You’re Probably Warming Up Wrong, and It’s Ruining Your Lifting

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

Warming up badly is inefficient, sometimes ridiculous, and it sets you up for poor results from your lifting. Starting Strength Coach Phil Meggers helps you warm-up effectively, efficiently, and simply and provides plenty of examples, tips, and mistakes to avoid.

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Stretching is Dangerous?! (Why You Should NOT do Mobility Work)

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

Make no mistake - stretching is dangerous. However, it’s probably not for the reasons you’re imagining.

Is Stretching Ever a Good Thing?
Before we talk about why stretching is generally a bad idea, it’s useful to cover a few instances wherein stretching might actually be a smart move.

In general, if there is a position you cannot achieve without a typical warm-up - e.g., squatting is the warm-up for squatting - then you might benefit from some stretching. Using the squat as an example, if you can’t get the barbell into that nice, low bar position on your back due to tight shoulders, then you may benefit from simply stretching out your shoulders. This shouldn’t take more than a few minutes each training session, and over time, your shoulder flexibility will improve. We’ve got a video below that covers the stretch to perform as well as the process, so be sure to check it out if you struggle to achieve the low bar position.

As an another example, if you perform cleans and front squats and the act of cleaning and front squatting is not sufficient to improve and maintain your front rack position (the position wherein the bar sits on your delts in front of your throat) - this could be due to inflexibility or long forearms - then you may need to spend some time actively stretching to improve this position. Again, this shouldn’t take a lot of time, and we also have a video that covers this process (see below).

How Do I Know if I Should Stretch?
The key in both of the aforementioned cases is that you are stretching because you can’t hit the positions you need to in order to successfully execute the lift (i.e., the squat, clean, or front squat).

With this in mind, if that situation describes you, then go ahead and stretch. However, if you can already achieve the proper positioning for a lift, then I would not recommend stretching.

But What About . . . ?
Some people might complain that they can’t hit proper squat depth when warming up with the empty bar. This is not a problem. The squat is an excellent warm-up and stretch for - not surprisingly - the squat, so it’s not unusual to squat a bit high for your first empty bar set, and then you squat a bit lower on each subsequent warm-up set so that you are achieving depth by the time your reach your work sets (and typically well before that point).

Squatting to depth isn’t an issue of flexibility - it’s simply an issue of sufficient strength and efficient technique.

Don’t complicate your training. In most cases, the lift you’re performing provides all the stretching you need to perform that lift, so your training already provides all the stretching you need for training.

Why You Shouldn’t Stretch
Remember, you stretch to increase your range of motion (ROM), and if you already have sufficient flexibility to go through your daily activities as well as your training, then you certainly don’t need to stretch.

If you enjoy stretching, feel free to do so, but since stretching is not necessary, I recommend avoiding it sheerly because it is a time suck on your life. For most people, stretching is a waste of time.

Most people need to get into the gym, train, and then get out of the gym in a reasonable amount of time because they have other things that they either need to do or they want to do. If you have all the time in the world to train, more power to you, but you are a unicorn. Additionally, even if you do have a lot of time, there are other things to do in life far more interesting and enjoyable than barbell training (remember - this is coming from a guy who promotes barbell training), so let’s be efficient.

Stretching is dangerous (I’ll cop to using that word liberally) because it wastes precious training time, so ditch the time suck that stretching represents, warm-up using the lift itself (gradually and progressively loaded), train hard, and then get out of the gym and move on with your life.

As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.

-Phil

PS: Whenever you want even more Testify in your life, here are some free resources:

  • Book a free intro and strategy session with us HERE.

  • Pick up a free copy of Testify’s Squat Guide: 12 Tips to Improve Your Squat Now HERE.

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At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Interested in getting stronger, looking better, and having more energy?

The Best Way to Warm Up for Lifting (do not do this...)

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

Never use 2.5 lb plates . . .

Specifically, never use 2.5 lb plates in your warm-ups . . . mostly . . . kind of.

using 2.5 lb plates in your warm-up? Let’s not be crazy here, folks.

Some elaboration is warranted here, but we’ll keep this short and quick.

The Three Criteria for a Good Warm-up
Remember that there are three criteria for a good warm-up. First, the warm-up needs to prepare you for your work sets, so the weight needs to get heavier throughout the warm-up, and this will typically be done in roughly equal increments.

Second, the warm-up should not exhaust you by the time you get to your work weight, so you’re typically going to taper your warm-up reps from one set to the next. Once you’ve put weight on the bar, something like 5-3-2-1 works pretty well as you’ll see in the example below (with 225 lb as the work weight):

45 lb x 5 x 2 (empty barbell)
95 lb x 5
135 lb x 3
185 lb x 2
205 lb x 1
—————
225 lb x 5 x 3 (work sets)

Could Julie do 90b for a warm-up? sure, but it takes two 10 lb plates and one 2.5 lb plate per side. 95 lb (i.e., one 25 lb plate per side) is far simpler.

Third - and this is what we’re talking about today with the absence of 2.5 lb plates - the warm-up should bow to convenience whenever it’s possible and reasonable to do so. It’s very convenient to choose your warm-up weights so that they end with the number five, e.g., 85 lb, 95 lb, 105 lb, etc., and if you do this, you don’t need to use 2.5 lb plates when warming up (if you use 2.5 lb plates, your weight selection will end with a zero such as 90 lb, 100 lb, 110 lb, etc.).

“Are You Sure This is OK?”
This works well because, in general, you don’t need to be nitpicky with your warm-up weight selections, and by avoiding 2.5 lb plates, we’ve now simplified the process by reasonably reducing the options we choose from when warming up.

Two Exceptions
This is a general recommendation, and as such, there are some exceptions.

First, you might want to be slightly more picky with your last warm-up set, and if that’s the case, you might choose to use 2.5 lb plates so that your last warm-up weight can end with a zero.

Second, if your work weight is less than 100 lb, you might need to use 2.5 lb plates in some of your warm-ups. For example, if you’re pressing 87.5 lb for the work weight, your warm-up might contain some weights ending in the number zero such as 70 lb or 80 lb, and you’ll need 2.5 lb plates to load those weights. However, if your work weight is 100 lb or more, most or all of your warm-up weights can end with a five, and thus you can skip the 2.5 lb plates.

Keep it simple, ditch the 2.5 lb plates in your warm-ups (with an exception here and there), and as always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better . . . and train more efficiently.

-Phil

PS: Whenever you want even more Testify in your life, here are some free resources:

  • Book a free intro and strategy session with us HERE.

  • Pick up a free copy of Testify’s Squat Guide: 12 Tips to Improve Your Squat Now HERE.

  • Get our free weekly email - containing useful videos, articles, and training tips - HERE.

  • Follow Testify on Instagram HERE.

  • Subscribe to Testify’s YouTube channel HERE.

(Some links may be affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, Testify earns from qualifying purchases.)

At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Interested in getting stronger, looking better, and having more energy?

Shorter Workouts! | More Gains in Less Time

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

You want to get strong, but you don't have all day to spend in the gym. What do you do? Starting Strength Phil Meggers explains.

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3 Reasons to STOP Using Percentages (or apps) for Your Warm-ups!

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

Warm-up percentage charts and warm-up apps are the diapers of the lifting world. You're better than that. You're a big kid now - it's time to move on to pull-ups. Phil explains why life is better without percentages and apps and shows you how to construct your own warm-ups quickly and easily.

(A Blast from the Past video originally published on 06/04/22)

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The BEST Warm-up for Barbell Training (Plus an EASY Math Trick to Help!)

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

How can you warm-up in a simple and efficient manner? It’s not a particularly thrilling topic, but it’s important, and if you’ve been using a percentage chart or an app to help you warm-up, well, you want to stop that right now. 

Warm-up charts and apps can indeed be useful when you’re new to lifting, but they’re the diapers of the lifting world - really useful to have in the beginning, but in the long run, life is a lot simpler, cleaner, and better if you outgrow them. Let’s cover the basic criteria of how to structure a warm-up (and there are a number of videos included that go more in depth), and at the end, we’ll go over a math shortcut that’s awfully handy.

#1: Your Warm-up Should Prepare You
There are three warm-up criteria, and the first is that your warm-up should prepare you for your work sets. To do this, the warm-up sets get heavier in roughly even jumps.

#2: Your Warm-up Should Not Exhaust You
Your warm-up needs to get you ready for the work sets, but you don’t want to waste any unnecessary energy during the warm-up, so you will taper the number of reps in your warm-up sets. A rep scheme like 5-3-2-1 works quite well, and although at the beginning of your strength training career, you might not need that many sets, that type of scheme gets the main idea across quite well.

#3: Your Warm-up Should Be Convenient
In other words, the weights you choose for each set should be relatively convenient and easy to load on the barbell. This is where percentage charts and apps really miss the boat - since they don’t take this factor into account, you’ll get a number like - for example - 90 lb for one of your warm-up weights. Don’t do 90 lb - instead, simply use 95 lb since loading a 25 lb-plate on each side of the bar is much simpler than loading two 10-lb plates and one 5-lb plate on each side.

Also, if you’re using a chart or an app to warm-up, every time your work weight changes, all of your warm-up weights then change too (since they are calculated as a percentage of the new work weight). If you construct your own warm-ups, however, you’ll find that you usually only need to change one or two warm-up sets from session to session.

Warm-ups Are Not Precise . . . Mostly.
As you get stronger, more and more of your warm-ups will stay roughly the same from session to session (as mentioned above), and more of your warm-up weights will be built around the bigger plates such as 25-lb and 45-lb plates. On the other end of things, you’ll find that you don’t need to use 2.5-lb plates for your warm-up as warm-ups don’t need to be terribly precise. You might find that you don’t even use 5-lb plates for most of your warm-ups, and you certainly don’t use 1.25-lb plates for your warm-ups.

The 90% Approach
However, as the warm-up progresses to your last warm-up set, it might be time to be a bit more precise, and with that in mind, performing 90% of your work weight for one rep as your last warm-up set is a very reasonable approach (not the only approach, but a pretty solid one). With this in mind, let’s take a look at a sample squat warm-up using 285 lb as the work weight, and we’ll cover an easy way to calculate 90% of 285 as well (Put the calculator down. Now.).

Sample Warm-up with Work Weight of 285 lb
Starting with the empty bar, our lifter performs two sets of 5 reps and then moves on to 135 lb for his next warm-up set (i.e., he adds a 45-lb plate to each side), so we have the following:

45 x 5 x 2
135 x 5

At this point, he adds a 25-lb plate to each side to reach 185 lb and performs a set of 3 reps:

45 x 5 x 2
135 x 5
185 x 3

After this, jumping to 225 lb (i.e., two 45-lb plates on each side) is a reasonable jump for someone who squats 285 lb, so he does this and performs a set of 2 reps, giving us the following thus far:

45 x 5 x 2
135 x 5
185 x 3
225 x 2

If you ignore the empty bar sets, you’ll note that we’re using the 5-3-2-1 scheme covered earlier in this article. The question now becomes, “Can he go from 225 lb directly to 285 lb, or should he do one more warm-up set?” He might be able to make that jump without any trouble, but it’s a rather big jump (bigger than the previous two jumps, which is usually a bad sign), and putting in one last single at about 90% of his work weight is probably a wise move.

The catch is this: Don’t actually calculate 90%.

Math Shortcut
Of course, you are indeed going to figure out 90% of the work weight, but you’re going to do it - mentally - in a roundabout manner, and by doing so, you’ll have done it faster than you would have if you went over and grabbed your phone, calculator, abacus, etc. 

Here’s how to find 90% of a number: Subtract 10% of the number instead. As you may or may not remember from your grade school days, finding 10% is easy as it just involves moving a decimal point . Breaking this down, we see the following steps:

  1. 10% of 285 is 28.5

  2. 28.5 is a silly number. Round that to 30 (remember, warm-ups don’t need to be that precise).

  3. 285 - 30 = 255

Thus, our lifter will squat 255 lb for one rep for his last warm-up set, which means his entire warm-up is as follows:

45 x 5 x 2
135 x 5
185 x 3
225 x 2
255 x 1

At this point, he’s all warmed up, and a huge bonus is that his next squat workout of 290 lb can use the exact same warm-up, with the exception being that he might choose to do 260 lb instead of 255 lb for his last warm-up single.

With a little bit of practice, this method of constructing your warm-up will be quicker, easier, and require less thinking than that old chart or that silly app. 

As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.

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