Author Archives: Lift for Live

PUB 101- Essay 2

Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash

Before I get a chance to understand publishing, I thought it was merely publishing a book, sell it to somewhere, people read it and done. I never thought about the actual work and story behind every process until I get a chance to started writing my blog, publishing my work and sharing content to the audience. In the past 12 weeks, fortunately, I have an opportunity to experience how is it to be an online publisher. It might I need to overrate my self, online publisher, but I did have a chance to understand more details regarding editorial, design, marketing and content. After the brief online publisher career, I realized that publish good content. A successful model is much more complicated than I imagine. There are so much more than I could imagine before, lots of affording and work behind every process.


In this semester, I get a chance to experience to open my blog lift for live. I created my blog and shared my idea and through to other people. I created a fitness-focused blog to share my workout ideas and recommendation to other people so as to motivate people who are new to workout or want to know more about it. Everything started from sketching on my sketchbook, I drew the outline of the blog, considered the focus of the content and what was my purpose of creating a blog. Throughout the semester, I constantly change and improve my blog editorial concept, design layout and content. At first, I was using a big cover picture with a link at the middle. I thought that was a good idea that matches the current trend of blog design until I read Travis Gertz “Design Machines. How to survive in the digital Apocalypse.” In the article, Travis explained that all the webpage design are the same right now. All of them are sharing the same elements, and he asked a question to the audience “Without the logos, could you tell which companies own which screenshots?”(Gertz, 2015, para 7). I realized that If I put my page in one of the design, I could not tell which website is mine. Travis indicated that digital design is a human assembly line, designers are like a designer machine, they use the same elements over and over again to fulfill the trend of the world. As a design student, it was a wakeup call of mine. Therefore, I started to search other themes on the template. Although I can not do much configure on the webpage, I tried to find the theme that produces a different atmosphere but meanwhile match up with my theme. I ended up using the theme right now which is a slideshow post along with posts content below.


Besides the design elements, editorial and content design are also crucial in online publishing. Choose of words and tones are essential to content design, what do you want to build up the relationship. Friendly? Inform? Alternatively, Educate? Based on the tone we choose, the blog purpose may shift. In my blog, I decided to use a relatively friendly tone to my audience, and I intended to share my personal experience rather than teach them how to do it. I wanted to shorten the distance between me and the audience. Befriend with them rather than be a teacher of them.


Marketing strategies are one of the parts that I feel interested the most. From Shelby Carpenter essay “The Toast Is Toast: Literary Humor Site Shuts Down Over Ad Revenue Woes,” it gave me a brief concept of the current online publishing industry. Absorb the failure of the Toast, and I understand that as a publisher, it is necessary to set up the mission statement and ensure the niche of the topic. It will be challenging if the purpose is unclear throughout the publishing process. Also, proper marketing is crucial in a successfulness of business. In other words, you need to make sure your company earn money and make a balance in your business, increase the sustainability of the publishing of the business. In peer review 3, Joanna Kim gave me some ideas about what should I do to make my blog profitable. She points out that my blog should more closely relate to my training. She suggested that I should post a blog about my transformation to let the audience pay close attention to me so as to increase the publicity.


Looking back the semester, I learned many concepts from the course. It expanded my vision, publishing is not only in paperback and e-book, but the online trend is also taking over the publishing industry. Online publishing and marketing is the new benchmark in the publishing industry. No doubt printed publishing is still playing an important role in publishing, but the trend of online publishing is also arising.

Week 12 – My all time motto “No Pain, No Gain”

“No Pain, No Gain”

It is the motto that motivates me all the time. It inspired me in bodybuilding, motivate me in studying, alerts me when I am too comforted in life. When I was 16, 17, I was a skinny guy in school. Back then I was in the school basketball team, I spent most of my time on training and practice. In order to improve my physique in court, I started to workout at the gym. At first, I went to the gym twice a week. I always thought I would rather go on court practice than go to the gym until my first injury happened. That was a regular season game, I stole the ball from the opponent and attempted a layup, suddenly, a man on the side bumped into me and bumped me out to the court. I lost balance and fall into the ground, eventually, I hurt my legs and arms. I took a long break to recover from injury. At that point, I realized that I need to take workout seriously and started my training programme. 

I started to work out at a small community gym. It was a good place to start the workout, no one was there, a simple and quiet place to let me concentrate my workout. I was struggling so much at the beginning, muscle pain and sore all over my body. The pain from the muscle stopped me from going to the gym every time, but I kept telling myself, “NO PAIN, NO GAIN”. It is the key to achieve anything, not only in bodybuilding but also as a person a general. Nothing’s can stop you from doing what you love as long as you put you afford on it, work your ass off it. Your result will definitely come to you. There is no shortcut in bodybuilding, actually, in everything. The only way to success is to dedicate yourself to do what you aim to do. You have to push yourself to the limit, makes up your mind, prepare your self and face the challenge. Remember, “NO PAIN, NO GAIN”.

Here are some quote that I use to motivate my self:

“Train Harder and Grow Bigger” – 8x Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman 

“What we face may look insurmountable, but what I learned is that we are always stronger than we know” – 7x Mr. Olympia Arnold Schwarzenegger

“What hurts today, Makes you stronger tomorrow” – 4x Mr. Olympia          Jay Cutler

Week 11- Abdominis (ABS) Exercise

Photo by Pedro Araújo on Unsplash

In this following week, I am going to introduce some abs exercise for you guys. It is essential to building up an abdominal muscle to support the upper and lower body. Abdominal is like the bridge between your upper body and lower body, it is crucial to have the muscle to support such works.

Rectus Abdominis

  • Push Sit-up – 3 sets (12,10,10,8)
  • Lying Leg-Hip Raise- 3 sets (12,10,10,8)

Transverse Abdominis

  • Incline Twisting Sit-up- 3 sets (12,10,10,8)
  • 45° Side Bend- 3 sets (12,10,10,8)

For the abdominal exercise, the reason it only has 4 exercise because abs training usually does before or after a workout. Since the abs muscle considers as a small muscle, the training will come along with other primary muscle training. There is the reason why abdominal exercise is not part of the split routine and distribute it into different training section. I suggest training the abdominal three to three times a week or work on the abdominal every two days. Be careful of overtraining your muscle, always monitor your body condition to prevent injury. For more details, please check out: https://exrx.net/Lists/ExList/WaistWt#Obliques to get more information. 

Week 10 – Interesting Fact About Your “Abs”

Photo by Cristian Baron on Unsplash

Abdominis, or people usually say “abs”. It is the part most people adore, the very first thing people define a person finiteness is if they have an abs. Fair enough for people who think that, since the abs is one of the hardest muscle group to show, it required a low fat percentage in the body to show the abs. Normally, abs will be protected by fat tissue that surrounded on waist, only a trained personal could relatively easy to show the abs definition. 

Source from: https://www.builtlean.com/2010/08/03/ideal-body-fat-percentage-chart/

Refer to the chart above, average men contain 18-24% fat and women contain 25-31% fat on their body. In order to make the abs visible on the body, normally it needs to cut down to 14% or below for men and 16% or below for women. It is not easy to cut down the body fat percentage to that level.  

Rectus Abdominis, Transverse Abdominus, Obliques

Source: http://www.pilatesfitness.com.sg/important-strong-obliques/

When we talk about abs, people may misunderstand the whole”front waist” part is”abs”. That is not true, in our body, the front waist is composed of three major muscle groups, Rectus Abdominis, Transverse Abdominus, and Obliques. To make a perfect Superman “abs”, it requires a variety of training. The most common exercise, sit-up, can only train the Rectus Abdominis. To build perfect abs, you need to more than just a sit up. (For the abs training, we will discuss in next week training session). Besides the aesthetic purpose, built abs can also protect you from injury. Not only muscles injury but also protect your organs inside the body. Don’t give up on your abs training just because you can’t see it at the moment. It is still secretly protecting you.  #Let’s train today!

Peer Review #3

In the peer review 3, this time I am going to review Joanne Kim website- Joanne Noella. Joanne’s blog is a lifestyle blog, shares her own experience with people. She shares different a variety of content to viewers, from daily saving advice to fashion and health. Many interesting though blended into her lifestyle blog. When I first clicked on the blog, there are a big clean heading media along with the white colour background, it created a clean and soft atmosphere to the blog. On the menu bar, there are eight different categories. It is a clearly separate different section in the blog which could increase the usability to navigate reader to their content. The blog overall produce a young and energetic style to the reader and it is matching up the theme of the blog, a 18 years old school girl lifestyle blog. 

Joanne’s blog is a teenagers lifestyle blog, the target audience of this blog should be around 15 – 23 years old adolescent who is sharing the similar lifestyle and experience. The reason for me choosing intended audience around 15 – 23, because the style of the blog is on teenagers style, from the fashion to the saving advice, all the problems Joanne listed will more likely appear at the age between 15- 23 age group. People who are facing the same problem will more likely to surf the blog to seek advice and help.

This is an interesting blog to take a glance and search for some interesting topic, however, I think the blog is low on marketability. Although the blog contains many different topics and ideas, the blog is not specific enough in one field. To marketing a blog or anything, it is crucial to set up a niche and focus on what you are targeting to market the product. There are too many fields in the same blog, for instance, some posts on the blog are about money saving, some posts are about health and workout exercise, and some posts about personal life and fashion. A wide range of topic no doubt could expand the market, but it will also decrease the marketability. Banner Ads could be one of the solutions for the blog, but it could raise the profit quite and die down in a hot minute. The Toast blog went down is an example. The Toast had no specific mission statement for the blog. They use different ads try to boost up the sale but it did not succeed. The marketing style leads The Toast couldn’t make enough money and struggle to keep it afloat. The same problem is happening in Joanne’s blog. 

To increase the marketability, Joanne’s blog needs to restrict the area of her work. It is not necessary to cut down most of the topic but try to maintain in certain field. For example, try to focus on what teenagers interested the most, like fashion and workout. Combine the money saving and personal experience into those two primary object. It will help to set up a niche and make the blog marketable. 

Week 9 – Legs Exerceise Routine

People are always ignoring lower body exercise. Lower body is playing an essential role in our daily task which supports our lower body and foundation of the movement. Lower body exercise contains several major components, including waist, hips, thighs, and calves. But this time, we are going to focus on leg exercise which concentrates on hips, thighs, and calves. 

  • Full Squat: 4 sets 8-10 reps
  • Dumbbell lunge: 4 sets 10 reps each side. 
  • Machine Leg Extension: 4 sets 10 reps.
  • Machine Inverse Leg Curl: 4 sets 8-10 reps 
  • Dumbbell Standing Calf Raise: 4 sets 8- 10 reps

The leg exercise could be much more complicate and intensified than this plan. However, to help people who have no training background, this is the best training programme to start up the training session. By the time goes by, when the muscle tolerance increase, you can be based on your body condition to increase the training repetitions and sets.  

A well build lower body not only provide an essential training foundation for your future training, but also as one of the fundamental principle to help your daily task. To get more exercise, please go visit ExRx to get more informations. 

Process Post Prompt: How I build my inforgraphic image.

The infographic image I was based on my blog content to develop the infographic. I use numbers to catch people attention at the graphic. All the numbers came from my weekly blog concept, such as 6 fundamental movement pattern, 5 muscles parts split routine, etc. The infographic is aiming to minimal the content but gives out the largest concept to the audience. 

I designed this infographic on illustrator, use lines and boxes based on my original blog design. The text I used “PROHIBITION” typeface which is provide a relative strong and muscular feeling to the text. It can brings up the theme of the topic.

Mini Assignment #3

This time I use clips from Ronnie Coleman. I mixed different clips together along with mixed background music to create this video. Enjoy!

  • Sources: Apple music 
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vWgSTdkc2A
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IaMMu1ckv8
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydmgd81zczg
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lVMwl3FsPg