The RepCanvas exercise library is a searchable catalogue of compound and isolation lifts, organised by muscle group and filterable by equipment. It feeds the program builder, the workout logger, and the per-exercise history pages - there is one source of truth for what each exercise is and how it has been performed.
What’s in the library
The library covers the canonical hypertrophy and strength lifts grouped under the muscle they primarily train: chest, back, shoulders, biceps, triceps, quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves, abs, forearms, and traps. Each exercise carries enough metadata that the picker can narrow the list down quickly - equipment, body position, grip, and execution style are all attributes you can scope on without typing.
The library is shared across all RepCanvas accounts. Editing the library record itself is not possible - that would change the exercise for every other lifter. Instead, attribute edits scoped to your program (a different bench angle, a different grip, a custom name) attach to your program’s instance of the exercise. The shared library stays canonical.
Browsing exercises
The Exercises tab is a flat alphabetical list scoped to your library, organised by muscle group. Each row shows a muscle-tinted dot, the exercise name, and a small subtitle covering the equipment and source. Filters at the top let you narrow by muscle group, and the search box matches loosely - tokens can be in any order, and a minor typo still finds the exercise. Typing “barbell incline bench” surfaces “Incline Barbell Bench Press” without you having to get the words right or in order.
Tapping into an exercise opens two sub-views: an instructions tab where written cues are available, and a history tab that lists every set you have ever logged for that exercise, with personal records marked. The history tab is the most-used surface - it’s where you check whether your top set today beats your best in the previous training block.
The exercise picker in the program builder and mid-workout
Adding or replacing an exercise — whether you’re composing a program or swapping a lift mid-workout — uses the same sectioned list the Exercises tab uses. Search at the top, muscle-group chip filters under it, then dumbbell-tile rows grouped under muscle-group section headers. The picker matches the rest of the app, so there’s nothing new to learn for the second context.
If the catalogue doesn’t surface what you want, switch to the Build Exercise tab inside the program builder picker. That tab is a cascading drill-down — muscle group, exercise type, equipment, variant, attachment, and so on — and as you narrow, RepCanvas previews the canonical name it composes from your selections. Add it once and it lives alongside the catalogue lifts as a custom exercise you can use in any program.
Custom exercises
Anything you create lives alongside the rest of the library and is fully editable. The intent is that the library should never feel restrictive - a niche cable variation, a piece of gym equipment with a brand name, or an exercise you’ve named idiosyncratically all belong here. Custom exercises also feed your strength trends and personal records like any other exercise; there is no second-class treatment.
Where to read next
- Building a custom program covers how to compose a program day by day from the library.
- How programs are structured explains the microcycle and mesocycle layers that hold your exercise selections.
- Strength trends shows how each exercise turns into a long-running progress signal.