How To Warm Up For Lifting
Why Less Is More
My favorite warm-up quote comes from Mark Rippetoe, the inimitable and irascible founder of Starting Strength:
Warming up is an essential component of training, but it need not be a tremendously histrionic affair, with lots of arm waving, hopping around the gym, contortions, demonstrations of movement proficiency, and exhaustion.
In short, warming up needs to prepare you for what you’re about to do and not much else. Any seasoned lifter will tell you that coming in cold to a heavy set of squats is a terrible idea, but if it’s longer than 10 minutes or so, you’re probably wasting time that should be spent on the workout itself.
Warming Up For Barbell Lifts
I think some people are horrified when I walk into the gym and immediately get under a bar. I’ve been doing that more or less for the last 15 years and have had minimal downtime due to injury. Same with my clients. I understand my empirical evidence is hardly scientific proof, but at a certain point of a trainer/coach's career and supported by enough "data" through an analytical eye, there is enough to draw solid conclusions.
Doing a 3-5 minute cardio warm-up on a rower, treadmill, or assault bike is probably fine to kick things off and should be enough to increase the temperature of the muscles. More than that and you're creating fatigue that can negatively affect your lifting.
The goal with a barbell warm-up, or any warm-up for that matter, is to practice the movement but not fatigue you so much that it reduces your performance for working sets. Working sets are the heaviest sets of the day and the ones specifically designed to elicit an adaptation (e.g. make you stronger and build muscle). If you're supposed to do 3 sets of 5 at 185 pounds on the squat, those are your working sets. All the lighter sets before that are part of your warm-up.
We want enough warm-up sets to prevent large jumps in weight, and what larger jumps we do have should be further away from the working sets. Here’s what a typical warm-up might look like for working sets with 185 pounds:
Warm-Up Set 1
45 pound bar x 10 reps
You can do an extra set here as a newbie, seasoned lifter, or someone lifting in a cold environment.
Warm-Up Set 2
135 pounds x 5 reps
Warm-Up Set 3
155 pounds x 3 reps
Warm-Up Set 4
175 pounds x 1-2 reps
First Working Set
185 pounds x 5 reps
Let's reiterate a couple things: the reps taper down and the weight jumps get progressively smaller as we approach the first working set. Remember, we want to prepare the neuromuscular system but minimize fatigue, so it doesn't make sense for us to do a ton of reps close to our working weight. We also want to avoid massive jumps in weight, because it increases the likelihood that we won't tolerate the load well.
My warm-up is based largely on the warm-up method for Starting Strength with a couple modifications. If you want a more extensive overview of this process for barbells, I definitely recommend checking out the book. Paid subscribers can also get access to my growing list of fitness and nutrition resources if you want to do a deep dive on this stuff.
Warming Up For Other Exercises
The absolute weight will be lower for most dumbbell, kettlebell, cable, and machine exercises, so you should follow the same principles but won't need as many warm-up sets. The same is true for exercises beyond the first series of your workout. You may still need to warm-up, but you should be able to cut a set or two since you're already primed and ready to go.
Here are some key warm-up tips for different types of equipment:
When warming up with dumbbells, if you're a beginner and the weight is relatively light, you may not need a warm-up at all. But as the weight gets heavier, you may want to consider adding 1-2 warm-up sets that are around 60% of your working weight. That's generally enough to prepare you to do the exercise without fatiguing you for the main sets.
For example, if you're doing Dumbbell Bench Press with 60lb dumbbells, you might want to do a warm-up set with 30-35lb dumbbells first.
Most commercial gym machines use some type of pin, which makes it easy to get a warm-up set or two. Just move the pin up incrementally after each warm-up set and make sure you limit the number of reps the closer you get to your working weight.
You might want to extend a machine warm-up if the absolute weight is VERY heavy, like in a leg press. In that case, your warm-up would look similar to the barbell warm-up.
Other Warm-Up Considerations
The previous two sections should cover 90% of your warm-up needs, but you can also use the warm-up to move in new ways or target "sticky" areas. The options are nearly endless and will depend on your limitations and needs, but let me give you some examples of what I call Movement Channel Openers (MCOs):
Alternating Lateral Lunges
Quadruped Reach and Rotation
World's Greatest Stretch
There are no rules for these and there is nothing special about the specific exercises I listed. These are aimed at getting you "unstuck" and moving differently. If you find you have "tight hips", do something that opens them up. If you have "tight shoulders", find an exercise that gets those shoulder blades moving or arms overhead. Don't overcomplicate it. Movement is your oyster; explore it. You don't need more than a couple of these each day, and I would limit them to 5-10 reps and no more than 2-3 sets.
What I Don't Do In My Warm-Ups
"Activation" Exercises
I gotta be honest, I'm still not entirely sure what these are supposed to do. Unless innervation to the target muscle has been severed, you can activate the muscle. I've never once done an exercise correctly with appropriate weight with great effort without activating the shit out of what needed to be activated. If something isn't "turning on", you're likely doing the exercise wrong, aren't picking an exercise that targets the muscle well, or aren't using enough weight or effort. In any case, doing the exercise with slightly less weight should be enough to "activate" what needs to be activated.
Soft-Tissue Mobilization
There are a myriad of health and fitness professionals that swear by using foam rolling, lacrosse balls, etc. as a form of targeted tissue release, but the research doesn't seem clear on what these modalities do or if they're effective. I don't see the value-add when coupled with a traditional dynamic warm-up. They also take a lot of time. If you like doing this stuff, have the time for it, and feel like you benefit from it, knock yourself out. Don't let some random meatsack like me dissuade you. But if you're short on time but still want to warm-up, this is the first thing I would omit.
Intense Cardio
The last thing you want to do before lifting is exhaust yourself with cardio. In my experience, the risk of lifting while fatigued is significantly higher than the risk of running after a lift. So unless you have a valid reason for prioritizing it and placing it right before your lifting session, move it somewhere else. I'm also assuming you have a schedule that allows you to make this choice as well as not having a reason to heavily prioritize endurance training.
Static Stretching
I'm very much a live and let live kinda guy. I think stretching can have its place, especially for folks that are inactive for most of the day. But since it may have the potential to reduce power output and strength if done immediately before training, there are probably better times to do it than right before a lifting session.
Like most things in life, I don't believe in doing things that don't make sense. The warm-up should prepare you for what you're about to do and anything that doesn't directly do that, in my mind, is superfluous and should be omitted. But this is also just my opinion. Do whatever makes you happy.
If you have any questions or topics you'd like me to cover, please drop them in the comments. Thanks for reading.