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Setkit

Library tool

Exercise alternatives finder

Pick an exercise and get the movements that replace it. Easier versions, harder versions, and swaps for the equipment you actually have.

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Find a swap

199 exercises

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How it works

Every exercise fails you eventually. The rack is taken, the gym has no cable machine, a shoulder is sore, or the movement is simply too hard right now. This tool answers the question that follows: what do I do instead.

Search for the exercise you cannot do, and the results come back in three groups. Easier versions of the same movement, harder versions to grow into, and swaps that train the same pattern with different equipment. Filter by what you own and the list shrinks to what you can actually perform today.

Searching for the barbell row returns the dumbbell row, the band row and the suspension row as swaps. The chest-supported row sits alongside them as the version that removes the hardest part, which is holding the bent-over position.

The links come from the library entries themselves rather than from a muscle match, and that distinction is what makes them useful. A pull-up and a barbell row both train the back. One pulls from overhead and the other from in front, so a session that already has one does not want the other as a substitute.

Where nothing honest exists, the tool says so. Some movements depend on their equipment, and the useful answer is to train the pattern a different way rather than to accept a substitute that quietly trains something else.

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Questions

How are the alternatives chosen?
From the library's own links. Every exercise entry names its easier versions, its harder versions and the movements that train the same thing with different equipment, and those links are what this tool searches.
What if I have no equipment at all?
Filter to bodyweight and the tool shows only what needs nothing. Some lifts have no honest bodyweight replacement, and it says so rather than offering something that trains a different muscle.
Is a substitute as good as the original?
Sometimes better, often close, occasionally worse. The tool says what each swap keeps and what it gives up, because a dumbbell row and a barbell row are not the same exercise even though both train the back.
Why is matching the muscle not enough on its own?
The movement pattern matters as much as the muscle. Swapping a horizontal pull for a vertical one changes what the session trains, even though both are back work.

Install on iPhone or iPad

  1. 1Tap the Share buttonin Safari's toolbar.
  2. 2Choose "Add to Home Screen".
  3. 3Tap Add.