Pilates and Strength Training Exercise Sheets

I love to exercise regularly but not for hours a day. I like to exercise for 30-45 minutes a day, sometimes up to an hour, but definitely not an hour every day. I love doing pilates and I love exercising in my own home. I love getting it done first thing and not having to drive somewhere to exercise. I started doing pilates by watching workout DVDs, but I got bored fast. I started muting the TV and listening to the radio or podcasts instead of the sound coming from the TV. I like to get my workout done as quickly as possible (especially when I have a baby to workout around) so I had the idea to just draw a few pictures to help remind me of the moves without having to watch the DVD over and over again, and have to wait around at times while they explained things. 

I also like to do some strength training exercises in between. I know the value of not doing the same exercises every time, so I rotate those strength training moves. I really like to use the exercise sheets from magazines because I like the variety. One day my baby ripped a few of my favorites up, so I decided to also draw those. I love to be able to glance at a picture to remind me of a move. But I don't like doing exercises that I feel are uneffective, and I like to do a balance of muscles. For example I don't like doing 6 different exercises in one day for one muscle group. So I created my own routines from several different exercise sheets. 

Usually I will do Pilates and Strength Training  twice a week. Each day I do them, I switch my Strength Training page. For one month I rotate through 3 pages of strength training exercises. The next month I have a different set, but I haven't drawn those yet! Here is Month 1. These are great because they don't use up too much ink, and if they get torn, you can easily print out another one. I keep mine in a sheet protector with the Pilates page on one side and the Strength Training sheets facing the other side. If you want to print these out, just right click and Print!

I love combination moves where you are doing an exercise for your legs and arms at the same time, I feel like I'm getting more out of my workout and like I'm being more efficient with my time. Also, I don't like doing sets, for example 3 sets of 12 reps. I am not very motivated to go back and do the same exercise again. So instead I just do 50 reps of one exercise and I'm done with that one (or 25 on each side). I like to use 5 or 10 pound dumbbells. Whenever I was pregnant I'd switch to 2.5 pound dumbbells.