Creating custom exercises

Basic  Protocol ships a base exercise library, but the best programming uses your movements, cues and demos. You can add your own exercises and they show up in the library everywhere you build workouts.

Two ways to create

• Quick-create while building. In the exercise picker, “Can’t find it? Create new exercise” opens a compact dialog — name it, attach a demo, set type / difficulty / muscle groups / equipment, and it drops straight into the workout you’re building.
• The full editor. From Vault → Training → My Exercises → Add exercise, you get the complete editor (tabs for Basic info, Media, Description, Advanced). Everything auto-saves as you go.

What you can set

Basic info

• Name — what it’s called in the library and in workouts.
• Exercise type — Strength · Cardio · Flexibility · Balance · Plyometric · Functional · Stretching.
• Difficulty — Beginner · Intermediate · Advanced · Elite.

Media

• Demo image and demo video — the visual a client follows. Add each from Upload, YouTube, or your media library.
• Loop the demo — when on, the video preview-loops (used by video-guided workouts).
• Optional additional media.

Description — coaching notes and cues, with formatting.

Advanced

• Primary muscle groups — what the movement works (powers the library’s muscle-group filter).
• Required equipment — tag everything it needs.
• Risk level (1–5) — how demanding / injury-prone it is.
• Compound — mark it if it works multiple muscle groups.
• Alternative exercises — similar movements offered as substitutions when you (or a client) swap it out.

Bulk-create from Vault videos

Uploaded a whole batch of demo videos at once? You don’t have to create each exercise by hand.

1. Go to Vault → Content and select the videos (tick their checkboxes).
2. Click Create Exercises in the action bar.
3. In the dialog, pick a naming style — keep the exact file names, or let Protocol clean them up (underscores and dashes become spaces, the file extension is dropped) with either each word capitalized or only the first letter capitalized. A live preview shows how a few of your file names will come out.
4. Optionally pick an exercise folder to file them into (or leave them at the root).
5. Hit Create — one exercise per video, each with that video attached as its demo.

Only videos in your selection are used — any other selected files are skipped (the dialog tells you how many). The new exercises are created Active with sensible defaults (Strength / Intermediate), so you can refine muscle groups, equipment and cues in the editor whenever you like.

Status & sharing

An exercise can be Active (usable in workouts), Draft, or Deprecated (retired but kept for old workouts). On team plans you can also keep an exercise private or share it with your team.

Tip: good alternatives and accurate muscle groups / equipment pay off later — they drive the “suggested alternatives” when swapping an exercise, and the filters in the library.

Next: how clients do the workout → Logging workouts on mobile →