3 Reasons to STOP Using Percentages (or apps) for Your Warm-ups!
/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!)
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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:
10% of 285 is 28.5
28.5 is a silly number. Round that to 30 (remember, warm-ups don’t need to be that precise).
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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Get the Most Out of Your Warm-up
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(A Blast from the Past article originally posted on 03/27/19)
You know - sage lifter that you are - that the purpose of your warm-up is to prepare you for the work ahead of you that day. You know it’s important, and you know that whether you’re going to squat 145 lbs or 345 lbs for your work sets, it is neither prudent nor productive to simply load the work weight on the barbell and have at it without the appropriate warm-up.
But . . . there is an additional purpose to the warm-up. Perhaps it’s not even an additional purpose, but rather a purpose that is merely hidden in the concept of preparing for the work ahead. Put simply, you can (and should) use your warm-up to become a better lifter.
The weights are (relatively) light when warming up, so this is a great time to work on refining your technique. Because you haven’t yet reached the soul-crushing, mind-altering load that is your work weight for the day, the warm-up is when you can spare some mental bandwidth and put into practice any changes or cues that you and your coach have recently discussed.
Maybe you’re trying to fix some pesky knee slide in the squat. Break out the TUBOWs and get to squatting. Perhaps you’re attempting to improve the bar path in the press or the bench press. The warm-up is a great time to do exactly that. Are you inconsistent when it comes to hitting depth in the squat? Grab a coach (or a fellow well-informed lifter) and ask him or her to check your depth as you warm-up.
The warm-up is a precious time. A magical time. Don’t just plow through it - get the most out of it. You can finish your warm-up a better lifter than when you started. Don’t miss out on this opportunity.
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If you found this helpful, you’ll love our weekly email. It’s got useful videos, articles, and training tips just like the one in this article. Sign up below, and of course, if you don’t love it, you can unsubscribe at any time.
At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Would you like to get quality coaching from a Starting Strength Coach?
How to Warm-up for Lifting Weights: Stop Using Percentages!
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(A Blast from the Past article originally posted on 02/18/22)
For new lifters, figuring out what weights to select for your warm-up sets can be a bit mind-boggling, and for this reason, a percentage-based warm-up chart provides a handy approach. With that said, as you gain experience as a lifter, you’ll be better off if you eventually stop using this approach and instead make your own warm-up weight selections. In the long run, it’ll be faster and easier.
When structuring your warm-up sets, use the three principles below, and for more demonstrations, examples, and explanations, be sure to check out the included videos.
Warm-up sets should . . .
Principle 1: Prepare you for your work sets. Because of this, the weight for each set should gradually increase in roughly equal increments. The increases don’t need to be exactly the same each time - “roughly equal” is just fine - and if you have a bigger jump, it’s better to have it near the beginning of the warm-up than near the end.
Principle 2: Not exhaust you before you get to your work sets. Because of this, it’s wise to taper your warm-up reps, i.e., use fewer reps as the weight increases. At Testify, we usually recommend 2 sets of 5 reps with the empty barbell and then a 5-3-2-1 approach for the weighted sets (you’ll see this in the examples below). When starting out, you might not need this many warm-up sets.
Principle 3: Be convenient whenever possible and reasonable. Warm-ups don’t usually need to be all that precise, and the further you are from your work set, the less precision is required. For example, if your work weight is 245 lb and you’re deciding between 90 lb and 95 lb, go with 95 lb since it’s much simpler to load (one 25-lb plate per side compared to two 10-lb plates and a 2.5-lb plate per side). Additionally, there’s no need to use fractional plates in your warm-ups, and as you get stronger, you might not use 2.5 lb plates in your warm-ups either.
Below are a few good warm-up examples.
Example #1
Work weight: 105 lb
45 x 5 x 2
65 x 5 x 1
85 x 3 x 1
95 x 2 x 1
—————
105 x 5 x 3 (work sets)
Example #2
Work weight: 235 lb
45 x 5 x 2
95 x 5 x 1
135 x 3 x 1
185 x 2 x 1
215 x 1 x 1
—————
235 x 5 x 3 (work sets)
Example #3
Work weight: 385 lb
45 x 5 x 2
135 x 5 x 1
225 x 3 x 1
275 x 2 x 1
315 x 1 x 1
350 x 1 x 1 (needed another single)
—————
385 x 5 x 3 (work sets)
In the examples above, if the lifter is deadlifting, simply remove the empty bar sets (you’ll need bumper plates for any weights under 135 lb).
With practice, structuring your warm-ups becomes a very quick and easy process, and the longer you train, the more you’ll find that your first few warm-up sets don’t change very often from workout to workout, which makes things even easier.
We hope this helps you get stronger and live better!
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