Home, gym or both: how your equipment shapes your plan
GoWorkout only prescribes exercises you have the kit for. How it decides, what happens when a plan reaches for something you do not own, and how to change it later.
A plan that assumes a barbell is no use in a living room. The fastest way to stop following a programme is to open today's workout and find you cannot do half of it.
So GoWorkout asks what you actually have, and treats the answer as a rule rather than a suggestion.
What you tell it
Two of the setup questions cover this.
Where you train: Home, Gym or Both.
What you can reach, from nine options:
- None
- Dumbbells
- Resistance bands
- Pull-up bar
- Bench
- Barbell
- Squat rack
- Cable machine
- Machines
Tick everything you can actually use on a normal training day, not everything you could get to eventually. The plan is built from this list.
Two answers, two different jobs
Where you train and what you own are treated differently, on purpose.
Where you train is context. It goes to the model that writes your plan, and shapes the kind of sessions it suggests. No rule enforces it, because "gym" means very different things in different places.
Your equipment is enforced. Every exercise in a new plan is checked against it before the plan reaches you, whoever wrote the plan — the AI model or the rule-based generator.
What the check does
Exercises that need no equipment always pass it.
Anything that needs kit you did not tick is replaced before you see it. The replacement is a bodyweight exercise working the same main muscles, and it has to pass the same injury check as the rest of your plan — see how GoWorkout handles injuries. The exercise carries a note saying it was substituted because the equipment was not in your list, so a change is never silent.
Because the model is told what you have, most of the time there is nothing to replace. The check is there for the times it was not listening.
Changing it later
Equipment changes: you buy a pair of dumbbells, or a gym opens near your office. Update it in the app under Profile, then Equipment.
Your plan is then rebuilt around the new list. The app tells you while that happens, and it usually takes a few moments. The same goes for your goal, experience and schedule: change any of them and the plan follows.
Comparing exercises yourself
Exercises in the library list their alternatives, so you can look at other ways to train the same thing. Those alternatives are grouped by what they train, not by what they need, so some may use equipment you do not have. Open an alternative to see what it needs before planning around it.
What it cannot do
It only knows what you ticked. If your gym's bench is broken this week, the plan does not know that, and you will need to work around it. And "Machines" is broad by necessity: it tells GoWorkout you have some, not which ones.