Warming Up Before Working Sets

Please don’t start your working sets without ‘warming up’ to your working weights. I saw someone do this today; walked in, loaded up the incline to his working weight and started benching, struggling, but benching. One it’s an easy way to get injured and two, you just won’t be as strong.

A warm up serves as a neuromuscular rehearsal of the upcoming lift (greasing the groove so to speak) as well as an opportunity to get your body used to progressively heavier loads (motor unit activation).

Contrary to how most people warm up (with high reps), the focus should be on low-rep warm up sets as the high-rep warm ups sets promote too much residual fatigue which can negatively affect strength. You should do a couple lighter weight (but progressively heavier), low rep warm up sets for the exercises before getting into the work sets. The stronger you are, and thus the heavier your working weights, the more warm up sets you should be doing.