signs your warmups suck

a lot of people don't know how to judge if their warmups' are working, so here's a quick test

Author

Fletcher Poole
June 12, 2025

Fletcher Poole Banner

Recently I’ve seen warmups become a bit of a trend.

I know that sounds strange as they seem so standard in a program, but these things come in waves.

The current warmup trend is something called schizo reps where you explosively mime one rep of the exercise you’re about to perform with the fastest possible form you can and then immediately go into your set.

This is not about schizo reps.

You can try them if you want, I might even end up writing about them later, but you’d never catch me dead doing one.

So, warmups.

The only reason you ever do warmups is to improve your actual working sets.

In there lies a few problems people perform them. The reason they might suck.

It’s important to first mention the poor outcomes before I’ll let you know how to debug if you’re doing something wrong, or point out common mistakes. This way you’re able to know exactly why you want warmups to not suck.

These are the two biggest NEGATIVE outcomes people get from their warmups.

  1. Nothing at all other than time wasted

  2. Actually losing the ability to perform

So, here’s how you debug.

First off, if you notice that your second set of an exercise ends up being stronger, more reps, etc. That means your warmups suck. Your first working set ended up becoming a warmup…

Second, if you remove your warmups and notice you’re stronger when doing so… it means your warmups suck. Your warmups were too fatiguing and took away from your working sets.

The way most people mess up warmups are by doing way too many reps, not doing the same sort of tempo or form, and not taking enough rest.

So long as you’re not doing any of that, you should be good.

If you want to make sure you’re doing a good warmup set aim for it to be ~6/7 reps from failure, with the exact same rest as your working set, and with a proper rest.

Here’s a bit of a chart for how that would look.

How many reps you think you can do max with your working weight

Reps to do (% of working weight you’re using)

10 reps

1 rep of 111.1%
2 reps of 107.4%
3 reps of 103.6%
4 reps of 100%
5 reps of 97.6%
6 reps of 95.2%
7 reps of 93%
8 reps of 90.9%
9 reps of 88.9%
10 reps of 87%

9 reps

1 rep of 107.30%
2 reps of 103.70%
3 reps of 100%
4 reps of 96.60%
5 reps of 94.20%
6 reps of 92%
7 reps of 89.80%
8 reps of 87.80%
9 reps of 85.80%
10 reps of 84%

8 reps

1 rep of 103.50%
2 reps of 100%
3 reps of 96.4%
4 reps of 93.10%
5 reps of 88.70%
6 reps of 86.60%
7 reps of 84.70%
8 reps of 82.80%
9 reps of 81%
10 reps of 79.30%

7 reps

1 rep of 100%
2 reps of 96.70%
3 reps of 93.20%
4 reps of 90%
5 reps of 87.80%
6 reps of 85.70%
7 reps of 83.70%
8 reps of 81.80%
9 reps of 80%
10 reps of 78.30%

6 reps

1 rep of 96.80%
2 reps of 93.50%
3 reps of 90.20%
4 reps of 87.10%
5 reps of 85%
6 reps of 83%
7 reps of 81%
8 reps of 79.20%
9 reps of 77.40%
10 reps of 75.80%

5 reps

1 rep of 93.70%
2 reps of 90.60%
3 reps of 87.40%
4 reps of 84.40%
5 reps of 82.30%
6 reps of 80.40%
7 reps of 78.50%
8 reps of 76.70%
9 reps of 75%
10 reps of 73.40%

4 reps

1 rep of 90.90%
2 reps of 87.90%
3 reps of 84.70%
4 reps of 81.80%
5 reps of 79.80%
6 reps of 77.90%
7 reps of 76.10%
8 reps of 74.40%
9 reps of 72.70%
10 reps of 71.20%

I know that’s not the easiest table to use, but hopefully it helped in some way.

If you are made to pick between a weight slightly heavier, or slightly lighter, pick the lighter one.

You can always mess with reps in order to work better perform your warmup.

In time this should also help you work out if your estimate on how many reps you can get was accurate or not.

Go make your warmups not suck!

Your Hypertrophy Hero,
Fletcher

Come Join The Deep End Coaching Group

Have a program which stays on top of what works, without having to research too much.

Reply

or to participate.