What’s the best warm up before lifting?
The short answer: it depends on what you’re about to train, how heavy you’re lifting, your experience level, and how your body feels that day.
But in most cases, the ideal warm up before strength training includes three possible components:
- A brief general warm up to raise body temperature
- Targeted mobility work for the muscles and joints you’re training
- Specific warm up sets of the exercise you’re about to perform
You don’t always need all three. And you definitely don’t need to turn your warm up into a 20-minute cardio session before you even touch a weight.
A good warm up prepares you to lift – it shouldn’t eat up half your workout before it even starts.
The goal isn’t to exhaust yourself. It’s to prepare your muscles, joints, and nervous system so you can lift heavier, move better, and reduce your risk of injury.
In this article, I’ll break down exactly how to warm up before lifting weights, how many warm up sets you really need, and how to warm up efficiently without wasting time.
Does Everyone Need The Same Warm-Up Before Lifting?
Like a lot of questions about lifting, the answer about how to warm up is, “It depends.”
It depends on:
- How many years you’ve been training and how strong you are.
- How heavy you will be lifting that day.
- How you feel that day (loose and warm and good or cold and tight and achy?)
- Whether you have any orthopedic problems, tendinitis or joint pain that feels worse when trying to train without thorough warm up.
- Your personal preferences
- Your time available.
Beginners to weight lifting don’t need as much warm up because they haven’t developed that much strength yet, so they’re lifting lighter to begin with. If a lifter is a young beginner, he or she probably doesn’t have problems with joint pain, so considering both of these factors, a quick minimal warm up probably does the trick (though even beginners should be thinking about future injury prevention and creating good warm up habits can help with that).
Advanced and experienced lifters usually need more time to warmup because they are stronger, so they’ll be lifting heavier weights for their work sets. Walking into the gym cold and jumping right to a heavy maximum poundage is not considered a smart move because the risk of injury is likely higher.
Why You Shouldn’t Lift Weights Cold
Even if you have no injury concerns, most people will simply not perform as well jumping straight to the work sets cold and tight. Cold muscles simply don’t contract as strongly or efficiently.
You want to feel warm, loose and mobile as well as mentally alert and ready. The warm up prepares and primes the body and nervous system, allowing a more effective and safer workout.
What Is A “General” Warm Up?
The older traditional way to warm up before lifting was to hop on a piece of cardio equipment and go for 5, 7 or 10 minutes, just enough to raise body temperature and get blood flowing. This is usually called a “general warmup.”
A general warmup can be done with body weight exercises (calisthenics) too. Either way, the general warm up is designed to raise body temperature and improve your physical and mental readiness to lift effectively and safely.
If it’s a leg day and the warm up is done on a bicycle or stair master, this is a general warm up that raises overall core body temperature and it’s also a specific warm up for the lower body, getting blood in the thigh muscles and loosening up the knee and hip joints.
Likewise, if you were training upper body and you did a rowing machine (that was working your arms), it would do the same thing, so when choosing a type of warm up you might want to think about what body parts you will be training that day.
Should You Do Mobility Exercises For Warm Up Before Lifting?
These days, a lot more people have dispensed with the cardio machine warm up and they do what’s known as mobility exercises, also called dynamic flexibility exercises. These exercises are chosen specifically to use the muscles and joints that you’ll be training.
For example, If I wanted some mobility work before my leg workout (if I were going to squat, lunge and so on), I might do some warm-up exercises like these:
Lower body mobility warm up exercises:
Body weight full squats (aka “air squats”)
Body weight lunges (sometimes with a rotation or extra hip flexor stretch)
Leg swings front to back
Leg swings side to side
Supine Windshield wipers
Spiderman steps aka dynamic runner’s lunge aka “groiners”)
Cossack stretch (dynamic side lunges)
Squat to stand
If I were training upper body (for example, chest, shoulders), I might do mobility work that especially involves the shoulder joint and trunk/spine:
Upper body mobility warm up exercises:
Arm circles
Arms vertical
Arms horizontal (across)
Shoulder “dislocations” with a stick or resistance band (back and forth over the head)
Shoulder shrugs
Neck side to side, front to back, rotations
Internal or external rotations (no weight, very light weight with cable, dumbbell or weight plate)
Face pulls with light weight or resistance band (great warm up on a pulling or pushing day)
Arm wall slides (ie overhead press with no weight)
Trunk twists
Trunk rotation
Side bends
This is just a small sample of mobility exercises – web searches on “mobility exercises” will pull up many more. The important point to note is that many of these types of exercises can improve flexibility, but this is not static stretching.
These are dynamic exercises because you’re working through a full, and usually increasing, range of motion. This is why pre-lifting mobility exercise are sometimes called dynamic flexibility exercises. Static stretching could be done before but it’s usually best done after lifting.
You’ll also notice that many of these use the same movement patterns as the lifts you’ll be doing (squat, lunge press, pull and so on). By doing them with body weight first and gradually increasing the range of motion, you open up / loosen up your joints and you are at the same time warming up and dynamically stretching the muscles and joints you’ll be using in the workout ahead.
So, while many people still like to do a general cardio warmup and that’s also fine (especially if it’s upper or lower body specific, depending on your workout), the mobility exercises are a great way to prepare yourself for your strength workout.
How To Do Warm Up Sets Before Lifting
Once you’ve gone through your mobility routine, then you go into warm up sets of the weight lifting exercises you’re doing. Warm up sets are most important for the first exercise in a workout, because after all your sets on that first exercise, you are already pretty warm and loose for the 2nd and 3rd exercise (you can often jump right to your work weight or only do one lighter warm up set for exercises later in the workout).
Warm up sets are also most important for experienced lifters especially for exercises like squats and deadlifts, where you can use a lot of weight. The more weight you can use (the stronger you are), the more warm up sets you may need before reaching your working poundage.
It’s not uncommon for strength athletes to do three or four lighter warm up sets before moving up to their heavy work sets. Sometimes, they will even start out with the empty bar.
Does Age Affect How Much You Should Warm Up?
The amount of warm up required may depend a lot on age as well. For example, I’m over 50 and I can still squat over 300 for reps. However, one of the few changes in my lifting routine compered to when I was in my twenties is that I feel I need more warmup to lift heavy weights comfortably and safely.
Don’t Over-Do Your Warm Ups
What you don’t want to do is tire yourself out with too many warm up sets or too many reps before even getting to your work sets. The lighter warm up sets should never be taken any where near the point of failure. Remember – they are just warm up sets (and they don’t count as work sets).
Powerlifters and strength athletes usually keep the reps on warm ups sets low. For bodybuilding and general fitness, some people prefer higher reps for warm up sets. The reps are up to you, but in either case, warm up sets should not fatigue you.
Finding The Right Warm Up For You
Your mileage may vary. The amount of warm up required can vary dramatically from person to person. Every so often, I meet a lifter (who I typically refer to as a “freak of nature”) who walks into the gym and simply starts crushing the heavy weights. For most regular people however, that’s going to increase risk of injury, reduce performance and probably feel bad (tight and cold).
You might be good with just a few mobility exercises and a couple warm up sets. It all depends on how you feel. It also depends on how much time you have. If you’re busy, keeping your warm up brief and efficient may be important to you.
Experiment with the type and duration of your warmups, keeping in mind those three options – general warmups, mobility work and warm up sets. See how different warm ups make you feel, how they effect your performance, and how well you stay injury free, and your own experience will uncover the best personalized warm up routine for you.
– Tom Venuto,
Author of Burn The Fat, Feed the Muscle
Creator of TNB TURBO – Ultra-efficient training for more muscle in less time
Scientific References
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Fradkin A. et al, Effects of warming up on physical performance: A systematic review with meta-analysis, J Str Cond Res, 24(1): 140-148, 2010.
Lisboa F et al, Effects of static stretching and specific warm-up on the repetition performance in upper and lower limb exercises in resistance trained older women, Aging Clin Exp res, 37:1, 1-6, 2025.
McGowan C et al, Warm up strategies for sport and exercise: mechanisms and applications, Sport Med, 45, 1523-1546, 2015.
Ribeiro A et al, Effect of different warm-up procedures on the performance of resistance training exercises, Percept Mot Skills, 119(1):133-45, 2014.
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Souza L et al, Effect of warm up protocols using lower and higher loads on multiple set back squat volume-load, Peerj, 12e17347, 2024.
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About Tom Venuto
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilding and fat loss coach with 35 years of experience. He holds a degree in exercise science and has trained hundreds of clients in person and thousands online. He is also a recipe creator specializing in fat-burning, muscle-building cooking.
A former competitive bodybuilder, Tom is now a full-time evidence-based fitness writer, blogger, and author. His classic book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is an international bestseller, first as an ebook and later as a hardcover and audiobook. He is also the author of Meal Prep For Fat Loss, a practical guide to smart shopping, batch cooking, and kitchen strategies that make healthy eating simple and sustainable.
Tom is also the founder of Burn the Fat Inner Circle, a fitness support community with more than 59,000 members worldwide since 2006.
Tom’s work has been featured in Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Oprah Magazine and dozens of other major publications. He is best known for his no-BS, scientific approach to natural fat loss and muscle-building.
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