Equipment setup
A bench is the most-skipped piece of equipment in home gyms. Leave it out of your inventory and RepRoute simply never programs bench work — you get floor presses, standing presses and push-up variations instead.
Floor presses skip the bottom third of the bench press range but train almost the same musculature. Plenty of strong benchers prefer them for triceps work anyway.
This is the whole mechanism, and it's refreshingly boring: RepRoute checks the equipment you ticked. No bench ticked, no bench exercises programmed. There's no clever substitution logic to explain — the lift simply never enters your plan, and the pattern gets filled by something you can do.
One thing to be explicit about: RepRoute does NOT treat a chair, ottoman or stability ball as a bench. There is no such mapping in the engine. If you press off a chair at home, that's a perfectly good idea — but it's your call, not something RepRoute knows about or plans around. Tick "bench" only if you own something you'd genuinely call a bench.
Standing pressing, push-up variations and pike push-ups keep upper-body pushing strong without a bench in sight.
| Day | Focus | Exercises |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Push (floor + standing) |
|
| Day 2 | Pull + legs |
|
| Day 3 | Repeat with intensity bias |
|
triceps
triceps
chest
shoulders
shoulders
shoulders
hamstrings
quadriceps
Partly — floor press transfer is meaningful for the triceps and overall upper-body strength. The setup-specific groove still needs reacclimation when you finally get a bench.
Physically it works for dumbbell pressing, and plenty of people do it. But RepRoute has no concept of a chair-as-bench — it won't program bench work off the back of one. If you want to press off a chair, do it as your own substitution during the session using Swap.
Only if you own something to dip on. RepRoute gates dips behind dip bars, rings or a TRX — without one of those ticked in your equipment, dips never appear in your plan.
Free plan, no credit card. Tell RepRoute what you own and the plan adapts immediately.
