Your Gym & What It Changes
Setting up gym profiles so the program generator only ever picks exercises you can actually do, and the plate calculator loads real plates.
Most programs assume a gym. Yours might be a garage with one bar, a commercial floor with everything, or both depending on the day. Telling the app what is actually available is the setting with the widest reach: it changes what gets programmed, what gets substituted, and what the plate calculator tells you to load.
Profiles, not one big list
Set up a profile per place you train. Each one has its own equipment, ticked from a standard list across barbells and plates, dumbbells, cables and pulleys, machines, bodyweight, bands, and specialty kit like a trap bar, safety squat bar or GHD.
The point of separate profiles is the travel case and the home-vs-gym case: the day's session resolves against the gym you are actually in, rather than an average of everywhere you have ever trained.
What it changes
Two things read your equipment directly. The program generator picks exercises filtered by the active gym's equipment, so a program never opens with a lift you have no way to perform. The substitution engine uses the same filter, so swapping something out mid-session offers alternatives you can actually do.
A typed bar brings its exercises with it
Bars are added from a catalog: Olympic, women's, deadlift, trap, EZ-curl, safety squat, cambered, Swiss, axle. Owning one switches on the work it makes possible: a safety squat bar on the shelf is what makes SSB work programmable.
Bars and plates in detail
Barbells record weight, shaft diameter, collar type and length. Plates record weight, collar type, whether they are metal or bumper, and how many you have.
That detail exists for one reason: the plate calculator loads from your real inventory rather than from an idealised set. It tells you what to put on the bar given the plates in the room, which is a different answer when you own one pair of 15s.
Gaps worth filling
If adding a single missing item would unlock ten or more exercises for you, the app says so. It is a genuine gap in what can be programmed rather than an upsell dressed as advice, and the arithmetic behind it is the same equipment filter the generator already runs.
Where to go next
More guides
MuscleBuddy 101: What's Where and Why
A quick orientation to the app: what Plan, Train, Nutrition, Health, and Community actually do, and how they connect.
Logging Your First Workout
The actual logging flow: starting a session, recording sets, RPE/RIR, and how offline mode keeps you covered.
Understanding Your Program & Progression
How double-progression, linear, RPE, and other progression methods automatically adjust your training loads.
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