How to warm up for lifting (without wasting time)

A good warm-up gets you ready for your first heavy set in under ten minutes. A bad one either skips the ramp-up and makes your first set feel awful, or burns twenty minutes on a foam roller and leaves you tired.

Part one: five minutes of movement

Get warm and move the joints you're about to load:

• 2 to 3 minutes of something easy that raises your pulse: a bike, a brisk walk, skipping.
• A few drills for today's muscles: bodyweight squats and reverse lunges before legs, band pull-aparts and push-ups before upper body.
• Nothing to failure and nothing long. You want to feel warm, not tired.

Part two: ramp-up sets

Your first heavy lift of the day needs a few lighter sets that build to the working weight. For a barbell lift:

1. The empty bar for 10 reps.
2. About 55% of your working weight for 5.
3. About 80% for 2.

If your working weight is very heavy, add one more step (say 50%, 70%, 85%). For machines and dumbbells, two sets are plenty: 50% for 8 and 75% for 4.

Later lifts need less

Once a muscle is warm, the next exercise for it needs one feeler set at about 70% for 3 reps, or none at all for an isolation exercise. Bodyweight work doesn't need warm-up sets.

Tip: Keep warm-up reps low as the weight climbs. The job is to practise the movement and feel the weight, not to tire yourself before the sets that count.

How Liftsmith does it

Liftsmith adds warm-up sets for you on weights your plates can make, labelled "Warm-up 1 of 3", with a 60-second rest and a Skip link. They never count toward your stats, records or recovery. "Warm up first" on Today builds the five-minute movement part for today's muscles, using only what your gym has.