Start Lifting
How to Warm Up Before Lifting Weights
Five minutes of easy cardio, three minutes of movement drills, then a few lighter sets of your first lift that climb to the working weight. That is the whole warm-up, and it puts you under your first real set about 12 minutes after you walk in. It belongs to the Start Lifting series for your first weeks in the gym, and it goes in front of every session of the 4-week beginner gym plan.
| Step | Time | What you do | How it should feel |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 min | Easy cardio: bike, rower, incline walk or cross-trainer | Warm, breathing a little harder, still able to talk in full sentences |
| 2 | 2–3 min | One pass of drills: 10 bodyweight squats, 10 hip hinges, 5 reverse lunges each leg, 10 leg swings each leg, 15 band pull-aparts or arm circles | Joints moving through the range today's lifts need. No burn, no holds. |
| 3 | 4–6 min | Warm-up sets on your first lift: empty bar, then 1–4 sets that get heavier while the reps drop | Every warm-up set is easy. The last one feels close to the working weight, but only 1–3 reps. |
The ramp, by working weight
| Your working weight | Warm-up sets |
|---|---|
| Empty bar to 30 kg (65 lb) | Bar × 10, bar × 8 |
| 30–60 kg (65–135 lb) | Bar × 10, ~60% × 5, ~80% × 3 |
| 60–100 kg (135–225 lb) | Bar × 10, ~50% × 5, ~70% × 3, ~85% × 2 |
| Over 100 kg (225 lb) | Bar × 10, ~40% × 5, ~60% × 3, ~75% × 2, ~85–90% × 1 |
What a warm-up actually does
A warm-up does three jobs, and each one points to a part of the routine above.
- It raises muscle temperature. Warm muscle contracts faster and moves more easily. Five minutes of easy cardio is enough to start it. You do not need to be sweating hard.
- It rehearses the movement. Your first set of squats each session is partly a reminder of where your feet go, how deep you sit and how the bar should travel. Better that the reminder happens with the empty bar than with your working weight.
- It tells you about today. The 80% warm-up set is your daily check. If it moves the way it usually does, go ahead as planned. If it feels like a max, today is a lighter day (more on that in the troubleshooting section).
A systematic review of warm-up studies (Fradkin and colleagues, 2010) found that warming up improved performance in most of the outcomes measured. Whether it prevents injuries in the weight room specifically has not been studied well, so do not warm up out of fear. Warm up because your first work set will be better, and because the ramp is free practice on the lift you are trying to learn.
The 5–8 minute general warm-up
The general warm-up is the same every session. Only the drills change a little with what you are training.
Minutes 0–5: easy cardio. Use whatever is free and close to the weights. An exercise bike is the easiest choice before squats, a rower before an upper-body day because it moves the arms and back too, and an incline walk when the others are taken. Aim for about 3 or 4 out of 10 effort. If you could not finish a sentence, slow down: the point is to feel warm, not tired.
Minutes 5–8: drills, one pass, no rest between them.
| Drill | Reps | What it prepares |
|---|---|---|
| Bodyweight squat | 10 | Squat depth, knees and ankles |
| Hip hinge, hands on hips | 10 | Romanian deadlift, deadlift, rows |
| Reverse lunge | 5 each leg | Hips, balance for split squats |
| Leg swing, holding the rack | 10 each leg | Hip range front to back |
| Band pull-apart or arm circles | 15 | Upper back and shoulders for pressing |
| Incline or knee push-up | 8 | Shoulders and elbows for bench and overhead press |
On a lower-body day, do the first four and skip the push-ups. On an upper-body day, do the last two plus the hinge. On a full-body day, do all six; it still takes under three minutes. If your gym has no cardio machines or you train at home with the full-body dumbbell workout, do two minutes of marching or step-ups on a stair, then the drills twice through, then one half-weight set of the first exercise.
Warm-up sets: how to ramp to your working weight
The ramp table in the card gives the shape. Percentages are rough: round to the plates in front of you. Three rules make it work:
- Reps drop as the weight climbs. Ten reps with the bar, then 5, then 3, then 1 or 2. Heavy warm-ups with high reps tire you out before your first work set.
- Rest short early, longer at the end. Thirty to 60 seconds between the light sets, about the time it takes to load the next plates. After the last warm-up, rest 1–2 minutes before your first work set. How long to rest between sets covers the work sets themselves.
- The last warm-up is the heaviest, and the shortest. It should be close enough to the working weight that the first work set does not feel like a shock.
Three worked examples
The kg and lb columns are separate examples with round numbers in each system, not conversions of each other.
| Lift and work sets | Warm-up in kg | Warm-up in lb |
|---|---|---|
| Squat, 3 × 8 at 60 kg / 135 lb | 20 × 10, 30 × 5, 40 × 3, 50 × 2 | 45 × 10, 65 × 5, 95 × 3, 115 × 2 |
| Bench press, 3 × 8 at 40 kg / 95 lb | 20 × 10, 25 × 5, 32.5 × 3 | 45 × 10, 55 × 5, 75 × 3 |
| Deadlift, 1 × 5 at 100 kg / 225 lb | 60 × 5, 80 × 2, 90 × 1 | 135 × 5, 185 × 2, 205 × 1 |
The deadlift starts heavier for a practical reason. The bar has to start at the standard height, about 22.5 cm (9 in) off the floor, which takes full-diameter plates. With iron plates that usually means 20 kg or 45 lb plates, so 60 kg (a 20 kg bar plus two 20s) or 135 lb (a 45 lb bar plus two 45s) is the lightest warm-up at the right height. If your gym has 10 or 15 kg (25 or 35 lb) bumper plates, they are full diameter too, and you can start lighter. If 60 kg (135 lb) is too heavy to start, set a bar with smaller plates on blocks or stacked plates so it sits at the same height.
Dumbbells and machines. One set of 10 at about half the working weight is enough. If your goblet squat is 16 kg (35 lb), do 10 reps with 8 kg (15–20 lb) first. On a machine, put the pin at about half the weight you plan to use and do 10 easy reps. Our guide to gym machines for beginners covers seat and pad setup, which is part of the warm-up on machines: set them on the light set, not the first work set.
Warm-up sets do not go in your weekly set count and do not need to be logged. Only work sets count toward how many sets per muscle you do each week.
Which exercises need warm-up sets
Not every exercise gets a full ramp. By the third exercise, the muscles are already warm and the session has rehearsed most of the movement.
| Where the exercise sits | Warm-up sets | Example |
|---|---|---|
| First big lift of the session | Full ramp from the table | Squat on day A |
| Big lift for a different body region | 2 | Bench press after squats: bar × 10, ~70% × 4 |
| Big lift, same region already worked | 0–1 | Romanian deadlift after squats: one set at about 60% |
| Machine or dumbbell accessory | 0–1 | Lat pulldown: one set of 10 at half weight if the back has not been used yet |
| Isolation exercise | 0 | Curls, lateral raises, calf raises: start the first work set slow and controlled |
On a full-body day that means a full ramp on the first lift, two sets on the first upper-body lift, and almost nothing after that. The whole session, warm-up included, still fits in about an hour.
What not to do before lifting
Long static stretching. A review by Behm and colleagues (2016) found that holding stretches for about 60 seconds or longer per muscle tends to reduce strength and power for a short time afterward, while shorter holds inside a full warm-up that ends with dynamic movement make little measurable difference. So the 10-minute routine of long hamstring and quad holds before squats is the one to drop. If one spot stops you from reaching a position, say tight calves limiting squat depth, hold that one stretch for 20–30 seconds, then do the drills and the ramp. Long stretching belongs after training or on rest days.
Hard cardio first. Fifteen minutes on the stair machine at a pace that leaves you breathing hard can take reps away from your first squat set. Keep the pre-lifting cardio easy and short. If you want longer cardio on the same day, do it after the weights.
Jumping straight from the bar to the working weight. Going from 20 kg (45 lb) to 60 kg (135 lb) in one step means the first work set is also the first time the load feels heavy. It often costs reps, and on a lift you are still learning, form tends to break down when the weight is a shock.
Warm-up sets that are really work sets. Ten reps at 80% is not a warm-up. If you are breathing hard after a warm-up set, it had too many reps. Cut them.
A 20-minute mobility routine borrowed from a video. Foam rolling a stiff spot for 30–60 seconds will not hurt your lifting, and plenty of people like it. Whether it adds much on top of the drills and ramp is unclear. It does not replace warm-up sets, and it should not push your session past the time you have. When time is short, cut drills, never the ramp.
Cooldown myths
The three reasons usually given for a cooldown do not hold up.
- "A cooldown prevents soreness." A 2018 review by Van Hooren and Peake found that active cooldowns do little for next-day soreness or for performance in the next session. Soreness after the first weeks of lifting comes from unfamiliar work, especially the lowering part of each rep, and it fades as you keep training the same exercises.
- "It flushes out lactic acid." Lactate returns to resting levels within about an hour after training. Easy movement clears it a little faster, but that does not change how you feel the next day: lactate is not what makes you sore two days later.
- "Stretching afterward stops soreness." A Cochrane review (Herbert and colleagues, 2011) found that stretching before or after exercise reduced later soreness by an amount too small for most people to notice.
What a cooldown is good for: after heavy leg work, three to five minutes of easy walking lets your heart rate come down gradually instead of stopping dead. If you feel lightheaded or dizzy, sit down until it passes rather than walking it off. And after training is a good time to stretch if you want more flexibility, because the muscles are warm and long holds no longer cost you anything. Both are optional. If you are short on time, re-rack your weights and go home.
Troubleshooting: if this happens, do this
| If | Then |
|---|---|
| The gym is cold, or you train at 6 a.m. | Add 2–3 minutes to the cardio and do two sets with the empty bar instead of one. |
| You cannot reach squat depth at the start | Hold the bottom of a goblet squat for 2 × 20–30 seconds, pushing the knees out with the elbows. If depth still is not there, squat to a box at the depth you can control and work down over weeks. |
| The heaviest warm-up feels like a max | Today is a lower day. Do the work sets 5–10% lighter, or keep the weight and stop each set with 2–3 reps more in reserve. The RPE chart shows how to judge that. |
| You feel tired before the first work set | Your warm-up sets had too many reps or too little rest at the end. Cut the reps on the heavier ones to 1–3 and rest 2 minutes before the first work set. |
| The warm-up takes 20 minutes or more | Cap the cardio at 5 minutes, do one pass of drills, and only ramp the first lift. Time the rest between light warm-up sets: 30–60 seconds, not 3 minutes. |
| A joint is achy at first but eases during the warm-up sets | Usually fine. Keep the ramp slower, add one extra light set, and note it in your log. |
| Pain is sharp, gets worse with each set, or changes how you move | Stop that exercise and swap a pain-free variation for the day. If it lasts more than a week or two, or there is swelling, see a doctor or physical therapist. |
A warm-up fixes the first set, not the whole program. If your work sets have stopped going up for weeks, the cause is rarely the warm-up and usually one of the seven beginner gym mistakes, such as no training log or too many sets.
Questions people ask
How long should I warm up before lifting weights?
About 5–8 minutes of general warm-up, then 4–6 minutes of warm-up sets on your first lift. Ten to 15 minutes in total before your first work set is normal.
How many warm-up sets should I do before squats?
Two to five, depending on how heavy your working sets are. Near the empty bar, two sets with the bar is enough. At 100 kg (225 lb) and over, use four or five sets with falling reps, as in the ramp table.
Do warm-up sets count toward my working sets?
No. They are too light to count as hard sets. Count only the sets that finish within a few reps of failure.
Should I stretch before lifting?
Use dynamic drills such as leg swings, bodyweight squats and lunges, not long holds. A short 20–30 second stretch on one tight spot is fine. Holds of a minute or more per muscle can cost a little strength for a while afterward.
Is it OK to do cardio before lifting?
Five minutes of easy cardio is the best way to start. Long or hard cardio is better after the weights or on another day, so your legs are fresh for squats.
Do I need to warm up if I only use machines?
Yes, but it is short: the general warm-up, then one light set of 10 on each machine that trains a new body part. Setting the seat and pads on the light set saves time later.
Should I warm up longer as I get older?
Many older lifters find a few extra minutes of cardio and one more light set make the first work set feel much better, and there is no downside to that. Strength training for women over 50 includes joint-friendly swaps for the drills. If you have a heart condition or have been told to limit exertion, check with your doctor about how hard to warm up.
Do I need a cooldown after lifting?
No. It does not prevent soreness. A few minutes of walking after heavy legs is pleasant, and stretching after training is a good time to work on flexibility if you want it.
Where this comes from
- The general-then-specific structure (light whole-body activity, then movements and loads that build up to the session's lifts) follows the warm-up chapter of the NSCA's Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning.
- Fradkin, Zazryn and Smoliga, Effects of warming-up on physical performance: a systematic review with meta-analysis (Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2010): warming up improved performance in most of the outcomes studied.
- Behm, Blazevich, Kay and McHugh, Acute effects of muscle stretching on physical performance, range of motion, and injury incidence in healthy active individuals: a systematic review (Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, 2016): the duration effect behind "short holds only, before lifting".
- Van Hooren and Peake, Do we need a cool-down after exercise? (Sports Medicine, 2018): the cooldown section.
- Herbert, de Noronha and Kamper, Stretching to prevent or reduce muscle soreness after exercise (Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2011): stretching and soreness.
Take the plan to the gym