How we pick exercises for your equipment

Each program in this catalogue starts life as an equipment list: two adjustable dumbbells and a bench, or machines and cables only. We lock the list before we choose a single exercise, and the list holds to the last session. It is the first promise the program makes, and the writing keeps it.

Week seven

Commit to the machine-only program and week seven contains no surprise barbell. The temptation, writing twelve weeks inside a constraint, is to borrow: slip in the barbell version of a lift because it is the stronger exercise, and let the reader sort out access. Each borrowed exercise rewrites the deal the cover made.

Machines stays on machines and cables from the first session to the last, and it finds overload in added kilos and added reps rather than in equipment the cover ruled out.

The equipment list as a contract

The list on the cover of each program is a promise. If the cover says dumbbells and a bench, the twelve weeks inside ask for dumbbells and a bench. No session borrows a cable machine. No session assumes a squat rack. The list names what the program requires, and the program stays inside that boundary from the first warm-up to the last working set.

An automated build system checks this at the point of creation. When a program is assembled, the build process compares each exercise in the spreadsheet against the equipment declared on the cover. An exercise that calls for a piece of gear not on the list triggers a rejection. The program does not publish until the violation is resolved.

This means the constraint is not a guideline or a best effort. It is enforced by the tooling that produces the PDF. A program that says "home gym" on the front and hides a barbell row in week nine fails the build and goes back for revision. The contract between the cover and the contents is checked before a customer can open the file.

The result is that you can read the cover, confirm you own the listed gear, and know that nothing inside will send you looking for something you do not have. That confirmation holds for every session, every exercise, every week.

Busy gyms

An equipment list has to survive a commercial gym at peak hour. A program built from one list makes the crowded hour workable: if the leg press has a queue, swap in another machine for the same muscles and keep the printed sets, rest and effort target. A crowded Tuesday costs you a variation instead of a session.

Keep the swap inside the list. The stand-in for a cable row is another cable row, at a different station, worked to the same numbers.

What to do when a machine is taken

A busy gym floor at 5:30 pm will have someone on the thing you need. The fix is a same-pattern swap. If the program calls for a seated cable row and the station is occupied, a chest-supported machine row uses the same muscles through a similar range. The movement pattern is horizontal pulling. The replacement should be horizontal pulling with the same equipment type.

Keep the sets, reps, rest period and effort target from the printed page. Change the station, not the prescription. If the program says three sets of ten at two reps in reserve with ninety seconds rest, the replacement exercise gets the same instructions. The swap changes where you sit, not what the session asks of you.

Write down what you used. If you swapped lat pulldowns for a different pulldown grip, note the grip and the weight. The logbook needs to show what happened so next week has a reference point. A swap without a record is a session without a baseline, and the following week starts from a guess instead of a number.

If no reasonable swap exists on the same equipment type, the next closest option is fine for one session. Missing a movement once in twelve weeks does not change the outcome. Missing it four times because you refused to substitute will.

Home gym constraints

A home gym with two adjustable dumbbells and a flat bench covers the majority of upper-body movements. Presses, rows, curls, lateral raises, triceps extensions, flyes. The dumbbells load in small increments and the bench provides a stable surface for both horizontal and incline work.

Lower body is the gap. Without a barbell or a leg press, the loading options narrow. Goblet squats, split squats and lunges can move meaningful weight with a single heavy dumbbell, but they reach a ceiling sooner than a barbell squat does. This is why dumbbell-only programs in the catalogue lean on goblet squats and lunges for their leg work. Those movements let you load the lower body with the gear on your list, and they respond to progressive overload for a long time before the dumbbell runs out of plates.

A pull-up bar, if you have one, opens up vertical pulling without adding floor space. Romanian deadlifts with dumbbells cover the hip hinge. Between those movements and the pressing and rowing work, a dumbbell-and-bench setup handles a full program for someone training at home.

The catalogue lists several programs for this setup. Each one stays within the two-dumbbells-and-bench constraint and finds its variety in grip changes, angles and rep ranges rather than in borrowed equipment.

Skipped sessions

The reasoning behind all of this is adherence, which is a polite word for whether you keep showing up. The first session that demands a thing you do not have is the first session you skip. The skip feels reasonable, the next one feels normal, and a fortnight later you have stopped without deciding to.

Skipped sessions compound faster than clever programming. Twelve weeks of an ordinary exercise builds more than three weeks of a perfect one, and the cleverest selection of movements does no work on days you stay home.

The catalogue's equipment lists run from no gear at all up to a full gym, with kettlebell and machine-only programs between the two. Whichever matches what you own or where you train, the sessions will ask for nothing you cannot reach from where you stand.

Related reading: Equipment you need and Machines are not cheating.

Take the quiz to find a program that matches your equipment and schedule.