Warming up for lifting
A good warm-up isn't twenty minutes on the treadmill or stretching on a mat. It's a short prep after which your first working set goes the way it should, not like your fifth.
Why warm up
A warm muscle contracts faster and harder, joints move more freely, and your nervous system gets a chance to "remember" the movement. In the review and meta-analysis by Fradkin, Zazryn and Smoliga (2010), warming up improved performance in 79% of the measures tested — from jumps to strength.
On injuries, honestly: the evidence that warming up prevents them is weaker than people think, but what there is leans in its favour. And in the gym a warm-up has a simple practical job too: check your technique and how you feel on a light weight before you put your working weight on your back.
General warm-up
5–10 minutes to raise your body temperature and heart rate: treadmill, bike, rower, a skipping rope at an easy pace. The target is a light sweat and faster but easy breathing. This isn't a cardio session: if it tired you out, it was too much.
Then a couple of minutes of dynamic work for the joints you're about to use: leg swings and lunges before squats, arm circles and band pull-aparts before pressing, hinges and cat-cows before deadlifts. The key word is dynamic: moving through the range, no long holds.
How much general warm-up you need depends on conditions. In a cold gym in winter, early in the morning, after a day at a desk or as you get older — closer to ten minutes. In summer, midday, if you walked to the gym — five is enough. The test is the same: your joints move freely instead of creaking on the first rep.
Specific warm-up: the ladder
The main part is warm-up sets on the lift you're about to do. In the Ribeiro et al. (2021) review, a specific warm-up with a load close to your working weight did the best job of supporting strength and rep performance. The ladder I use:
- Empty bar — 10 reps.
- 40% of your working weight — 5 reps.
- 60% — 3 reps.
- 80% — 2 reps.
- Before a heavy set (5 reps or fewer) — another 90% for 1 rep.
Example: a working squat of 100 kg for 5. Warm-up — 20 × 10, 40 × 5, 60 × 3, 80 × 2, 90 × 1, then your working sets. Each weight is rounded down to something you can load with plates. The warm-up calculator will build the ladder for your weight, with the plates per side.
How much and how to rest
- Reps drop as the weight rises: the last steps are 1–2 reps, to feel the weight, not to tire from it.
- Rest between light steps — as long as it takes to load the plates, 30–60 seconds. Before the last heavy step and before your first working set — as long as between working sets.
- Light working weight, short ladder. If your working weight is 40 kg, the bar and one step in between are enough. A step that ends up no heavier than the previous one after rounding simply drops out.
- A second exercise for the same muscle usually doesn't need the full ladder: one or two sets at 50–70% are enough.
The whole warm-up before your first exercise takes 10–15 minutes — about the same as the extra sets you'd lose by starting cold. Upper day or lower day, the logic is the same: general warm-up, the day's joints, a ladder on the first lift. If the first exercise is isolation for a small muscle, the ladder is shorter: a couple of light sets of 15–20.
Stretching and common mistakes
Long static stretching — holding a stretch for a minute — isn't needed before a heavy set: it does a different job. If you can't get into position without it, say into a deep squat, stretch briefly, 15–30 seconds, and go back to dynamic moves. Work on flexibility separately or after training.
Common mistakes:
- Skipping the warm-up and starting straight at your working weight — the first set comes out worse, and on compound lifts it's a risk too.
- Getting tired warming up — 10 reps on every step eat into your working sets.
- Jumping from 60% straight to your working weight on a heavy lift — your nervous system needs a step in between.
- Warming up on machines instead of the bar. A bike warms your body, but only squatting prepares your squat technique.
- Not listening to the warm-up. If 60% feels heavier than usual and a knee or shoulder aches, take 5–10% off your working weight today rather than grinding through. The warm-up is the best moment to notice it isn't your day.
Warming up and your log
Don't log your warm-up sets. They aren't work: light sets would skew an exercise's average weight, tonnage and "last time", and records never happen in them. I don't log warm-ups myself, and when importing from Strong and Hevy I skip sets marked as warm-ups and say in the report how many there were.
Log only working sets — then your estimated max and volume per muscle stay honest. More on the difference in the glossary: warm-up set. And if you came here to test your max, the warm-up for it is covered in the guide on finding your 1RM safely.
Work out the ladder for your working weight — and log only your working sets in the diary.