User Guide

Discover: Ready-Made Training Plans

By NexusWorks · Updated July 2026 · 6 min read

Not everyone wants to program their own training — and nobody should have to before they've even started. Discover is Herculog's built-in library of ready-made plans, from two-day beginner routines to high-volume splits and specialization blocks. This guide shows you how to browse the library, pick the right level, preview a plan set by set, add it to your own list, and make it yours.

Opening Discover

Discover lives inside the Plan tab. Open the Plan tab and tap Discover to browse the full library of ready-made training plans that ship with Herculog. Everything in it works exactly like a plan you built yourself — same editor, same run screen — so nothing you learn in the Workout Plans guide is wasted here.

How the library is organized

The library is grouped into three levels, and each level contains complete, proven layouts rather than random workout ideas:

Two of these layouts have full write-ups on this site if you want the reasoning behind them: the full-body workout plan covers the approach behind the beginner Full Body A/B routines, and the Push/Pull/Legs guide explains the split behind the PPL plans at the intermediate and advanced tiers.

Choosing the right level

Pick by experience and by how many days a week you can actually train — the layout of each plan implies a weekly schedule:

• Beginner if you're in your first months of lifting or coming back after a long break. The Full Body A/B and Machine & Dumbbell Full Body plans work every muscle each session, so two or three visits a week is a complete program. The Two-Day Upper/Lower is exactly what it says: two sessions a week, one upper, one lower.
• Intermediate once easy progress slows and you can train more often. Upper/Lower splits imply around four days a week; Push/Pull/Legs runs as three days (one cycle) or six (two cycles); PHUL's Power and Hypertrophy days pair up into a four-day week.
• Advanced when you have years under the bar and the recovery to match. High-Volume PPL and the Hybrid strength/volume days demand more sessions and more work per session, and the Specialization plans exist to pour extra volume into one lagging muscle group — Chest, Back, Legs, Shoulders, or Arms — alongside your base training.

When in doubt, start a level lower than your ego suggests. A plan you can complete and recover from beats a plan that flattens you by Wednesday.

Previewing a plan

You never have to add a plan blind. In the Discover list, tap a plan's title to expand its full exercise list, showing each exercise with its sets × reps and RPE targets. Tap the title again to collapse it. Skim a few plans at your level and pick the one whose exercises match your gym's equipment and your taste — the best program is one you'll actually show up for.

Adding a plan

1. Find the plan you want in Discover (expand the title to double-check its contents).
2. Tap the Add button next to it.
3. The button changes to an Added checkmark, and the plan appears in your own plan library on the Plan tab.

From that moment it's your plan, not a locked template — you can rename it, reorder it, and edit every set, exactly as if you had built it yourself.

Setting your working weights

Added plans ship with sets and reps filled in and every weight set to 0 — the library can't know what you lift, and guessing would be worse than asking. Enter your loads one of two ways:

1. Edit the plan first. Open the plan from the Plan tab, edit each exercise, and type in your working weights. The name autocomplete pulls from your logging history, so if you've logged an exercise before, your past numbers are right there to guide you. The Workout Plans guide walks through the editor in detail.
2. Adjust during the first run. Start the plan and enter the real weight as you reach each exercise. By the end of session one, the plan holds your actual numbers.

Either way, the first session doubles as calibration — after that, the plan is dialed to you.

Building a weekly program

Most Discover plans are single days, so a full week is just a small collection of them. Add each day's plan and rotate through them across the week — for example, add the Push, Pull, and Legs plans and run one per session, three or six days a week. Since added plans are fully editable, you can also duplicate a plan and tweak the copy: two versions of the same upper day with different accessory work, or a heavy and a light variant of the same session. Your plan library becomes your week — pick the day, tap Start, and lift.