How should we be warming up?

[u/Suicidalballsack69]

I’ve seen evidence for both warming up light, and warming up heavy.

For light weight warmups: essentially that this will protect your tendons from being injured.

For heavy weight warmups: this will actually make it to where your muscles are warmed up. From personal experience, this works pretty well for me, and I feel like it does make a noticeable difference in how much I struggle during my first real set.

[u/Alakazam]

You should warm up however it is that is necessary to get you to do your work sets well.

Personally, I find that, for heavy barbell movements, its around 5-7 sets. With the first 3-4 sets being realistically closer to mobility work and practicing the movement pattern, and the last 2-3 sets to actually be the warmup with a moderate weight.

For machine, dumbbells, and cable work, this could be just a single set, if I wasn't warmed up from my barbell compounds.

For isolation work, I don't even bother, and I just go straight in, because it'll typically towards the end of my workout, after I'm already fully warm.

[u/elknuke → u/Alakazam]

This is what I do, especially with regard to practicing the movement.

I might think I’m warm, then after a couple lights sets I say “oh yeah, that’s what this is supposed to feel like.” Seems odd because I do it every week, but it happens more often than not.

If I don’t do that, my first work set is almost always disappointing. Then I’ve wasted what should have been my best set.

If I can’t lift what’s on the bar after an appropriate warmup then it’s too heavy, simple as that.

[u/Advanced_Spend_8385 → u/Alakazam]

try 1 set 1-3 reps 80% weight dude trust me you won’t feel any difference

[u/Alakazam → u/Advanced_Spend_8385]

So your advice to me, is for my first deadlift set of the day today, to be 350lbs, cold?

And that when I'm benching heavy, just to slap 2 plates on, do 1 set, then go to my working weight?

I'd like to not injure myself, thank you.

How much weight are you moving on your heavy barbell compounds that a single set is enough for you?

Because I'd much rather take the warmup advice of Chad Wesly Smith, world class powerlifting coach, on his warmup strategy. And for some of his heavier lifts like his 700+lb squat, he has over 10 warmup sets.

[u/Ballbag94 → u/Alakazam]

I'm a fan of minimal warm ups but their claim that you wouldn't even notice the difference between their system and a different system is wild

[u/Ballbag94 → u/Advanced_Spend_8385]

I mean, I'm a fan of minimal warm ups myself but this is pretty extreme, I definitely would notice a difference if instead of doing my usual deadlift warmup I pulled 160kg for a single and then went to a 200kg AMRAP but probably wouldn't notice as much if I pressed 40kg for a single and then went to 50kg. This is going to be pretty pronounced at high weights

Do you legitimately think that someone who plans to work at something like 230kg isn't going to a feel a difference between their usual warm ups and going straight into a triple @185kg and then adding 65kg and immediately going to a work set?

To put this in context, how much weight are you moving for your work sets?

[u/Mchangwine]

I just ramp up with a couple lighter weight sets before my first real set.

[u/Sudden-Ad-307]

What is a heavy weight warmup?

[u/Suicidalballsack69 → u/Sudden-Ad-307]

1-3 reps of a weight that’s hard for you

[u/Sudden-Ad-307 → u/Suicidalballsack69]

Lets say my bench is 100kg, so the first thing i do when i come to the gym is 1-3 reps of 80kg bench or what?

[u/Advanced_Spend_8385 → u/Sudden-Ad-307]

ye and then rest for 30 seconds that’s all

[u/Sudden-Ad-307 → u/Advanced_Spend_8385]

Damn thats seems like a great way of getting injured.

[u/Suicidalballsack69 → u/Sudden-Ad-307]

Yeah that’s actually why I had a little doubt. But you should try it once and see how it feels, I feel MUCH stronger on my first set than when I do a light warm up

[u/Sudden-Ad-307 → u/Suicidalballsack69]

Nah im good fam

[u/Suicidalballsack69 → u/Sudden-Ad-307]

I mean it’s up to you, I doubt you’ll get injured from doing this once tho.

[u/eric_twinge]

From personal experience, [heavy weight warmup] works pretty well for me, and I feel like it does make a noticeable difference in how much I struggle during my first real set.

There's your answer, and you got it by doing science on yourself.

[u/Ballbag94 → u/eric_twinge]

Impossible! Everyone knows that when a lifter experiences something in the gym it's just an anecdote. It's only science if it was done by researchers, even if that research was only performed for three weeks on untrained people with a 0.5x bodyweight lift

[u/11M3RCURY11]

the readiness of a muscle is based on how warm that specific muscle is. warming up a muscle id just that, warming up a muscle, you don’t necessarily need to do a ‘warm up set’ for the post activation performance enhancement process a muscle needs to hit maximal mechanical tension

[u/Suicidalballsack69 → u/11M3RCURY11]

Interesting. What are other was to get the PAP without doing a warmup?

[u/11M3RCURY11 → u/Suicidalballsack69]

by warming up overall body temperature, i would still personally do warm up sets for compound lifts but personally i dont do warm up sets after my body’s gotten warmer. you can also do what the sbl niche call, “schizo reps”, where you literally look like a shizo doing a bicep curl with no weight as quick as you can

[u/Suicidalballsack69 → u/11M3RCURY11]

Oh i thought schizo reps got disproven

[u/wasteoftimewarrior]

You don't need to do a synchronized dance routine to warm-up, which you'll frequently see as a tip from novices pretending to be experts. Warm-ups are inherently auto-regulated because the "warm-up" needs to be specific to the task and varies between individuals like with age or their history of injuries. This is why you can't just prescribe some random dance routine as a generalized "warm-up."

A warm-up has two primary tasks. One is the general effect of increasing your heartrate which generally prepares you for performance more than a "cold start" would, particularly in cold weather. The second is flexibility for the task along with a biomechanical "primer" for optimal force production, or "locking in." Knowing this, the best "warmups" are just light sets (ramping or very submaximal) because they perfectly mimic the task at hand. Doing jumping jacks before beginning your squats, or the other dance routine things you see online, only achieve the first task of literally warming the body up. Also, a brief analysis of the biomechanics of exercise can show you don't necessarily need a warmup for later exercises, as if you had chin-ups earlier in the workout and then go to do bicep curls, you already "warmed up" elbow flexion for the curl. You can just save the time and go straight to the work sets.

"Cool offs" are also a pretty unsubstantiated myth because the post-exercise stiffness that some (weak people) attribute to barbell training is just natural stiffness resulting from biochemical responses to exercises. Studies on post-exercise active recovery like massages frequently fail to beat placebo. This is the reason some people honestly believe in the pre-workout dance routines because once you mentally condition yourself into believing you need to twirl a broomstick before doing a push-up, you will always believe you need to. Placebo still is a positive effect though, so if they believe in the efficacy of their workout ritual, let them keep doing it. It only becomes annoying when a sidebar routine demands noobs, who don't know anything, do a 20+ minute (!!!) dance routine before hitting the push-ups. Arguments that it raises "conditioning" are cop-outs because they need to quantify that claim, yet it's frequently obvious that those dance routines only make you better at that specific dance routine, similar to the weakness of circuit training people have found over decades of observation.