When preparing for a training session it's important that we gradually build intensity rather than just jumping into our working sets. I like to break our warm up into 2 distinct phases: The general warm up and the specific warm up.
General Warm Up
The purpose of the general warm up will change as you learn your body better throughout your journey, but for now the purpose is to elevate your heart rate, improve circulation, and transition from a parasympathetic state (rest, digest, reproduce) to a sympathetic state (fight or flight).
For someone just beginning I recommend to keep this simple. Doing about 5 minutes or so on some piece of cardio equipment should do the trick. This will elevate your heart rate, improve circulation, and just generally prepare you for work. This might look like a jog on a treadmill or even a moderate paced ride on the bike or row erg.
Specific Warm Up
Once you’ve completed the general warm up, you should feel generally ready to work. However, we can improve upon this by getting more specific with our warm up. The purpose of the specific warm up is to prepare yourself for the actual task you'll be performing during that session.
What is it?
For strength training, a specific warm up would be to practice the exercise you're about to perform with increasing intensity until you're using loads that are stimulative. I recommend starting light, dialing in your technique, and gradually increasing loads (while decreasing reps to prevent fatigue) until you reach your working sets.
How do I do it?
For novice lifters, I recommend 1-3 warm up sets prior to your working sets. This doesn’t need to be performed for all the exercises in the program as this can easily waste a lot of time. Instead, only ramp up for your primary lifts of the day (usually programmed at the beginning), and just truck along through the rest of your training session once you’re warmed up. Here’s an example of how one might perform warm up sets:
Exercise 1:
Warm Up Set 1: 10 reps @60 lbs (~60% of the working set load) (60s rest)
Warm Up Set 2: 5 reps @75 lbs (~75% of the working set load) (60s rest)
Warm Up Set 3: 1-3 reps @100 lbs (~100% of the working set load)(60-120s rest)
As you progress through your training session you’ll find that you don’t need as many warm up sets as you did on the first exercise because you’re already somewhat "warm". Here, I recommend taking only 1-2 warm up sets just to get used to the new movement.
Exercise 2:
Warm Up Set 1: 5 reps @75 lbs (~75% of the working set load) (60s rest)
Warm Up Set 2: 1-3 reps @100 lbs (~100% of the working set load)(60-120s rest)
If you'd like, you can perform a single warm up set to get the feel for the rest of your exercises that day but most will agree it's not completely necessary:
Exercise 3+:
Warm Up Set 1: 1-3 reps @100 lbs (~100% of the working set load)(60-120s rest)
How long should a warm up take?
This whole warm up process combined should take about 15 minutes to perform which I find to be the sweet spot for most people.
Do I track my warm up sets?
We don’t track warm up sets because they don't provide enough stimulation to count as "working sets". You may take ~1-2 mins rest or so between warm up sets. I tend to take shorter rest with the easier loads and maybe a little more rest with the heavier loads or before my first working set. Like I said- don’t overthink this stuff.
How do I know how much to lift my first time performing an exercise?
Warm up sets will also serve as a good way to “feel out” a newer movement. Meaning that if you’ve never done the exercise before, you’ll be able to learn it with lighter, more conservative loads, gradually increase the weight each set, and then have a good idea of what your working set loads should be by the end of the warm up. Always start conservative with any loading and slowly build up from there. Don't overthink it.