HOW TO WARMUP FOR BARBELL TRAINING

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We're going to explain about how to warm up during the Starting Strength novice linear progression (NLP). We have to know the difference between work sets and warm-up sets. Work sets are done for the stress that we're going to apply for today's workouts. An example might be 200 lb for 3 sets of 5. That would be the goal today when we come into the gym. But we're not going to walk into the gym and just load 200 pounds on the bar. We're gonna go through a logical warm-up that gets us ready for the workout that we're going to do.

In the case of the squat we'll start with the empty bar, and we'll do 2 sets of 5 regardless of what our work weights going to be. From there we'll take 45% of our work weight and do it for 5 reps. Then 65% for 3 reps, and 85% for 2 reps. At this point your body's warm and you're ready to perform your work sets. However you may need a little rest. The first few warm-up sets are done as quickly as you can as you add weights on and off the bar. After you've done 85% usually 2 or 3 minutes rest depending on your level of experience. From there you´re ready to go into your first work set.

Warmup protocol

  1. Empty bar → 5 reps x 2
  2. 45% → 5 reps
  3. 65% → 3 reps
  4. 85% → 2 reps
  5. Rest → 2-5 minutes

As you get more experienced, your warmup might change. For example, if you're a 500-pound squatter, you may just go up by plates. You may find that you don't like to jump larger than 50 pounds. Some of that will be dependent. There's no need to stress over the percentages of your warmup. You don't need to microload a warm-up set. It's just a warm-up. This is a guideline to facilitate you getting ready for your work sets.

You may find from time to time that the percentages don't work perfectly. Maybe you're a new lifter and you're squatting under a hundred pounds. The best way to do that is still to start with an empty bar. If you're gonna squat with light weight maybe you need to start with the lighter bar and then just make incremental jumps up to your work week. The key is to get your body warm without applying too much stress so that you're unable to do your work sets.

So that's how it warm up the squat. The other lifts there's some slight variations and modifications we can make. For example, a new lifter on the press may not be lifting more than 50 or 60 pounds. A standard Olympic barbell is 45 pounds, so you may need a lighter bar to do your first two sets of 5 in order to facilitate getting ready for 60 pounds. On the deadlift sometimes we don't follow the percentages exactly. For man that's going to deadlift over 200 pounds, weights under 135 aren't necessary. He could just put a 45 pound plate on each side and start with his warm up.

If you´ve been doing weight training for a little bit, then you know how your body responds to warm-ups. Generally, if you´re doing heavy sets, you need a little bit more warm-ups. If you´re doing more volume work or if you´re on your NLP, you don´t need to warm up as much.

Time is valuable. Warm-ups shouldn't take the same amount of time it takes you to do your work sets. You should be able to bang through them real fast. If you have clients, you don't need your clients to warm up for 30-40 minutes. It shouldn't take that long.

You don't need to take forever for your warm-ups. If time is an issue for you, you're going to want to get through warm-ups as quick as possible, so you can get through your work sets and get into your next lift. And then, while you're in your work sets, you can start warming up on your upper body.

If you're doing the lifts by yourself and you know that you need a little extra work on technique, or if someone's coaching you or you're coaching, that would be a good time to take more time on the warm-ups to start hammering out technique issues before you get to your first work set. You don´t have to do your warm-ups in 5 to 6 minutes. You can do them in 5 or 6 minutes, but they shouldn't take 20 minutes. But if you're working on things like knee slide, driving your hips out of the hole, bending over..., the warm-ups are a time to hammer out all that stuff before you get into the work set. The work sets need to be as perfect as possible so you can train most efficiently. 

So, I hope this helps put things in perspective on what warm-ups should look like whenever you're pressed for time or, if it's not even pressed for time, you're just want to be more efficient in your workouts.

Even when you're messing with an empty bar, people like to just grab the bar and just kind of do whatever. They're just moving around. Even with an empty bar, you should start focusing on your technique early. You should start focusing on keeping the things that need to stay tight and your bar path. All that stuff you have to focus on early. In the squat, your bar path is going to be different just because you don't have any weight changing the center of mass on your body.

Always start with the empty bar. This will get your movement pattern set early and that's just the proper way to warm up. Coach Rusty's seen people just immediately go to 135 lb even though their max bench press is like 250 lb. That's silly.

Get a little bit of chalk on your hands. It's important between every single set that you start chalking your hands. You don't want any moisture on your hands. A bar slipping out of your hands should not be happening.

Another good tip whenever you're warming up: if you drink pre-workout, caffeine is your friend when it comes to working out, especially when you're lifting weights before 7:00 am.

Coach Rusty always tells his kids whenever he's training them and they're looking at their phones or they're doing something in between their sets: "Stop doing that and start thinking about your weight." You're getting close to your work sets, whether it's singles, triples, fives or whatever it is. You need to start thinking about the work weight.

During every single one of those warm-ups, you're focusing on the bar. You're focusing on what you're doing. You're not just lazily getting under the bar and just repping things out. You want all of the movement pattern to be ingrained and getting used to the weight to be something you're not worried about. So, by the time you get to your work set, you can just get under there, focus on what your feet, what your legs, what your body is doing. So just pushing on the bar and staying tight is second nature.

The key takeaway is take your warm-up seriously. Always attack the bar as if it's a heavy single. If you actually attack the bar, then you're going to have a lot more success when things start getting real difficult, that is to say, when you start getting in grindy reps because you're practicing pushing fast and pushing hard on the bar. So, take your caffeine, get some good rest, and get some good food in you. When you show up to the gym, show up with intention and attack the bar on every single set, including the warm-ups.

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