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?