How to warm up for lifting

Yes, warm up, and keep it short. The sensible default is a few lighter sets of your first lift. Make each one heavier until you're close to the weight you'll train with. Hard upper-body warm-ups improved strength and power in studies.^[1] But the direct evidence for warm-up sets is thin. In one trial with lifters, a warm-up that included a heavier set beat a single light one.^[2] A few minutes of easy cardio is optional.^[3] Stretching is optional too.^[4] Short holds barely change your strength, but holding a stretch for a minute or more right before lifting can cost you some.^[5]

So the whole thing can take about five minutes. That number is coaching practice, not a tested finding. Much of what people do in a warm-up comes from coaches' trial and error, not from trials.^[6]

If you've just picked your first program, this is how to start each session of it.

Why it matters

Warming up does seem to help. A 2010 review of 32 good-quality studies found that a warm-up improved performance in 79% of the measures tested. It found little sign that warming up does harm.^[7] Moderate evidence. Those studies tested many kinds of sports performance, not lifting in particular.

There are two easy ways to get it wrong. Some people skip it and load the bar straight to their working weight. That skips the heavier warm-up sets. In one trial with lifters, a warm-up that included a heavier set beat a single light one, by a little.^[2] Others spend 20 minutes on a bike and a stretching routine before they touch a weight. That costs time, and long stretches can cost strength too.^[5]

What the research says

A few terms first. Working sets are the sets your program counts. A warm-up set is a lighter set of the same exercise, done before them. A general warm-up is easy whole-body exercise, such as 5–15 minutes on a bike, meant to raise your body temperature. A specific warm-up is the lift itself with lighter weights: squats with a light bar before heavy squats.^[3] Warm-up sets that get heavier each time are called ramp-up sets.

A systematic review collects every study on a question using fixed rules. A meta-analysis goes one step further and pools their results into one estimate.

Lighter sets of the lift: the sensible default, on thin evidence

A 2015 systematic review looked at 31 randomised trials of upper-body warm-ups, with 628 people, about three in four of them men. (A randomised trial decides by chance who gets which warm-up, so the comparison is fair.) The authors found strong evidence that "high-load" warm-ups improved strength and power.^[1] But "high-load" there covered many kinds of hard work, such as sprints, plyometric drills and forceful contractions above 20% of maximum effort. (Plyometric drills are fast, explosive movements.) One study in it tested ramp-up sets on the bench press, and it found no clear benefit.^[1] Limited evidence for warm-up sets in particular.

Limited evidence. It's one trial, in single sessions, and it measured bar speed and work, not how many reps people managed. The differences were small. In another small trial, 15 men lifted to failure at 80% of their 1RM. They did about the same number of reps with or without warm-up sets.^[9]

Warm-up sets probably matter most when the weight is heavy. With higher reps, the first few reps of a set act as a warm-up of their own.^[3] Expert consensus. This is the authors' view, not a tested finding.

Warm-up sets have a second use. They're a chance to rehearse the movement before the heavy sets.^[3][8] Coaching practice. (More on that in learning the lifts.)

Light cardio first: optional, and the results are mixed

The general warm-up has little support for lifting.^[3] Take that trial of 15 men again. They lifted at 80% of their 1RM until they couldn't do another rep, on the bench press, squat and arm curl. They tried four setups: no warm-up, cardio, warm-up sets, or both.^[9] The study found no clear difference in total reps between them.^[9]

For a 1RM test, the results split. In a trial with 16 strength-trained men, the test was a leg-press max. Fifteen minutes of easy cardio before the test raised the max by about 3%. Easy here meant 40% of aerobic capacity (the most oxygen your body can use). Five minutes, easy or harder, made no measurable difference. Fifteen harder minutes (at 70%) lowered the max by about 4%.^[10] Limited evidence for both trials. They're small, single-session studies.

A 2021 review on time-efficient training advises that a general warm-up shouldn't be a priority when you're short on time.^[3] Expert consensus.

What about warming the muscles themselves? A 2025 meta-analysis of 33 studies (921 people) found a small effect: warmer muscles produce force faster, which helps power. They didn't produce more maximum force.^[11] Moderate evidence. These were lab tests, not sets and reps. Heat helped speed, not top strength.

Stretching: short holds are fine, long holds cost strength

Static stretching means holding a muscle in a stretched position. Dynamic stretching means moving a joint through its range, such as leg swings.

The research is consistent here: the longer you hold a static stretch, the more strength you lose for a while afterwards. A 2012 review of 106 studies found that holds under 30 seconds had no harmful effect. Holds of 60 seconds or more were likely to lower strength.^[12] A 2016 review found a 4.6% average drop with holds of 60 seconds or more per muscle, against 1.1% with shorter holds.^[13] The newest meta-analysis, of 83 studies, found a small strength loss overall and a large one when each hold lasted 60 seconds or more.^[5] Strong evidence.

Two details soften this. Most of these studies tested single muscles on lab machines, such as leg extensions or calf raises, not barbell lifts.^[5] The same meta-analysis found no harm to jumping or sprinting.^[5] And most tested people a few minutes after stretching, with no other activity in between. When studies did add movement after the stretch, they found no clear effect on performance.^[13] Limited evidence, since only a few studies did that.

Dynamic stretching didn't lower strength.^[5][13] Moderate evidence.

A 2025 panel of 20 stretching researchers agreed on the practical version. They don't recommend holding a stretch for more than 60 seconds per muscle before a maximal effort. Short static stretches inside a moving warm-up, or dynamic stretches, are fine.^[4] Expert consensus. This is the panel's view, not a tested finding.

Stretching does improve your range of motion (how far a joint can move). But the gain usually lasts less than 30 minutes, and other warm-up activities, such as cycling or jogging, give similar gains.^[13][4] The panel says stretching isn't essential in a warm-up.^[4]

Whether a warm-up prevents injury: nobody knows yet

No study shows that a single stretching session before training prevents injuries.^[4] The 2016 review found no clear effect of static stretching on all-cause or overuse injuries.^[13] The 2025 panel doesn't recommend stretching for injury prevention in general. It notes early evidence that static stretching may cut muscle strains, possibly at the cost of more bone and joint injuries.^[4] Mixed evidence.

For warm-ups in general, a review of five trials in sport found three with fewer injuries and two that couldn't show a clear drop. The authors said the evidence leaned toward fewer injuries but wasn't enough to recommend a warm-up for that reason.^[14] The upper-body review found no studies on injuries at all.^[1] For lifting, nobody has studied this well yet.

How to apply it

Here's a routine of about five minutes. The steps and numbers below are common coaching practice, not a tested protocol. The core of it is lighter sets of the lift that climb toward your working weight. The evidence for that is thin: one trial in lifters found a warm-up with a heavier set beat a single light one.^[2]

1. Optional: two or three minutes of easy movement. A walk around the gym, or a few minutes on a bike if you feel cold or just like it.
2. Ramp-up sets for your first exercise. Start light and climb toward your working weight. Do fewer reps as the weight goes up, so the warm-up doesn't tire you out.
3. A new muscle group gets its own one or two lighter sets. Bench press after squats, for example.
4. Later exercises for muscles you've already warmed up need little or nothing. To save time, the 2021 review suggests limiting warm-up sets to the first exercise for each muscle group.^[3]
5. Stretch only if you want to. Keep each hold short, under 30 seconds, and do your warm-up sets after it. The 2021 review advises making time for stretching only when flexibility is a goal.^[3]

Say your working sets for the squat are 60 kg × 8. A ramp could look like this:

• Empty bar (20 kg) × 8–10
• 30 kg (about half) × 5
• 45 kg (about three-quarters) × 3
• Then 60 kg × 8 for your working sets

That's three warm-up sets, a few minutes with short rests. If your working weight is light, say 30 kg × 10, one set with the empty bar is plenty.

Common mistakes

• Going straight to the working weight. It feels like saving time. But you skip the heavier warm-up sets, which beat a single light set by a little in one trial with lifters.^[2] Fix: two or three ramp-up sets before your first lift.
• Turning the warm-up into a workout. More seems safer. In one trial, 15 harder minutes of cardio lowered leg-press max by about 4%.^[10] Fix: keep cardio easy and warm-up sets light.
• Long stretches right before heavy sets. It feels like the careful thing to do. Holds of a minute or more can lower your strength for a while.^[5] Fix: skip them, or keep each hold under 30 seconds, then do your warm-up sets.
• Counting on the warm-up to prevent injuries. It might help, but nobody has shown that for lifting.^[14][1] Fix: warm up because it helps the lift, and learn the movements with light weights.

How Gymbers fits

Warm-up sets are part of the session, so they belong in the log. The Gymbers app has a warm-up set type, so you can log your warm-up sets too. The app can also add warm-up (ramp-up) sets before your working sets.