lower back
A flared lower back is one of the most common reasons people quit a program. RepRoute takes 209 of the 219 loaded hinging, carrying and core movements out of your plan and refills the emptied days from what's still safe — so there's still a session waiting for you.
Heavy deadlifts, loaded carries, and weighted spinal flexion are the usual suspects when a lower back is irritated. RepRoute's response is deliberately simple: it stops programming them.
Flag the lower back and every exercise carrying the lower_back tag is REMOVED from your plan — 209 of the 219 hinge, carry and core movements (95%), and 248 exercises catalogue-wide. Hinging is all but wiped out (145 of 146 deadlift and RDL variants go), loaded spinal flexion goes entirely (47 of 47), and most carries go too (3 of 5).
Bracing work fares better than the old version of this page claimed. Ten movements survive the flag: Bird Dog, Dumbbell Farmers Walk, Extended Plank, Farmer's Walk, Glute Bridge, Kneeling Plank, Pallof Press, Pallof Press With Rotation, Plank and Push Up to Side Plank. So the plank family and the Pallof press generally stay while the crunch family goes — which is roughly the distinction you'd want, though it's a by-product of per-exercise tagging rather than a rule the engine understands. Check the ones you're given; if a plank aggravates your back, swap it.
Days emptied by that strip get refilled with up to three exercises from the patterns still available — squats, presses, rows. Your leg day doesn't vanish; it stops hinging.
One thing RepRoute does NOT do: reduce the load or shorten the range of motion on a movement before removing it. There is no half-measure in the engine. It's either in your plan or it isn't. If you want a gentler adjustment than that, use Swap during the session on the specific movement that bothers you.
209 of the 219 movements in these patterns carry the lower back tag and are removed. Tagging is per exercise, not per pattern, so 10 survive — they are named below.
These 10 carry no lower back tag, so the flag leaves them in your plan. Not tagged is not the same as cleared for your injury — if one of them hurts, use Swap on it or skip the set.
These carry no lower back tag — verified against the live catalogue, not picked by hand — so they survive the strip and are what emptied days get refilled from. They are not one-for-one replacements — the engine removes and rebuilds, it does not substitute like for like.
quadriceps
quadriceps
chest
shoulders
You'll lose some — how much, and how fast it comes back, is individual enough that we won't put a number on it. What RepRoute can promise is that the rest of your training keeps running while the hinge is out.
Mostly no — and this page previously said the opposite, which was wrong. The plank, the kneeling plank and the Pallof press carry no lower_back tag, so they survive; the crunch family and the weighted-flexion work do not (47 of 47 loaded-flexion movements are removed). The tagging is per exercise, so check what you're actually given rather than assuming a category was cleared.
Shooting pain down a leg, numbness, weakness, or pain that wakes you at night are not training-load problems. RepRoute is a planning tool, not a medical one — go and get those looked at.
Free plan, no credit card. Flag the lower back in onboarding and the conflicting movements are stripped from your plan straight away.
