Warming Up Effectively: 200 Pounds Isn't Always 200 Pounds
Weight jumps between sets are contextual
The famous words of Henry Rollins have inspired many of us:
The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you’re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs.
Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.
A fantastic quote, and very true. But from a certain point of view, 200 lbs isn’t always 200 lbs.
Warming Up Properly
One of the biggest stumbling blocks for lifters transitioning from rank novices to late novices or intermediates, is learning how to warm up correctly. When you’re new and weak as a kitten, you don’t require any context or personalization - you can follow simple instructions by rote and it’ll be good enough to get the job done.
For warmups to a first work set of 5 reps, I often tell newbies to do the empty bar for 2 sets of 5 reps, 40% of the first work set for 5 reps, 60% for 4 reps, and 80% for 2 reps, then jump to the work set and you’ll be ready to rock and roll. This works well for beginners because it’s a simple, clear instruction that’s easy to follow.
Take a typical guy in his 4th week of training, not particularly athletic, 45, hasn’t ever lifted seriously and hasn’t lifted at all since some messing around with his buddies in college 25 years prior. He’s probably squatting something like 155 lbs for 3 sets of 5 reps. So we warm up with 45x5x2, then 40% for 5 =65, 60% for 4 =95, and 80% for 2 = 125. Boom, easy peasy and he’s ready to go.
But what about 9 months later when the same guy is now warming up for one top PR set of 315x5? Does the simple empty bar/40/60/80 work? Hell no. It would look like 45x5x2, 125x5, 190x4, 250x2 and then right to 315. All the warmups will be fine but he won’t be ready for the work set at all.
The uninitiated are probably wondering: Why are 65-80 lb jumps fine for the warmups, but the same 65 lb jump into the work set isn’t? Why won’t he be ready at all?
This is where the title of this article comes in: 200 lbs isn’t always 200 lbs. Objectively, as gravity operates, of course 200 is always 200, 80 is always 80, and 65 is always 65. But dispassionate gravity isn’t lifting the weight - YOU are. And for better or worse, you are a human being. What this means is that, as you get closer to what is heavy or maximal for you - for you right now, not for what you might do someday or what you used to be able to do back in high school - bigger jumps become unmanageable.
This has to do with the nervous system and the way we perceive “heavy.” When 315 is the heaviest you’ve ever squatted, jumping 65 lbs - or 20% of the total weight you’re about to lift - is massive. But if your max squat is 700, you can easily jump from 225 to 315 to 405 - 90 lb jumps - without any issue, because it’s still all light and easy. But take the same guy and have him jump from 610 to 700, and that will probably not go well. Certainly if you try a 20% jump, from 560 to 700, it won’t go well at all.
So the idea is that while yes, of course 200 or 65 lbs always weighs the same, how we perceive it on our body or in our hands changes:
The heavier it gets
The closer to our maximum it gets
This has important ramifications for warming up properly.
Get Ready, Don’t Get Tired
The most important thing to remember about warming up for lifting is that it must get you READY for your first work set, without getting you FATIGUED before you get there.
This is the principle to always keep front and center, and through which to sift all the details to figure out if your warmup makes sense.
If you’re an advanced lifter doing easy work (for you) for the day, the details aren’t crucial - if you can max out at 585x5 but your work sets for this day are just 405x5x3, then you can probably just do 45/135/225/315 and go right to 405 EZPZ. Because 405 is so far from 585, those big 90 lb jumps are no biggie at all. Even at 405 it’s still fairly light, so you can handle a 90 lb jump into it.
But if you’re a novice lifter doing 405 for the first time in your life, jumping from 315 to 405 would be disastrous. Your body wouldn’t be ready for that new, massively heavy (for you) weight at all. You need to feel something fairly close to 405 on your back first, so it doesn’t totally shock your system and so you’re ready for it.
Something like 45x5x2, 135x5, 225x4, 315x2, 365x1 would be a decent starting point.
Individual Differences
As I wrote earlier, the hard part for lifters moving from beginners to more experienced is to stop thinking of everything as a set of rigid rules or steps on a checklist to follow, and start learning to apply the principle to different situations based on their individual proclivities.
What I wrote just above - 45x5x2, 135x5, 225x4, 315x2, 365x1 - will work fine for a large percentage of people. But for some people who are more sensitive to big weight jumps, that 40 lb jump from 365 to 405 will still be too much and they’d be better off handling 375 or even 380 as their last set prior to 405.
Their warmup instead might look like this:
45x5x2, 135x5, 225x4, 315x2, 375x1
or even
45x5x2, 135x5, 225x4, 275x3, 325x2, 375x1
None of these three options is objectively more correct than the others; rather each will work better for different people.
You might ask, why take the chance, why not have everybody just do the more conservative last warmup option here, just in case they need it?
This is where going back to the main principle is important: your warmup must get you READY for your first work set, without getting you FATIGUED before you get there. And like everything else in life, there are no solutions, there are only trade-offs.
The obvious tradeoff here is potential fatigue. You’re doing extra sets and reps before the work set. If you’re someone who needs to feel a weight closer to the new max weight before you do it, that tradeoff is worth it. But if not, then it’s not worth it. Simple. Another less obvious tradeoff is time. Between the extra loading, resting a bit between sets, and doing the set itself - it’ll take 3-5 minutes longer to do the latter warmup than the former. Multiply this by multiple lifts per workout, 3-4 workouts per week and you might add an hour at the gym per week just doing things this way. Is that worth it? Depends on how much time you have and how much you need to avoid large weight jumps. For some people, jumping from 365 to 405 will be just fine and anything else a waste of time and energy. For others, they’ll fail the 405 work set without the smaller jumps.
This is why it becomes crucial as you get more advanced to explore your individual needs via learning and applying general principles, instead of following a simple checklist by rote.