not changing necessarily the right angle to affect different parts of the tricep. And so you might end up with underdeveloped triceps or unbalanced triceps. I mentioned the brachialis. Almost nobody considers a brachialis when training their biceps. That's a muscle under the bicep. And if you develop it, it pushes the bicep out. Then you have the forearms, the flexors and extenders, which a lot of people also completely neglect. And sometimes weak forearms and weak hands can get in the way of developing nice-looking arms. Well, you just mentioned one of our four points that we're going to talk about. And I'm glad that you listed it first because this was the biggest one for me. So forever, as a young kid going to the gym, and I'm sure you guys were just like this, right? A new machine in the gym, like you've never tried out. You want to try all the machines out. All the cable tools, the triangle, the straight bar, the easy curl bar, the rope, like you want to try all these things out. What I didn't understand the importance of the position of the elbow in relation to how it works the tricep and how it works the bicep and how important that was to stimulate more growth, right? And so I found myself doing what I thought were different really exercises, but my bicep didn't recognize it as really different.   You doing that with a straight bar, a triangle, a reverse grip, a rope, and all those things is the same movement. And the tricep recognizes that way. So even though I thought I was being smart and changing it up every other week or every few weeks by changing the tool that I was holding, my tricep had already become very adapted to that movement and I have already saw most the gains I was gonna get from that and I wasn't varying the angle. You were changing the wrong things. So hand position, whether my hand is turned up or neutral or turned down affects the bicep. It does not affect the tricep. So the bicep is involved in turning the hand. So if you flex your bicep and look in the mirror right now and then turn your hand out or in, you'll see your bicep dance a little bit. It moves a little bit. And that's because the bicep, the way it attaches is it also rotates the hand a bit. So doing curls with my palms up versus doing curls with my hands facing each other versus doing curls with my hands facing down, it does train the bicep differently. That matters. Doesn't matter for triceps. Rotating my hands for triceps makes pretty much no difference. Unless it changes the angle of the elbow, it's not making any difference at all. Understanding this is really, really important. There's another part that's important to understand which is where is this exercise most difficult in the range of motion? Is it at the top? Is that when I'm noticing that most of the resistance is happening? Or is it at the bottom? In the case of a bicep, for example, a preacher curl where my elbows are over a bench, the weight is going to be heavier or it's going to feel heavier at the bottom because that's when I'm directly opposing gravity. At the top of a preacher curl, it's much easier. Well, your elbow, you got to explain that. Your elbow is positioned underneath the weight which is then positioned on the pad which is supporting a lot of the weight. Yeah, I could do a full curl with a preacher curl, hold a heavy weight and kind of balance it there and that use a lot of my muscle to hold it up there. Now, that's much harder to do with a traditional standing curl because now I'm opposing gravity directly or a concentration curl, for example. So, angles for biceps and triceps matter in that regard. Hand position matters a lot for biceps. If my palm is facing straight up versus facing in or down, I'm working different parts of the bicep. For example, I talked about the brachialis. Hand facing in or down is going to use more brachialis than if my palm was facing up. Now, triceps, elbow position matters even more. Hand position doesn't make a big difference because if I put my elbow up above my head, like I'm doing an overhead tricep extension, the long head of my tricep, this is one of the parts of the tricep, actually attaches at my shoulder blade. So now it's in a stretched position.  That exercise with an overhead tricep extension because the long head is stretched, I'm going to work the long head a little bit more than if my elbows are at my sides. So, hand position for biceps matters, so does elbow position for biceps. For triceps, it's pretty much all elbow position that matters. Now, you just gave a really good explanation of all that and if you're somebody who's, I think, you know, somewhat advanced or intermediate, like this makes sense to you, but for a lot of people that are beginning, that might have been a lot of information. So, the way I simplify it for most people, so we don't get so nuanced about it, it's just literally the elbow position. So I just say, okay, listen, if we are going to do a tricep exercise, I want to do one of my exercises, I want to do with the elbow position above my head, I want to do one of my exercises with my elbow out in front of me, and then I want to do the elbow position down by my side. So an example of that would be a tricep pushdown, a skull crusher, and then an overhead extension. You've got three angles there, that's perfect with biceps, same thing.  Am I doing an exercise where my palms are facing up and where my palms are maybe facing in like a hammer curl? But again, with elbow position, I could do an incline curl, where my elbows are behind my body.  So now you've got, because here's a deal, most workouts for arms will have more than one exercise. Very rarely will you see just one exercise for biceps, unless you're a beginner, or unless you're working out frequently throughout the week, in which case, same thing, if you're going to pick three different exercises, make them three different exercises that complement each other, which mainly should be elbow positioning and to a smaller degree hand positioning for biceps. Right, so to that point I was going to say, if you're somebody who's following like a split routine and you're doing three exercises for the bicep or the tricep in one single workout, I would vary it within that workout. If I'm following a more like full body routine, then I would just make sure that I'm varying that throughout the week, right?  Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you know, you do the elbow position by your side. On Mondays, Wednesday, it's out in front of you, and on Friday, it's overhead. So if you're doing three exercises within a workout, somebody running split, you can change the elbow positioning within that workout. If you're somebody who is running more of a full body routine, I'm going to change the elbow positioning by day, like that's the best way that I saw it. The way that they explain this back in the day, because, you know, bodybuilders for a long time observed changes in their body and tried to explain them. And they figured out a while ago that changing angles made a difference in developing their body. Now, they explained it wrong, and they would say things like, a preacher curl works the lower part of the bicep, and a concentration curl works the upper part of the bicep, and a barbell curl works the whole bicep, and hammer curl makes the bicep thicker, and stuff like that. That's not true. That part's not true. But what they were observing was that the different angles, if you combine them all in that fashion, you got better results. So this is very, very important. Pay attention to the positioning of your elbow, especially for triceps, but definitely for biceps, and then a little bit for the biceps, also hand position. This is how you should select your exercises. Don't select three different bicep exercises where they're all by your side. Palms up, dumbbell curls, palms up, barbell curls, palms up, cable curls, all with my elbows at my side, far less effective than what we were talking about earlier. That's the mistake that I was making. Forever I just assumed, because I was using a different tool, I was using a dumbbell, then I was using a cable, or then I was using a rope, but all of them, my elbow and my wrist were positioned the same way, not realizing that just because I'm, and the same thing goes for machines.  If same thing applies, just because you're on a different-looking apparatus, and it's colored different, it may feel different as far as the resistance, if your position of your elbow is the same on all those machines, you're getting a similar stimulus. And I think this actually, this goes and kind of feeds into our next point in terms of getting that full range of motion and what those different positions actually provide the full range of the ability of your muscle to contract in different angles. And so to really now take that through its full potential is way beneficial for muscle growth. Yeah, like when's the last, I think about this way, if you're listening right now, when's the last time you didn't exercise that you felt a lot of tension in the stretch of the bicep? Rarely. A lot of people don't pay attention to their bicep getting a stretch. Try doing an exercise like an incline curl where your elbows are slightly behind you and getting the biceps to fully extend. You won't, first of all, you will not be able to use nearly as much weight as you're used to. And if you don't train your bicep in the stretch position, watch what happens. I love that for that alternating. So I have one in that stretch position, and I curl and then I alternate it. Oh my God, that just kills. I remember doing this with preacher curls for the first time as a kid. I always stopped a preacher curl just short of full extension because I couldn't use nearly as much weight. And I remember working out with a friend of mine who was older, had very well-developed biceps, and he's like, dude, cut the weight in half and go all the way down and watch what happens. And it made a huge difference. Just that little, it was like an inch more range of motion. Well, I love it. So Sal took the notes for this episode. So after I looked at him, I'm like, this is great because you actually listed this in the order that I pieced it together as a kid. Yeah, same, right? No, seriously, like the very first like... First introduction, and then you start learning. No, totally. The first like aha moment was the elbow positioning. I had already spent years of the same, and I'm like, oh my God. And that was like, all of a sudden my arms responded. The next thing was the range of motion in the stretch position because, and maybe this is more of a guy thing, right? Tendency to cheat curls. Because you want to be able to say, I can curl in the 25s. It's all about how much you're doing. Now I'm curling the wheels. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, you care so much about increasing the weight on this little isolation exercise, which is ridiculous, that you tend to shorten the range of motion up and cheat the curls just so you can get more weight up. Not realizing how much you're robbing yourself of gains because you're not lightening the low, taking it through full range of motion. That was a big ego check for me as a young, insecure boy who was trying to build size on him. I was so excited to increase my dumbbell curls by five pounds or be able to throw a larger plate on my easy curl bar that I would sacrifice things like range of motion and doing things in the stretch position because it was difficult because I had to cut the weight in half in order to do it, not realizing how beneficial that would be to my gains if I just did that. Yeah, and even the squeeze. This one may be more important or I should say more neglected in triceps. Focus on that full extension and that squeeze with the triceps.  Now, I see more people being okay with the squeeze of the bicep, probably because it's like them posing their bicep. But I do see short range of motion. This is very common with triceps where people don't go all the way out, lock out, and squeeze the tricep. That little bit of range of motion makes such a big difference. People don't know that. Well, you combine these points together. This could have been a whole separate point for me because here's another thing that people tend to do. And I know I did it too for a long time, is when you do the exercise, the hard part, the positive, curling the weight up, we put so much focus on that. And then we just let it come down. And we just let gravity take over the exercise. The exact same example that for the tricep would be doing a cable tricep pushdown and you focus on pushing down on the exercise, and then you let the cable swing. No emphasis on that eccentric part. Exactly. There's no emphasis on the eccentric portion of the exercise, which is extremely beneficial. It should be around at least a four-second tempo. So learning how to squeeze the bicep at the top of the curl or squeeze the tricep when you flex and extend the elbow, and not ending there.  Boy, does that make a huge difference. Yeah, and too. And I know it's sort of back to the first point, but being able to maintain a nice upright posture through the entire time and not hunching over, especially doing a tricep extension, I see this all the time, even if they're using cables. Guys, when they get to those last few reps, they're leaning and hunched all the way down and shortening their range of motion, where the benefit there being a nice upright position, you're also teaching your body to do something that's more effective by maintaining these anchor points and being able to control your body while doing these movements. Yeah, and here's a little hack, okay? Because we mentioned angles and we mentioned squeeze and stretch. So here's a little hack, and I've just figured this out for myself and when I trained other people. Here's a nice way that I like to put exercises in order. I like to start with an exercise that I call a mid-range exercise, one that isn't emphasizing necessarily so much on the squeeze or the stretch. So for bicep, that might be like a bicep-standing barbell curl. For tricep, it may be like a skull crusher. Then I go to the stretch exercise. For biceps, that may be an incline curl. For triceps, that might be an overhead tricep extension. Really get a good squeeze. Always focus on the stretch and the squeeze, do both. And then finish off with an exercise that's really good with the squeeze. For whatever reason, following that order, the pumps are insane, absolutely insane. And I would write workouts like this for my clients. I'd look at mid-range, squeeze, exercise where the squeeze is crazy, and excuse me, where the stretch is crazy, and then exercise where the squeeze is crazy. For whatever reason, that order seems to work really, really well. But it does, and also keep in mind, that's the emphasis. If I'm doing overhead tricep extension, although I am squeezing at the top, I know that the key of that exercise is the stretch. So I'm going all the way down. I'm emphasizing the stretch and then extending at the top. And remember, there are certain exercises that lend themselves well to have a little bit of body English or where form isn't as crucial. When you're doing an isolation exercise, we're trying to isolate a part. Even though it's impossible to isolate a muscle, we're trying to as much as we possibly can. So doing a weight that you have to cheat at all or use momentum at all in it really starts to defeat the purpose of the isolation exercise. Because you cheat it and then other muscles come in to support it and help it. For doing a barbell back squat, there's so many things that are being worked that a little bit of momentum body English or if the form is slightly deviated whatsoever, you're still going to get a lot of the benefits from the movement. Where if you cheat a curl or you cheat a skull crusher and use momentum or let you like Justin was using the example of like cable push downs where people either let their shoulders roll and cave in and your chest kicks in, your delts kick in, you're getting very little work for the tricep and that's the whole point of the exercise. So taking your ego out of training arms is so crucial. They're such small muscles, it's very easy for the body to cheat the movement. So choosing a weight that's light enough that you can control and focus on the stretch and on the squeeze is so important. Yeah, and I can hear people right now being like, what about cheat curls? Arnold did cheat curls. Okay.  You cheat the weight up and then you control the descent with a really heavy weight. In fact, if you watch Arnold do cheat curls back in the day, you can tell that there was a lot of tension on the biceps and he was controlling it. You don't see that a lot, by the way. No, you don't. These days, people who cheat curl, either they do it for the videos, for the Instagram, they've already got developed arms because they've been working out for a long time and whatever. But really, if you do use a little bit of English with a cheat curl, emphasize the negative. So if you swing up a little bit, now when you go down, fight the negative on the way down. I don't recommend you do this all the time, though. I think excellent form, squeeze and stretch with control is superior 99% of time. 1% of time, you want to overload with a heavy cheat curl. Still, pay attention to the negative. Don't let the weight just fall. Otherwise, you're just training your ego. To me, that's such an advanced exercise. Yes, it is. You have to have mechanics down really, really well, understand biomechanics, understand what we're trying to accomplish to take advantage of advanced exercises like that. Otherwise, I mean, to be honest, I'm trying to remember, I mean, I definitely can count on one hand. I don't have, I never had any clients. Yeah, I can count on one hand how many times I've taught this. Like, you just, there's no need for it. You can make such great gains on your arms without ever including cheat exercises or more momentum type exercises. And that's not to say, okay, for those that are advanced lifters that are listening right now, that there's not value in it. Does that mean I've never, I've absolutely, yes, I've done cheat curls. I like cheat curls. But I also have been training for a very long time, understand what I'm trying to get out of that exercise. So for the average person that is trying to build, sculpt or shape their arms, there's not a lot of value here until you become more of an advanced lifter. Absolutely. Now the next one, this one really moved the dial for me when I really figured this out. And that was to train my, and this has to, this goes for my whole body, but especially for my arms, train them more frequently. You know, when I first started working out and for a long time, what was communicated in the popular fitness magazines was to train a bicep or tricep or a muscle group really, really hard and then let it rest and recover for a full week. So when you looked at the traditional workouts at the time, it was like, you know, arm day was Tuesday or whatever, or bicep day was Tuesday and triceps was Wednesday.  When I started to really figure out that my arm, that my body responded better to more frequent training, everything exploded, including my arms. In fact, for the longest time as a kid, my arms could not surpass 17 inches which doesn't sound like a huge amount. This isn't, you know, I'm natural, I'm not a genetic freak, but it could not surpass 17 until I started training my arms three days a week. This is what I did. And this is how I wrote my programs for my clients afterwards and this is what you'll find in most of the maps programs is I took the total weekly volume and I divided it up over three weeks. So instead of doing 15 sets for biceps on Monday, I did five sets on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That increased frequency made a tremendous difference. Now today, we have studies to support this. Today, the best studies show that training muscle groups two to four days a week is the best way to maximize growth and to get them to respond. I think there's other reasons for that too, right? So when, and I think anybody who's trained arms before and or trained them to failure has experienced this, like there comes a point where that muscle gets so fatigued that your body does not want to use it anymore for that movement and then the other muscles, they take over. And I found this a lot when I was doing splits. So when I was doing splits and had an armed day, yeah, exercise one and two seemed really valuable. Like I could control it really well. I'm getting this massive pump. But by the time I got to exercise three and four, they were so burnt out that the majority of the movement was no longer the bicep or the tricep that all the other muscles are starting to cheat. So just simply spreading it out over the week gets all the benefits that you're talking about, Sal. Then it also gets the benefits of you don't fatigue the muscles so much that you have to be so good at thinking about form and working that and not allowing the other one. So I feel like it's kind of too prompt. So all the things you talked about I think are important. But the value that I found from it was, man, when my muscles weren't so gassed on these small muscles, it made it a lot easier to stay focused on them when I was lifting and not taking them to failure all the time. It would cause the other body parts to kick in. Yeah, I totally stumbled across this by accident and really like your trigger session concept of being able to do that in between but with like moderate to low intensity. So like repeating a lot of these movements, curls, and tricep extensions and things with rubber bands in between like my regular foundational type of workouts I was doing with the team just because I was waiting for guys to get rehabbed. And so I'm in this training facility anyways where they get rehabbed. There's bands there. I'm kind of waiting in and around. And I saw the most muscle growth I've ever seen in my arms just simply because I just kept that going. Oh yeah. If you, let's say you train your arms two or three days a week with good, hard, effective workouts. Let's say you're following a program like Maps and a Ballet which will have you training your arms as well as other muscle groups two to three days a week depending on your experience level. On the days in between, here's what you can do.  That's it. And that a hard one, you're not going crazy with the workout. But give yourself about eight minutes and give yourself a little bit of an arm pump. Try this a couple times a day on the days off in between. Watch what happens to your arms. It's crazy at how fast it responds. They respond to this kind of frequency. Well, I think this is a perfect time also to include the conversation around BFR. So when you're talking about trigger and frequency another great frequency builder is BFR. This was something that I found way later in my career. I wasn't using it during this time. But another thing that doesn't do a lot of damage but then you chase the pump, you get that frequency and there is doing things like BFR. We haven't talked about that in a really long time. I think it's been a few years since we wrote the BFR guide but there's a ton of value in using that as a frequency builder also. Absolutely. And again, the whole body responds well to frequency but small muscle groups especially because they don't tax the body as much when you're training them super frequently. So you could do lots and lots of arm workouts and watch how your body responds and of course if you start getting diminishing returns back off a little bit but studies show and this confirms my experience about two to four days a week of good hard workouts and then in between some frequency builders like a trigger session where you're just kind of getting a little bit of a pump that makes a huge difference. Now the last one, this one took me a little while to figure out especially for biceps because I knew this for other muscle groups and basically what this says is compound movements build more muscle than isolation movements. Now this made sense for my legs. I knew that squats built my muscles bigger and faster my legs than leg extensions and leg curls. Back. I knew this for my back like rows and pull-ups did a better job of building my back than a cable straight arm pull down or a pull over. I knew that bench presses and incline presses built my chest more than flies or cable crossovers. I knew that overhead presses developed my shoulders faster and better than laterals did but for arms I didn't really ever consider this. In fact, you know for triceps I knew there were some compound movements like dips and close grip bench press. For biceps I had no idea. I thought all bicep exercises were isolation. Totally not true. What's true for the quads and the hamstrings which is that squats will build them more and faster than leg extensions and leg curls. Because remember your legs are like your arms really no different. Your quads are like your triceps.  Your hamstrings will be like your biceps. They flex the knee just like your biceps flex your arm. For the arms this is true as well.  So when you're doing a chin up with your palms facing back and you're pulling up and at the top you're squeezing your biceps really hard getting full extension. That's a compound exercise for the biceps. Talk about the ultimate version of full range of motion. And the other cool part to that is not I know some people like pull-ups are fairly easy. I know that's probably a rare few or like your body weight isn't that high but you know for me it was always a struggle but then I started to get good at it. And so you know what I found later though too is not about always like how many reps I could get I could actually add weight to myself now and just do a few reps and get a totally different experience out of it as well. Well Sal always shares his bicep bunny hop story. So I have a story for this. Like when this all came together for me I wasn't even focused on biceps. I just I don't remember of course I probably read some silly article how to build your back and had something to do with pull-ups and starting every workout with pull-ups. And I went on this kick of like I would do 50 pull-ups before every single workout. I did the same thing. Yeah and I started off I started every back workout like that for I did this for like six months and you know the goal was eventually get to a point could I do 50 I never got to a point where I could do 50 in a row but I did get to a point where I could do high 20s almost 30 reps of pull-ups. As a side effect what I saw aside from my back getting really strong and good at pull-ups was my biceps grew like crazy. And so that was kind of when that light bulb went off for me and then I started to think okay what are some other really good compound exercises for the arms and that's what made led me over to doing the close grip bench press for my triceps. Also was the biggest thing that ever changed my triceps was getting into that. And I prefer the incline I just think that it's easier to get in the right position it's more comfortable for this. I think you get more elbow flexion extension too because of the angle right? Yeah so I really really love an incline elbows in tight by your side close grip bench press and part of what has to be the major benefits is the load right? Like you just you're not going to be able to load a straight bar curl that heavy. Even someone who's really really strong is what maybe doing a hundred and something pounds but pulling your body weight where you're weighing 150 to 200 plus pounds that's a lot when you're doing pull-ups. Same thing goes for an enclosed bench press. I might be able to skull crush you know a hundred and something pounds but I could do an enclosed bench press up to 200 and something pounds so just the simple fact that you're able to load these movements on these smaller these smaller muscles would make them blow up. Oh yeah and here's how you do strength training heavy strength training for your arms because it's hard to do you know four rep sets for you know try you know bicep curls or a tricep press down it's just going to be it's going to be terrible form and isolation exercises don't work really well for super low reps but can I do a heavy curl grip chin up for four reps or a heavy close grip bench press or dips for four reps absolutely and then I can build that kind of strength on it so here's here's how you do by the way that the the chin up for biceps because any chin up is going to work your biceps but here's how you can emphasize it get your supinated grip pull yourself up when you get up to the top try to curl your bicep as hard as you can and prepare yourself for the most intense bicep burn and squeeze you've ever had in your life it's actually quite brutal it's one of the few times I feel like my biceps gonna rip off my arm no bicep exercise will do that but you I pull myself up when I get up to the top rather than leaning back like I normally would with a chin up to squeeze my back I get up to the bar and I curl my arms as hard as I can holy cow does that recommend okay so from the functional world you guys have your like Arnold cheat curls and like I'm not I don't identify with that but I do identify with is basically these muscle ups where they use a lot of momentum to get into a position where you're in such a low range of motion to dig your way out of and and and literally dip your way up and lock out so there's lots of ways that people have tried to just be able to accomplish a muscle up and when I was going through this entire year of doing body weight training that was a goal of mine is to do a strict muscle up and to make that happen I had to start just with rings where I could get as literally as low as I could possibly go with the range of motion and be able to control and dig my way out of that had the most enormous growth just from really just trying to attempt it now do you think that some of that has to do with it's probably one of the best ways to do a heavy loaded isometric exercise oh you're holding yourself at the top so much tension involved it's it's insane right there's not a lot of tricep or bicep exercise that I can think of that are that it's going to because it's loading your body weight it's forcing you right and you have to stay in at the bottom of it you're not rested so you're having to hold that tension and that isometric tension has to be one of the best things that you could possibly do and I probably respond so well to so many people because they just don't include that into their routine that's right it's a heavy load it forces you to get a good squeeze it's the same thing with the chin up that I just talked about where you're up at the top and you're really squeezing your bicep when are you going to have that much weight on your biceps with that much tension right there is no isolation exercise that does that exactly dips do the same thing I like to strap weight around my body do heavy dips and at the top of the dip I'll hold myself for a second and squeeze my triceps now I can do low rep strength training for my arms and then I can move to the isolation stuff where I'm focusing on you know different angles that gets the arms to respond like crazy so there you have it use more angles look at elbow position for both biceps and triceps and hand position to a lesser extent for the biceps focus on stretch and squeeze full range of motion train your arms two to four days a week with hard workouts throwing some trigger sessions or some BFR on the days in between and then don't forget the compound exercises for biceps and triceps they build muscle in your arms just like they do for your legs and your bigger muscle groups okay so I think what we should do is give some giveaways here like our top 10 favorite arm exercises five for triceps five for biceps hopefully you're doing these hopefully you're doing these so for triceps we have dips great compound exercise for the triceps another great compound exercise for the triceps your close grip bench press then you have your skull crushers that's a great one with the elbows in front of your body the overhead tricep extension that's where your elbow is pointed over your head and you're getting that stretch and then your tricep press down variations that's great for squeezing the triceps then for biceps great compound exercise for the biceps I talked about this earlier curl grip pull-ups or also known as chin-ups then you have your incline curls that gives you that nice stretch position of the biceps your preacher curls this is where your elbows in front of your body your traditional barbell curls elbows at your side of your body nice heavy isolation exercise and then hammer curls now you're working with the hand position this one works the brachialis look you can check out our big arms guide because we referenced that a little bit in this episode but there's more information on there on how to develop your arms you can find that at mindpumpfree.com also if you want to check out all of our different maps workout programs we have lots of different programs designed for different people with different goals go to mapsfitnessproducts.com well I didn't go crazy you know what I'm saying I wasn't trying to get totally ripped by myself but I was like you know I was setting the mood for the night I'm like I got uh got my my yeah your music on yeah my incense burning the music playing I'm getting ready for your Costco size movie fat of lube yeah I was alone too last night we'll get to your night


Can you name a fruit whose processed juice is healthier than just eating the fruit itself? Here's the VCEAC of fruits and their juice.  VCEAC stands for vitamin C equivalent antioxidant capacity. So for example, even though apples don't actually contain 150 mg of vitamin C itself, they have other antioxidants that add up to the equivalent of that much antioxidant power. As you can see across the board, as you go from fruit to juice, the antioxidant capacity is slashed. In fact, the only reason the grape juice was even that high is because it happened to have extra vitamin C added to it, so kind of cheated. But wait a second, what's this? A fruit juice that has significantly more antioxidants and even greater phytonutrient availability? And the answer is, tomato juice. About twice the antioxidant power of tomatoes and five times the phytonutrient lycopene. And no, it was not a trick question. You may use a tomato like a vegetable, but it is a fruit because it's got seeds. Don't tell that to the Supreme Court, though, who having nothing better to do ruled in 1893 that tomatoes were vegetables, though they were only a batch of justices away from those that ruled Mr. Scott was not a citizen. So I wouldn't listen to him. Arkansas decided to have it both ways, declaring tomatoes both the official state fruit and the official state vegetable.


My name is Carolyn Delaney, I'm the founder and CEO here at Journey Enterprises, we're a media company on a mission to make recovery from addiction visible because it's important. It saves lives. There are over 26 million of us in recovery and we want those who are still sick and suffering to know that there is a path for them. There's millions of us here on the other side of active addiction and that it's probable that people can and do recover. Our videos share personal intimate stories of what people's journeys were like going from what it was like to what happened to what it's like now in an effort to let people know that we're here, we care and that there's a way out. Visible recovery saves lives and we want the world to know that. So if you have a story about recovery and would like to share it, please contact me carolin at recovery-journey.com. I hope you enjoy our video, have a great day. I wonder if you'd start out by just introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about yourself and what forms of recovery you identify with. I honor it, I respect it, so to me that is the number one reason why I am sober so I can be connected in my life. I find it to be a privilege. It's not effort, it's I guess it's almost a passionate experience because every day is a journey. Tell me about your experience with addiction and how you found your way into recovery. What was that like for you? I don't think I was ever kind of like that textbook drinker.  I mean, I personally was always an incredibly creative person. I have always been a very, very sensitive person and not that I would have to like go to the doctor or go to it. It wasn't anything like that and I didn't know if this was normal or abnormal or and so my art was always a vehicle for me to kind of be able to handle life here and you know as life went on challenges came up. You know the years and I felt so insecure. I didn't understand why and I didn't know what to do with that so these things really stacked inside of me. I was almost conflicted but outside I wanted to present myself the best I could so I continued to do my art. I got my college degrees but the more time went on the more my internal suffering increased and I didn't understand that you know and I tried so many things you know I mean as a a fitness person and an artist it was like I was on the eternal mission to fix myself. It was like Willa with her line and Willa with her art and Willa with her athletics and it looked great on the outside but the inside I had a conscience about my behavior you know and that's what started to stack up and I started to feel very conflicted because inside I was not loving Willa and outside I was acting like look at me. I mean I'm sure at times I probably wasn't the best example of how to like hold your alcohol but I can't say that I also was the representation of like that girl needs to quit. Some people were like what you quit drinking like what's her issue and for me it was more an emotional issue it was more a mental issue. I was terrified for the world to really see who I was on the inside and if that was the case would you still love me and so I never thought like for the life of me the idea of a 12-step program or recovery was like what not me no way like no way and so I had a real conflict with my beliefs around this and but I kept attracting people in my life that were in recovery very beautiful healthy illuminated souls yoga teachers I just the lifestyle that glow and so what I realized was like this isn't about drinking or not drinking this is about walking walking in the light it became real clear that there was a calling inside of me that the game was over that going against myself and numbing myself in the form of drinking wasn't going to work and I was pretty desperate meaning I was trying so many things on my own and it wasn't working I can go three months without and then I'd celebrate with thank you bottles of wine so so I ventured into this the halls and I was terrified because I really didn't think that that was for me and I could understand how all these people could do this one book thing and what I learned even in the first 90 days was my judgment showed me how much judgment I had in general with myself and that whether I am right or wrong that's not what this is about anymore and that took a lot of time that took a lot of energy to every day one day at a time change my actions change my behaviors ask for help when I don't know how to ask for help that becoming a woman that was going to be sober day after day after day I had to admit to myself I didn't know what to do or how to do it I've conditioned myself I'm an expert at that and when you know you're an expert at that it's kind of cool because you start to becoming like you understand you start to like understand that instead of your limitations mastering you you become a master of your limitations you start to understand what your limitations are and they don't have this power over you anymore I'm picturing that person maybe a woman maybe not a woman who is watching this video and she's trying to decide whether or not to open that bottle of wine or to do something different today and so what would you say to her if you were in her kitchen with her I would say give yourself a chance you deserve it you stop numbing yourself out so if you want to drink right now and if you want to go and do that forgive yourself as fast as possible and try again take a risk a really big one and commit to yourself commit to yourself that you're going to give yourself the life you deserve because no one else will you mean go to that meeting do that like two-week thing where you think you're going to you know commit absolutely commit and I've learned from betraying myself so many times that I am not willing to betray myself again ever and so I would tell that person let go of the self-betrayal I would love to hear you talk about what you know from a recovery perspective what does a day in the life look like for you I honor being a human and I honor having like this biomechanism work for me so I love to be physical so every day I will work out and there's days where I have rest days but it doesn't mean I'm just going to lay on the couch and nature is an enormous source of connection inspiration I will always find time even if I don't have a lot of time I will literally go outside and just lay on the lawn and and like ground you know I want to connect love and connection is really important to me um family friends when people come into my shop you know intimately connecting with people very very important to me so that's another piece of my sobriety that I work on that's how I'm showing up more as a human you know I isolated a ton when I wasn't sober another part is nutrition I'm not really psycho about it but I'm also not going to be at like McDonald's drive-through I think what we put on our body also affects our energy our moods our feelings our energy I like to take care of myself I like to drink a lot of water I like to sleep a lot not a ton but enough and most of all the two more helping people I'm fairly transparent like if you go on my own personal Facebook as well as my business Facebook I write about my personal experiences because those experiences influence my work and my work influences who's going to wear it one thing I've absolutely loved about recovery is the help that I've had and that the people that are in my life that and that is what this journey has taught me and continues to teach me there's no destination you know and I'm on it for the long haul is there any uh anything else any last closing thoughts that you want to convey about your journey to recovery and your life today in recovery I made a decision it was 2012 I was in Mexico I was traveling by myself I remember I was on top of this pyramid and I literally had this like I mean I saw like in my mind's eye half the sky was black the other half was bright white and I believed it always to be white and I was like oh my god like this is I'm creating that darkness and that did scare me but in the right way like that fear motivated me be decisive so that person at home I would say take everything toxic in your life put it on the table but when it comes to toxic relationship with yourself that's what I'm talking about put that on the table whatever is toxic and literally cut it out I was still living in the same place I still look the same way I still went to the same gym I relatively ate the same food I just didn't drink every night day after day after day when pain came up I felt it and then I was like and that got better and better and better I got stronger I was like wait I can transform myself my name is Carly um I'm 29 years old I currently live in Scarborough, Maine and my name is Brynn and I'm Carly's sister older sister I'm 34 and I just moved to Portland from Brooklyn after being there 11 years growing up I lived in a great house I have the best family ever um I got everything that I ever needed and ever wanted um but I still have this disease the gateway to my substance use disorder was um not fitting in I felt like um you know all my friends were really smart and got great grades and I didn't or you know my sisters were they also did really great in school and they were and are skinny and I wasn't so there was always this um hole that I couldn't fill so I started drinking when I was probably 13 um and I the first time I drank I just remember feeling like thank god I found something that can fill that void and then I started smoking weed and I did notice that you know my friends would be like no I don't want to drink this weekend or no I don't want to smoke pot today Carly and I'd be like why you know um and they could stop and I couldn't um you know it took me a really long time to know or accept that I'm a drug addict or I'm an alcoholic I went to college I stayed for a semester I couldn't I just couldn't do it right and so I came home lived with my parents and that's really when things got um messy my family dynamic started to um break if you would say um a lot of fighting and that's when I started to get into you know harder drugs and you know start dating people that you know I probably shouldn't have dated so I had this group of friends as well um as this boyfriend who like I said we're doing harder drugs and I figured why not do these drugs with them finally I have this group of people who accept me for who I am so that's really like I said when things got pretty bad um started getting into opiates which led to doing heroin when my parents wouldn't give me money I would never do normally um I stole from my family I stole from somebody that I was um working for I would never do that normally you know um my family and myself basically did not own a piece of jewelry anymore because I would sell everything in the house my addiction led me to overdosing at my parents house my dad found me in my bathroom I stayed in the ICU for four days and I just remember my mom excuse me my mom kneeling down and crying and saying what are we gonna do at this point because before this I didn't mention this but before this I had gone to three treatment centers I had been in I don't know five sober living facilities I had been to a place for like mental health that focuses on like helping you find a job and going back to school and I had relapsed four or five times I couldn't stay sober you know so this really was a turning point for me what am I gonna do um the last treatment place I had been to said we're not gonna take you back because clearly we're not helping you so I went to a place in Massachusetts so I had a way to week before I went and yeah I went to this facility in um Massachusetts called Spring Hill and it was the best thing I I'd ever done uh I really decided that I have to do this and I stayed there for 45 days they uh encouraged me to go to Portland, Maine I came up here and I went to a sober house um it's called Grace House for Women and I stayed there for about nine months and I dove into the steps I work a program of of AA and um yeah I got a sponsor she took me through the steps I really found out a lot about me I have a community of women up here that I got sober with almost seven years ago so my sobriety date is October 4th 2014 and the women that I got sober with they're still sober with me today I do things that I love doing again uh I'm on a softball team I you know sing when I can um originally I have gone to school for singing I just that's what I do the past nine months have been really really hard for me um I got diagnosed with epilepsy last October um you know I've had a lot of medical issues since then I have I've gotten out of a pretty um rough relationship that I had been in for almost five years the one thing I didn't do was go back to drugs and alcohol because I have these tools that I can use that it doesn't even cross my mind I don't have to pick up a drug or drink alcohol to feel better um you know my life is it's really beautiful I no longer feel like I don't fit in where I have to feel some sort of void um I'm exactly where I need to be so that is my story Bryn so holy smoke you know you're the older sister and you're watching your younger sister who you love and adore imploding so what was this what was this journey like for you I saw quick more quickly than everybody else um that it was really not gonna end up well for everybody um and I didn't think I tried to talk to my parents about it it was just all red flags to me and me trying to get the family to understand what was going on and that it was just getting bigger and bigger our family is really close and having to face that um was just going to be really hard for everybody and I just stopped sort of coming up to things that we would do together my family being like we don't do we don't not participate in things together so what's going on with you and I was just like I can't watch this continuously happen and the way that I tried to get more help was you know I had had a therapist at the time she wasn't an addiction specialist um you know we didn't have any we really didn't have the knowledge of what was going on either you know I know my family my parents found meeting up near there that they went to for a while and then you were doing well and then they they stopped going to it I have found like exactly what I need in people that understand this disease when people don't understand you know none of my friends really got it they when it was bad with Harley um I think everybody my group my tight group of friends was just like oh that's that's strange or um that's sad we're sorry and so I I had to find that community for myself I can pick up the phone and people in this community answer it's awesome and I want to do that for other people too you know I have a little pride of place going on here because we we do have awfully strong recovery community yeah all forms in for the families for those who are whether it's alcohol or drugs or gambling or debtors or whatever like we've got a very strong community here and day-to-day recovery also looks like making sure I get exercise in when Carly Carly's recovery um she really wanted to get into an activity that wasn't like running around the block and she started lifting like heavy lifting power lifting and so when I got here last August she was like come with me to a session so exercise is big for me daily recovery um you know getting up early so I can like fit in some meditation before I'm working and we spend a lot of time together too now that I'm up here and that feels really important a shift in our relationship was was me coming up here and definitely I think getting a better understanding of what Carly's world looks like and how yeah that community piece is so big and so Carly when you think about your recovery what would you say that you have regained oh myself worth confidence I mean I was like a shell of a person before active addiction even um I like it's for me it's not like I gained what I had before addiction it's I started over after you know when I got to recovery in my relationship with Brynn it's really grown a lot and Brynn how about you what would you say that you have regained through this process yeah that conference piece is a big one um and yeah trusting myself um I think when you are in this with somebody who's struggling there's a lot of moments where you just don't trust you your own intuition um you're not trusting that person I can trust myself in this and I can sort of trust in God the universe whatever we want to call it when you work through recovery for the entire family I think that slowly regains um trust and confidence in the relationships that happen within the family the relationship to yourself my story is that I I found recovery before I actually went to prison and that made a huge difference in my in my personal and ultimately professional trajectory I got sober or at least mostly sober in early May coming up on what now 14 years I believe 2007 at that time I was involved in selling drugs doing all sorts of other stuff you know just very uh low bottom terrible highly you know late stage chronic substance use disorder and doing whatever I could really to to just stay alive pay rent so it was May 2007 and I went to my doctor's office who I normally would go to and because I was on all sorts of different prescription medications I felt so so broken and desperate and in such pain that I knew I needed to either seek help or no longer continue living that's that's how I felt at age 24 I got to a point where I was still ingesting all the substances but I could find no no relief from rewinding back to age about 12 or 13 when I first really discovered alcohol and drugs once the alcohol started flowing down into my system and I could feel it you know forcing through my body or ultimately the you know cocaine going up my nose or the pill dissolving and going into my bloodstream as soon as that started to happen what I felt was this feeling of that's the best way I can describe it all of my internal anxiety pain fears inadequacies whatever all of that stuff melted away for about a decade my external life was amassed pretty quickly but as far as how I felt inside the alcohol and drugs really masked a lot of trauma a lot of emotions a lot of insecurities I go to this doctor and for the first time in my life I told I told most of the truth I I did open up he said okay great well in that case you're not going to need detox and you probably don't need inpatient so let's get you into the mercy outpatient intensive outpatient program at Westbrook I'd never really fully experienced withdrawal from all the substance believe it or not for all those years I was more or less on a substance or a combination of substances the whole time my mom welcomed me home when I said I wanted help for the very first time at age 24 we had to change the sheets every couple hours because I was just drenched in sweat the 12 steps in a strong recovery community I have not had to have that experience since and it's been you know around 14 years now since that happened and how that made such a big difference in my life what happened was several months into my recovery we were able to hire a lawyer and I don't even know what they had for dinner in jail that night because about two hours later I was home I left jail that day solely because of the fact that I was already in recovery and had already been doing some internal work I was already aware of my own privilege in that situation and so when I left I became committed to becoming an attorney ultimately I did end up going to federal prison and then continuing to work a program of recovery and planning for my future while I was there while I was in prison I try not to use this language but the name of the program is residential drug program in federal prison and I was part of that program I filled out all my FAFSA forms of course I'm not making any money in prison so I was 100 eligible for Pell Grants to return to the University of Southern Maine and so as soon as I got out I was able to resume my education primarily at the state level I work with the federal government as well particularly right now related to voting rights for people with convictions is my main goal right now with the federal government now in the year 2021 what what what's your life like personal professional now my life is is really full it's full of all of gifts full of blessings I recently got married now we have our little home but on on several acres on the Puget Sound or here the Puget Sound outside of Olympia Washington I think recovery journeys and paths evolve so while I was early in recovery it was really going to 12-step meetings was really essential for me and I never consciously left 12-step meetings but what I've done is I've also in in addition found other ways to be part of something bigger than myself in addition to all the work that I do with prison reform and the entry for the for the governor and stuff like that I most recently joined a mountain rescue team I got really into hiking and mountain climbing and mountaineering and learning how to rock climb and mountaineering and what I wanted to do was add an element of service to that area of my life


This is stock number 10148. We are here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You're new and used car headquarters. Today we are checking out this super clean 2015 Dodge Dart GT. This vehicle has the 2.4 liter four cylinder motor and from this HD video you will be able to tell that this car is extremely clean all the way around inside and out considering the age and miles on it. Pitch black is the color. We shoot all of our videos in 1080p so if you have HD capabilities on your computer tablet or a smartphone device turn them on right now because it is like you're right here looking at the car with me and definitely your best way to check out the vehicle before seeing it in person. It comes with painted these are I believe 18 inch alloy rims 22540 R18 Kelly Edge tires these are brand new tires on this car. We got a little bit of wax dust there but brand new tires on this car. No dents or dings on that fender. Projector lamp head lamps. Projector lamp fog lamps. Front bumper no major dents, stings or cracks. Hood I didn't see any dents on either. Passenger side fender is in nice shape as well and the passenger side rim no scuffs or scrapes on that. As you go down this side of the car you can see just how clean the body is how reflective and mirror like that paint is. We take these HD videos so if you are far away or even if you're close by and just cannot make a trip down but you're still interested in purchasing the car you can still see the car here the car and have confidence in the vehicle that you're looking at before you can get here try and give you the most detailed perspective of the car as possible. Four-wheel disc brakes on these darts has brand new tires on the back as well and that back rim is in pretty nice condition too. As you come around to the back of the vehicle rear bumper is in nice shape got the racetrack tail lamps in back. Deck lid is in nice shape too. Back trunk area very nice and clean and this one comes with a spare tire and jack tools. As we get on this side of the car just as clean as that passenger side is back rim is in excellent shape for full disclosure and down this side of the car just as clean as that passenger side didn't see any major dents no dings has heated power mirrors with the built in directional signals.  There are no rips or tears on these seats. Factory floor mats throughout this one does have auto headlamps power windows power locks and power mirrors. You get the red accent trim throughout the car and you can see that this one has 35,730 miles you get the 7 inch TFT display with the digital speedometer there. Instrument cluster is very nice and clean. Heated or I'm sorry just leather wrapped steering wheel. I'm pretty sure it's heated as well. Yeah it's heated. Heated steering wheel, cruise controls on the right, blue tooth and information center controls on the left and then audio controls on the back comes with the 8.4 touchscreen radio factory navigation heated seats heated steering wheel buttons and it also has backup camera which shows up there and the radio is AM FM and Sirius XM radio capabilities.  Automatic transmission has the keyless entry with the factory remote start, passenger side seat and floor mat are in nice shape no rips or tears on that and the headliner is in nice shape as well. You have your home link buttons up there for your garage door security systems and lighting systems and we'll take a quick look at the back seats and then we will check out under the hood back seats are in nice shape as well no major rips or tears back here it does have the latch child safety system with factory floor mats back here as well and these seats do fold down for extra storage space does have a pass-through on it as well and we'll take a quick look under the hood I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today hopefully from this HD video you will have been able to tell just how clean this car is all the way around inside and out under the hood we have the 2.4 liter multi-air motor engine bays very clean runs very smooth this car has been fully safety and inspected by our service shop has a fresh oil and filter change all the fluids have been checked and topped off and this car is 100% ready to go see more pictures of this car one of our other 450 new and used cars trucks SUVs minivans Wranglers half tons or quarter tons one tons you name it we got it go to our website www.summitauto.com full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations all at summit auto.com and if you'd like to check out more HD videos you can go to youtube.com slash summit auto remember to like subscribe and share on this video and all the videos that you see there in fact in a second you will see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel on your left a link to more used inventory videos like this one on your right if you've not been to our website on the bottom link to this vehicle on our website click those check us out and we really look forward to help you with this super clean 2015 Dodge Dart GT thanks again


Hello everyone, I'm Anthony from Studio Hook. We're an SEO specialist agency and I'm here to talk about SEO and brands, brands and SEO. So as an agency, we're dealing with brands all the time. We've learned to fair bit over the journey to see what makes them tick, what do they always want, what stops them and what are the big things that you wanna focus on as an SEO agency because you want to match up the business goals with SEO strategy. What tends to happen sometimes in SEO agencies is that we get too caught up on the SEO and forget that there's a client at the end paying the bills. So what we wanna do and what we're gonna talk about today is what do they usually want, what's stopping them and what can you do. So let's start. What do brands always usually want? Well, in our experience, they always wanna beat the competition. Using competitors to try and motivate them is always a good starting point in seeing what SEO strategy their competitors have got, how well they're doing and using that as a benchmark. Second, of course, they always want more organic traffic. Who doesn't? They always wanna get more users through their website. They wanna have less reliance on more expensive channels like PPC or social or just open up another stream that they didn't really tap into before such as SEO. Obviously they want better rankings. They want those shiny number one rankings to be at the top and things like better branded and non-branded search. So getting people who don't know who they are but then also improving their brand and search because other competitors might be also trying to beat on some of their brands from the PPC perspective so they can try and organically rank a bit better for their brand. So there's some of the things that they usually want in our experience. Obviously there could be more, but in our experience, here are some of the top level things that they usually want as a brand. Personally, depending on who you're dealing with, if you're dealing with a CMO or a marketing manager or an exec, sometimes they just wanna make it look good. So you as an agency have to make them look good and work with them to make their numbers better. Find out what their goals are. So that leads into what's stopping them. So what are some of the things that could impact the ability for a business and you as an SEO to get that strategy going? Now in our time, some of the biggest things are they've already got poor SEO, poor technical foundations or just a poor understanding of SEO so they don't really buy into it, they don't really understand, they don't really get it. So you're really starting at the back of the pack they're having to try and educate them on what SEO is and the impact that they can have and matching up with their business goals. Second, is just a lack of goals and prioritization. So like, they don't know where to begin. They wanna try and do everything but they do nothing. They let perfection get in the way of progress. They want everything to be perfect or it has to be a certain way rather than just actually getting things done. Whether that's you as an agency getting things done or you working together with the business say they have an internal team or they have developers to get things done because they just have no prioritization. They don't know where to begin and they don't understand SEO. So there's no real goals, they just have like, we need more money, we need more traffic. All right, cool. But there's no actual plan and no clear goals and stepping stone as to how to actually get there. And a general understanding, just trying to understand marketing and where SEO fits in their actual marketing plan. A lot of businesses, if they're startups they won't have the patience for SEO or scale. So they won't have the patience. So they'll have to work on things like social or PPC or other quick impact sort of lead generation channels that'll provide them the money and the revenue now. Now, ideally you'd have a bit of a balance there where you'd know starting the SEO while you're getting the traffic coming through from those other channels but sometimes that isn't how it happens. And with understanding marketing sometimes they also think that SEO is in a vacuum. That nothing in the world affects SEO at all. SEO runs itself, there is no external factors, there's no, nothing that can affect SEO. Well, SEO is not in a vacuum just like the rest of the world isn't in a vacuum. SEO is affected by other things as well. So sometimes you'll find brands that will absolutely be hot under the collar because they're like, well, where's our SEO? Where's this? Where's that? Well, failing to understand that there are a lot of things that make up the demand. Like I can't control the demand for your product. If search volumes have gone down in 12 months and they've gone down by half for your product or your service there's not much I could do about that. If the market just isn't there for your product you can improve your SEO for that. But if the overall demand is gone or dampening for your product or service that's not only gonna affect SEO it's gonna affect a fair few things. So that's some of the things that are stopping them. Now what can you do about it? Now again, there's no one silver bullet if you do all of these things I hope that these have helped us to be able to get things across to be able to get things implemented to be able to work with the stakeholders to be able to make the campaign actually viable and get some value out of it. But these are some things in our experience that we try and do. So proactively getting things done. Now that's not a one size fits all approach with that. Again, depending on the size of your business you will have a lot of stakeholders. You will have internal dev teams especially custom built CMSs where you might not be able to get things done on a technical front. But what I mean by this is if you have the ability or the opportunity to jump into the website and get things done, you have the ability to create content. You have the ability to get ahead on certain things and showcase you actually trying to provide value. What's the worst that can happen? They're gonna complain that you're trying to provide them value and you're trying to give them a returning investment on their SEO.  If you're working with a big brand that's got a custom CMS and you've got a few legalities in there and you've got a few things, just don't jump into the website. You don't wanna just rip down ASOS in a day, okay? But with certain brands, if you've got the ability to just get things done and showcase your productivity within reason, again. I like that because it showcases that you're actually trying to get things done. You're showcasing to the business, hey, we're trying to make this work here, not just paying us, and we're just gonna sit around and do nothing. We're actually trying to actively make your SEO help you to achieve your business goals. Prioritizing key services are products. Now, SEOs tend to get caught up in just doing SEO, which is fine, but they again forget that there's a business on the other side paying the bills and wanting to see results. So one of the things we want to do is focus on prioritizing the most important services that they offer, all the products. And what I mean by that is, what are the ones that they make the best margin on? What are the ones that they wanna push? What are the ones that drive the most revenue or the most popular? Focus on working your SEO strategy initially on those key services and products instead of just focusing on the privacy policy page or some random product that they might sell one of because it's got great search volume. That won't mean anything to the bottom line of a business. Focus on the key services or products. Now, another thing is simple reporting and updating on the why, and this probably goes in with the clear communication of stakeholders as well. SEO is intangible. It's just numbers in the air to these people that I don't actually know. That would be vanity metrics or yes, they'll see number one on Google, right? But what happens when you're not number one yet? Well, because it's intangible, the only tangible thing that they get is a report, is your team, is that call, is that strategy, are those documents, the things that they can see and then hold and hear because SEO is intangible. There's a lot of things happening in the background, but your marketing manager, CFO, CMO just wants to see the results. They wanna see the number go up. That's what they wanna see. So simple reporting, Data Studio, maybe there's custom tools out there. You can just detail what the SEO numbers mean but match it up with their business goals. So don't use non-braided queries to you and I, we know what that means. But to the average Joe working in the business, they might not know what non-braided means. So you really have to explain as to what that means. So you'd use certain keywords that they would know. So sometimes a client will be like, we wanna be known for these keywords. So you use those keywords that they wouldn't even know for their goals to explain what branded or non-branded means. Showcasing revenue, money. You might have fixed like 10 title tags but they don't know what the hell the title tag is or care, right? What does that actually mean? Well, hey, client, we've done all this metadata optimization to improve people clicking on our results. Therefore, we can lead that to more traffic and potentially more revenue or more leads. So you wanna try and explain those really SEO-y things in a way that matches up with their business goals so that they understand.  Clear communication with stakeholders. Again, using things like docs or sheets or word, explaining it clearly, explaining it to them like they're five. Showcasing, use Slack, use emails. Have a call. Sometimes it's easy just to call them up and explain on the phone because there's no tone over email and you can have 50 long chain emails and everyone forgets what happened. Matching the SOS strategy to the business goals. So that's the encompassing bit where we're gonna be like, hey, client comes to you and says, we wanna be number one for this, we want more revenue and we want more leads, right? Great. Those SEO-y things have to then match up to get those goals. So how are you gonna get more revenue? All right, we're gonna focus on those key services and products. We're gonna focus on EEAT. We're gonna focus on the technical health of the website. But when you're saying EEAT, that are not what that is. So you're gonna say something like, we are creating these about us pages and team pages because we want to create your own Wikipedia and your own LinkedIn on your own website so that you can showcase to Google and users, hey, we know our stuff. These are the legitimate people behind this business. And reaffirming those goals, showcase the impact of SEO, showcase those graphs, showcase those ramps, have like catch ups with them to be able to be like, are we still on track? What's going on in the business? How are the products going? Essentially, ask them some financial questions like, how's the business performing? What are the goals this week? Sometimes you might not get that information, but if you get enough context to be like, are we hitting our goals this month or are we not? You can then tweak your SEO strategy to be like, oh, actually it's a bit of a down quarter coming up. What can we do? All right, here and then you can make that adjustment because if things are happening in the business and you're not aware of them, they get that report or they get that call and go, this means nothing to me. What does this mean? There's no money coming in. Oh, but we had to do X, Y, Z on this project. For this, who cares? There's no money coming in and you're sort of a bit screwed. And last but not least, always remember what is most important to them? Now, to you as an SEO, you're gonna be like, yes, doing the work is great or fixing matters and getting internal links in there and doing backlinks and all this stuff is important to you as an agency, which is great. That's how we showcase value, yes. But at the end of the day, the client is paying the bills. What is most important to them? If it is something like just getting more organic traffic, all right, fine. You as an SEO have to explain why that's fine as a goal but then also continually educate them as to some of the other parts that make up SEO. Yes, okay, traffic is only the first bit but are you getting the right traffic? Are they converting? And it leads you on to many more questions which can then shape your strategy. But always remember the why and what is most important to them and then you get that information and then you can craft your strategy and you can craft your work and your dedicated time to achieving those goals. And what should happen, now again, doesn't always happen this way but what should happen is the business should be appreciative that you're trying to actually leverage and use the channel of SEO and the power of SEO to help them achieve those goals. So that's everything for today in terms of SEO and brands, brands and SEO, matching up the business goals with the SEO strategy. Remember, what are brands usually want? More organic traffic, less revenue, better branded or non-branded search, better rankings, beating the competition. What is stopping them? Poor SEO, poor education, lack of goals and prioritization, understanding marketing, resources, ego and what can you do? Being proactive sometimes depending on the situation it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Prioritizing key services or products, focus on the things that will make them money. Clear communication with stakeholders via simple reporting and updating on the reasons why we are doing this. Reaffirming their goals, continually understanding what their goals are and showcasing the impact of that SEO through simple reporting and clear communication. Matching that SEO strategy to the business goals and always remembering what is most important to them. What is the why? Impact over vanity metrics essentially. So that's everything. I'm Anthony from StudioHawk.


Drying is an easy method of preserving herbs. The leaves, flowers, or seeds are exposed to warm dry air in a well-ventilated area until the moisture evaporates. Hi, I'm Julie Cascio with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service. The best time to harvest most herbs for drying is just before the flowers first open when they are in the bursting bud stage. Gather the herbs in the early morning after the dew has evaporated to minimize wilting. When bruising the leaves, they should not lie in the sun or remain unattended after harvesting. Rends herbs in cool water and gently shake to remove excess moisture just before using. Discard all bruised, soiled, or imperfect leaves and stems. Air drying is one method of preserving herbs. Sturdy herbs such as sage, parsley, thyme, and summer savory are the easiest to dry. They can be tied into small bundles and air dried. Air drying outdoors is often possible. However, better color and flavor retention usually results from drying the herbs indoors. My strings are getting tangled here. On the other hand, tender leaf herbs have a high moisture content and will mold if not dried quickly. Examples of tender leaf herbs are basil, tarragon, and lemon balm. Try hanging the tender leaf herbs or those with seeds inside paper bags to dry. Tear or punch small holes in the sides of the bag and then work with small bunches of the herbs as large bunches will mold. We're going to place the herbs inside the bag, suspending them from the top and closing paper bag around the top of the bunch of herbs with a rubber band. Place this where air currents will circulate through the bag and any leaves and seeds that fall off will be caught in the bottom. Additionally, individual leaves can be strung on a string and then suspended on overhead racks to air dry. Here's an example of basil leaves that are being strung to dry. When preserving chives, chop into the size pieces desired, spread on a plate or cookie sheet and set out of the way in a warm room. Dill seeds and other seeds are handled the same way. Spread on a plate or a screen and dry indoors. Oven drying is a preservation method especially nice for mint, sage, or bay leaf. Remove the best leaves from the stems and place them individually on paper towels so they're not touching one another. I think I have one more. Cover with another towel and you can add other layers of leaves, up to five layers. A layer of leaves, another towel, another layer of leaves to dry at one time. Dry in a very cool oven. The oven light of an electric range or the pilot light of a gas range is enough heat for overnight drying. Leaves dry flat this way and they retain a really nice color. Microwave ovens are a fast way to dry herbs when only small quantities are to be prepared. Choose three to five branches with leaves and again place them on paper towels and add another paper towel on top. Heat for two to three minutes on high. If they're not brittle and dry when removed from the oven, repeat microwave drying for 30 seconds more. Dehydrator drying is a fast and easy way to dry high quality herbs because the temperature and air circulation can be controlled. So you would preheat your dehydrator, which we'll do in a few minutes, with a thermoset set to 95 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit. In areas with higher humidity, temperatures as high as 125 degrees Fahrenheit may be needed. After rinsing with cool running water and of course you can rinse in a faucet and shake your excess moisture off the leaves. Place the herbs in a single layer on your trays and you could leave the stems on, but I want to conserve a little space.  You could break them as well. So I'm taking some of these stems off. That looks nice. Drying times may vary from one to four hours. Check periodically. Herbs are dry when they crumble and stems are dry when they break when bent. Check your dehydrator instruction booklet for specific details. Dried rosemary. Smells so good. When leaves are crispy dry and crumble easily between your fingers and stems are easily broken when bent, then they're ready to be packaged and stored. Dried leaves may be left whole, such as these basil leaves that were dried last summer in a dehydrator, and then crumbled as used, or they may be coarsely crumbled before storage. Place herbs in airtight containers and store in cool, dry, dark areas to protect the color and the fragrance. Dried herbs are usually three to four times stronger than fresh herbs. To substitute dried herbs in a recipe that calls for fresh herbs, use one quarter to one-third of the amount listed in the recipe. For example, with this sage, if a recipe called for fresh sage for one tablespoon, then you would use one teaspoon, I had to do the math in my head, of the dried sage. So after you've dried your herbs, you can enjoy a little bit of summer all year long in the dishes that you make.