Exercise library: how to build one without starting from scratch

An exercise library for trainers is not written from scratch: you start from a broad catalogue, with an image for each exercise, and copy into your library only the ones you really use. That way each exercise is chosen once, and when you build a routine you find it in seconds without leaving it. The rest is keeping it short, tidy and free of duplicates.

What a library of your own is for

A library of your own means you do not start from scratch every time you choose an exercise. Without one, every routine begins the same way: you look for the name, wonder what you called it last time and end up with the same exercise written three different ways across three clients. A list of your own gives you three things:

• Consistency: the same exercise has the same name in all your routines, and your client does not think they are two different exercises.
• Speed: you pick from a short list, your own, instead of digging through a huge catalogue every time.
• Judgement: the list reflects how you work. What you do not use is not there, and does not get in the way.

It does not need to be long. A useful library is closer to a toolbox than an encyclopaedia: it has what you use often and grows when a need arises, not before.

Start from a catalogue, not a blank page

Writing hundreds of entries by hand, each with its name and its image, is work nobody pays you for. The practical approach is to start from a catalogue that already exists and keep what is useful to you:

1. Browse by muscle group and by equipment. It is the quickest way to see what is there without reading the whole list.
2. Copy into your library only what you are going to use. Copying commits you to nothing: if you do not use it later, you remove it.
3. Check the name before using it with clients. If the catalogue comes from a translation, some names may not match the one you use on the gym floor. Keep the ones that are understood without hesitation.

Take it gradually. Instead of spending a whole afternoon copying exercises, add the ones you need as you build your first routines. After a few weeks you will have a library tailored to you without having set aside any time for it.

Organise it around how you will search

A library is used by searching it, so it is worth organising it the way you search when you build a routine:

• By muscle group: when preparing a day, you usually think first about which area it will work.
• By equipment: a client training in a fully equipped gym is not the same as one training at home with the bare minimum.
• By name: a clear name that is always the same is what makes searching work. If you search for “row” and saved it under a different word, you will not find it.

The image helps you recognise the exercise at a glance when two names are similar. But it does not replace your instructions: how you want each client to do it is something you decide and explain.

Search without leaving the routine

The moment you really need your library is while you are writing a routine. If adding an exercise means going to another screen, finding it, copying it and coming back, the library becomes one more step instead of saving you one. What works is being able to search from the routine itself:

• First among your own exercises, the ones you already know and have chosen yourself.
• If it is not there, in the full catalogue, without changing screen.
• And whatever you add from the catalogue stays in your library for next time, without being duplicated.

This way the library grows on its own with the work you already do. How this fits with templates and per-client copies is covered in how to create routines without losing hours, and if you are coming from running everything in spreadsheets, in training planning in Excel.

Keep it clean without breaking what already exists

Over time, any library collects exercises you no longer use. It is worth reviewing now and then, with one condition: removing an exercise from your list should not change the routines your clients already have or delete what they logged with it. If you delete it completely, you lose the history that shows you how each client has been doing.

A quick review, every few months:

1. Are there repeated exercises with different names? Keep one and always use that one.
2. Are there exercises you have not put in any recent routine? Remove them from your list.
3. Do you often miss one? Add it now, calmly, and not halfway through a routine.
4. Does any name confuse your clients? Note down what they call it and explain it in the routine's instructions.

How Entrenify handles it

• Standard catalogue: 873 exercises, each with an image, which you can filter by muscle group and by equipment, or search by name.
• Names in Spanish, with a warning: the Spanish names come from a translation done by software, and the library flags those that a person has not yet reviewed.
• Your library: you copy an exercise from the catalogue into “Mis ejercicios” (My exercises) with one click; if you already had it, it is not duplicated.
• From the routine: when building a template or a client's routine, “Añadir ejercicio” (Add exercise) searches “Todos” (All), “Mis ejercicios” or “Biblioteca” (Library) without leaving the routine. If you choose one from the catalogue, it is copied into your exercises and added to the day in the same step.
• Remove without breaking anything: removing an exercise from your list does not delete it: it stops appearing among your exercises, but it stays in the routines where it already was and in the history of what your clients logged. If you add it again from the catalogue, you get the same one back, without creating another.
• For you, while building: the image appears in the editor, so the template is not just a list of names.

What it does not do: the catalogue exercises have an image, not a video. What your client sees when they open their routine is covered in the app for your clients, and the rest of the product is on the Entrenify home page (in Spanish).