"Do three or four warm-up sets" is repeated in gyms and forums as if it were settled fact, but it rarely comes with a reason. Three or four compared to what? Ramping to what load? The advice treats warm-up sets as a quantity problem — do enough of them and you're covered — when the controlled research on the question points somewhere else entirely.
Three studies that actually measured what warm-up sets change, rather than just counting them, agree on something most generic advice misses: the number of sets barely matters. The load in those sets is what moves your working-set performance, and even a well-loaded warm-up doesn't buy you extra total volume the way lifters often assume it does.
That distinction has a real cost if you get it wrong. Too many light warm-up sets and you've spent fatigue you needed for your working sets. Too few, or none heavy enough, and your first working set moves slower than it should. Here's what the evidence says to actually do about it.
What Is a Warm-Up Set, and How Is It Different From a Working Set?
A warm-up set is a submaximal, ascending-load set performed before your working weight to prepare the joints, tissues, and nervous system for the load ahead; a working set is a set performed at or near your target intensity with the explicit goal of driving adaptation. Warm-up sets don't count toward your training volume — working sets do.
That's not a labelling technicality. Volume in strength training is calculated from sets performed close enough to your capacity to create a meaningful stimulus. A set at 40% of your working weight, done well short of any real effort, doesn't meet that bar no matter how many reps you do. It's preparation, not stimulus.
IronLedger's set types reflect that same distinction directly: "Warm-up" sits alongside Working, AMRAP, EMOM, Timed, Distance, and Cardio as its own logged category. Mark a set as a warm-up and it's excluded from the volume, RPE/RIR trend, and estimated 1RM calculations that your working sets feed. The workout sets guide covers the full breakdown of every set type if you want the complete picture beyond warm-ups specifically.
Do More Warm-Up Sets Actually Improve Your Working Sets?
More warm-up sets don't improve your working sets — a heavier warm-up load does. Ribeiro et al. (2020) tested this directly and found that warming up with sets at a genuinely heavy load produced faster, more powerful working sets than warming up with more reps at a light load.
Forty resistance-trained men performed three sets of six reps at 80% of their training load in the squat and bench press, after one of three warm-ups: two sets at 40% then 80%, six sets at 80%, or six sets at 40%. In the squat, the high-load warm-up (6×80%) produced significantly higher mean propulsive velocity than the low-load warm-up in both the second working set (0.69 m/s vs 0.67 m/s, p = 0.02) and the third (0.68 m/s vs 0.66 m/s, p = 0.05). In the bench press, the mixed warm-up reached peak velocity faster and produced more total work than the low-load-only warm-up.
"Force outputs were mainly optimized by WU80 in squat training and by WU in bench press training. Moreover, warming-up with few repetitions and low loads is not enough to optimize squat and bench press performances." — Ribeiro et al. (2020), International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
The practical read: six light sets don't substitute for one set at something close to your working weight. If your warm-up never gets heavy, you're leaving bar speed and power on the table regardless of how many light sets you've stacked in front of it.
Do Warm-Up Sets Change Your Total Training Volume?
Warm-up sets don't meaningfully change your total training volume, even when the warm-up itself is heavy. Souza et al. (2024) tested a high-load warm-up against a low-load warm-up and a usual-practice control across a full session of squats to failure and found no significant difference in total reps or total volume load between any of them.
Fourteen trained men performed back squats to muscular failure across multiple sets after either a high-load warm-up (one set of three reps at 90% of 1RM), a low-load warm-up (one set of six reps at 45% of 1RM, moved at maximal velocity), or a control warm-up (eight reps at 45% of 1RM at a controlled pace). Total reps completed showed no significant difference across conditions (p = 0.17), and neither did total volume load (p = 0.15). The high-load warm-up did produce a significantly higher volume load on the first working set specifically (p = 0.04) — but that advantage didn't carry through the rest of the session.
Ribeiro et al. (2014) reached the same conclusion from a different angle. Fifteen trained men performed four sets to failure at 80% of 1RM in bench press, squat, and arm curl under four conditions: no warm-up, a specific warm-up, an aerobic warm-up, and a combined warm-up. None of the warm-up conditions changed the total number of reps completed to failure or the fatigue index across sets.
Put together, these two studies say something most warm-up advice skips: you can't "bank" extra reps or extra volume by warming up harder or longer. What a good warm-up buys you is a better first working set, not a bigger session. That's exactly why tracking working-set volume separately from warm-ups matters — folding warm-up sets into your volume count would make a session look bigger than the stimulus it actually delivered.
How Many Warm-Up Sets Do You Need for a Heavy Compound Lift?
For a heavy compound lift like the squat, bench press, or deadlift, three to five ascending warm-up sets are enough, provided at least one lands close to 80% of your working weight. More sets below that threshold don't add anything the research above didn't already rule out.
The table below sketches a practical ramp built around the load thresholds the cited studies actually tested — 40%, 80%, and 90% of a reference load — rather than an arbitrary rep scheme. Treat the rep counts as a starting point, not a prescription; the load percentages are the part with evidence behind them.
| Set | Load (% of working weight) | Typical reps | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Empty bar | 8-10 | Groove the movement pattern |
| 2 | ~40% | 5-6 | Initial load exposure |
| 3 | ~60% | 3-4 | Bridge to a heavier load |
| 4 | ~80% | 2-3 | The load Ribeiro et al. (2020) found necessary for faster working-set bar speed |
| 5 (optional) | ~90% | 1 | Extra readiness for a near-maximal single or double |
| Working set | 100% | As prescribed | The set that counts toward volume |
Skipping set 4 or 5 doesn't just make the ramp shorter — per Ribeiro et al. (2020), it's the difference that showed up as slower, less powerful working sets in the low-load-only condition. If you're only warming up with light sets, that heavy top-end set is what's missing, not more reps at the bottom.
How Many Warm-Up Sets Do You Need for Isolation or Machine Work?
For isolation exercises and machine-based work, one to two warm-up sets at a moderate load are typically enough. These movements carry less technical demand and lower joint-loading risk than a barbell compound lift, so the ramp that matters for a squat isn't necessary for a leg extension or cable row.
Ribeiro et al. (2014) included arm curl — a single-joint isolation movement — in its warm-up comparison and found the same null result as it did for bench press and squat: warm-up type didn't change reps completed to failure. If warm-up type doesn't move the needle even for compound lifts beyond the first working set, there's no evidence it does more for an exercise with a fraction of the technical and joint-loading demand.
A machine also removes the balance and coordination cost that a free-weight ramp is partly there to rehearse. One or two sets at roughly 50-60% of your working load, enough to get blood into the target muscle and rehearse the range of motion, covers what a machine or isolation exercise needs. Extra sets beyond that mostly cost you fatigue you'd rather spend on the working sets that follow, especially late in a session when rest between sets is already being managed carefully.
How Should Warm-Up Sets Change With Training Age and Exercise Complexity?
Warm-up sets should scale with how technically demanding the movement is, not primarily with how long you've been training. None of the three cited studies tested training age directly — all three used resistance-trained participants — so the guidance here is reasoning from exercise complexity, not a specific research finding.
A barbell back squat asks more of your joints, coordination, and nervous system than a leg press, regardless of how experienced the lifter is, so it earns the fuller ramp described above. A newer lifter learning a compound pattern for the first time may want an extra light set purely for technique rehearsal, on top of the load-based ramp, since the extra rehearsal serves motor learning rather than performance priming.
More experienced lifters attempting a genuinely heavy single or double benefit most from the optional 90% warm-up set in the table above, since that load range is closest to the working weight they're about to attempt. A lifter working in a moderate 8-12 rep range at a submaximal percentage doesn't need that fifth set — the gap between their warm-up and working loads is smaller to begin with.
How Do You Avoid a Warm-Up That Hurts Your Session Instead of Helping It?
A warm-up hurts your session when it accumulates enough fatigue to blunt your working sets — which the evidence above says happens well before it adds any measurable extra volume or strength benefit. The fix isn't fewer warm-up sets in the abstract; it's cutting the ones that aren't at a load high enough to matter.
Watch for two specific signs. First, if your warm-up sets leave you breathing hard or your grip fatigued before the first working set, you've crossed from preparation into unlogged working volume — autoregulating off how the bar feels on that first working set is a reliable way to catch this before it derails the session. Second, if you're doing more than five ascending sets for a single compound lift, you're very likely adding sets below the 80% threshold that Ribeiro et al. (2020) found necessary, not sets that help.
The version of this that costs you the least: fewer sets, but don't skip the heavy one. Ribeiro et al. (2020) and Souza et al. (2024) together support a warm-up that gets to a genuinely heavy load quickly rather than one that lingers at light loads for volume's sake. If you train with RPE or percentage-based targets, apply the same discipline to your warm-up ramp that you apply to your working sets — a ramp with a clear endpoint, not an open-ended set of light reps.
How do you log warm-up sets in IronLedger?
Mark each ascending set as a "Warm-up" set type as you log it, separate from the "Working" sets that follow, so your session stays split exactly the way the research above treats it. IronLedger's program templates include warm-up guidance ahead of the first working set for supported programs, and every set — warm-up or working — still records load, reps, and an optional note, so you can flag a heavy top-end warm-up set that felt unusually easy or hard without it touching your working-set numbers.
Because warm-up sets are excluded from volume, RPE/RIR trend, and estimated-1RM calculations, your progressive overload tracking reflects only the sets that actually drove the session's stimulus. A five-set warm-up ramp and a two-set ramp show up identically in your training history once you reach the working sets — which is the correct behaviour, given that neither study above found a volume benefit to the longer ramp.
Frequently asked questions
Three to five ascending sets, with at least one close to 80% of your working weight. Ribeiro et al. (2020) found that warm-ups without a heavy set produced slower working-set bar speed.
Sources and references
- Ribeiro, Pereira, Sousa, Fernandes, Marques & Marinho, 2020 — "A high-load warm-up (6 sets at 80% of training load) produced significantly higher mean propulsive velocity in squat working sets than a low-load warm-up (40%), while low-load-only warm-ups were not enough to optimise squat and bench press performance." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17(18):6882 (2020).
- Souza, Silva, Vale, Pessoni et al., 2024 — "High-load and low-load warm-ups produced no significant difference in total reps or total volume load across a full session of back squats to failure, with the high-load warm-up's benefit limited to the first working set." PeerJ 12:e17347 (2024).
- Ribeiro, Romanzini, Schoenfeld, Souza, Avelar & Cyrino, 2014 — "Warm-up type (specific, aerobic, combined, or none) produced no significant difference in reps completed to failure at 80% of 1RM in bench press, squat, or arm curl." Perceptual and Motor Skills 119(3):793-802 (2014).
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