Warm-Up Sets

What It Is

A few lighter sets of a lift before your working sets of it.

Why It Matters

No study has tested whether warm-up sets change the strength, power, or muscle you build, which is what Boddy grades training advice on. What has been measured is the session itself. In young adults with at least a year of lifting behind them, one or two short sets before sets to failure on the bench press and leg press made little difference to the repetitions and volume they managed that day, against going straight into the working sets.¹ That is one session, not a training block, and its authors caution against reading it as a guide to what training builds,¹ so the evidence is very uncertain about what warm-up sets do for your strength and muscle over time.

Warm-up sets are often recommended to prevent injury, and that question is untested too. The same trial was not built to test it, and its authors name it as a question for future research.¹ They also caution that their finding, in healthy young lifters, may not carry to people who are older or new to training.¹ So the evidence shows neither that warm-up sets help nor that they are wasted: the question has not been asked.

None of this says to skip them, or that you must do them. Many lifters use a few easy repetitions to settle into the movement and find their working weight, and they cost a few minutes. What no study supports is warm-up sets that build more strength or muscle, or that keep you from getting hurt in the gym, which is why this sits here rather than as advice under Strength Training. If you use them, keep them short and stop before they tire you, as the trial's were, and give your attention to load, volume, and progression, where the evidence does tie training choices to the strength and muscle you build.

• 1 Enes, A. et al. (2025). Warming up to improved performance? Effects of different specific warm-up protocols on neuromuscular performance in trained individuals. Sports Medicine and Health Science. doi.org/10.1016/j.smhs.2025.08.002