How to plan warm-up sets before a working weight
The arithmetic of ramping up to a working weight: common percentages, falling reps, rounding to plates you can load, with worked examples in kilograms and pounds.
November 11, 2026 · 6 min read
Most lifters do not go straight from an empty rack to their heaviest set of the day. They ramp up: a few lighter sets of the same exercise, each one heavier than the last, before the sets that count. These are warm-up sets, and planning them is mostly arithmetic.
What follows describes common practice. It is not medical advice, and it makes no promise about performance. If you have an injury, a health condition or doubts about what suits you, ask a qualified coach or a health professional.
The usual shape of a ramp
The working weight is the weight of your planned sets, for example 100 kg for 3 sets of 5. A widely used ramp for a first barbell exercise looks like this:
| Step | Weight | Reps |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Empty bar | 8 to 10 |
| 2 | About 40% of the working weight | 5 |
| 3 | About 60% | 3 |
| 4 | About 80% | 2 |
| 5 | Working weight | As planned |
Two things happen at once: the weight goes up and the reps go down. The early sets are light and give you several reps to rehearse the movement. The later sets are close to the working weight, so they are kept short to save effort for the sets that matter.
The percentages are approximate on purpose. Nobody needs exactly 40%. What matters is a series of reasonable steps that you can load without digging for small plates.
Rounding to plates you can load
A percentage rarely lands on a loadable weight. 40% of 72.5 kg is 29 kg, and no one is going to hunt for fractional plates for a warm-up.
The simple rule: round each warm-up to the nearest weight that needs few plate changes. In kilograms, rounding to the nearest 5 kg works well. In pounds, round toward weights built from 45, 25 and 10 lb plates.
It also helps to choose steps where you add plates rather than swap them. Going from 20 per side to 25 + 5 per side means taking a plate off. Going from 20 to 20 + 10 only means adding one. Both give 80 kg on a 20 kg bar; the second is quicker.
If the subtraction itself is unfamiliar, barbell plate math explains how to get from a total weight to the plates on each side.
Worked example: 100 kg
Working weight 100 kg, 20 kg bar.
| Step | Calculation | Weight | Per side | Reps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Empty bar | 20 kg | none | 10 |
| 2 | 40% of 100 | 40 kg | 10 | 5 |
| 3 | 60% of 100 | 60 kg | 20 | 3 |
| 4 | 80% of 100 | 80 kg | 20 + 10 | 2 |
| 5 | Working weight | 100 kg | 20 + 10 + 10 | 5 |
Here the percentages land on round numbers. Loading 40 kg per side as 20 + 10 + 10 instead of 25 + 15 means you only ever add plates between steps 3 and 5. Either loading is the same weight.
Worked example: 72.5 kg
Working weight 72.5 kg, 20 kg bar. The raw percentages are 29, 43.5 and 58 kg. Rounded to the nearest 5 kg:
| Step | Raw | Rounded | Per side | Reps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Empty bar | 20 kg | none | 10 |
| 2 | 29 kg | 30 kg | 5 | 5 |
| 3 | 43.5 kg | 45 kg | 10 + 2.5 | 3 |
| 4 | 58 kg | 60 kg | 20 | 2 |
| 5 | 72.5 kg | 72.5 kg | 25 + 1.25 | 5 |
The rounded steps are 41%, 62% and 83% of the working weight. That is close enough.
Worked example: 225 lb
Working weight 225 lb, 45 lb bar. The raw percentages are 90, 135 and 180 lb.
| Step | Raw | Rounded | Per side | Reps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Empty bar | 45 lb | none | 10 |
| 2 | 90 lb | 95 lb | 25 | 5 |
| 3 | 135 lb | 135 lb | 45 | 3 |
| 4 | 180 lb | 185 lb | 45 + 25 | 2 |
| 5 | 225 lb | 225 lb | 45 + 45 | 5 |
95, 135 and 185 lb are about 42%, 60% and 82% of 225. Every step uses plates found in any pound gym.
When the working weight is light or heavy
Light working weights. If the working weight is 40 kg, then 40% is 16 kg, which is less than the bar. The steps collapse: empty bar for 10, then perhaps 30 kg for 5, then the working sets. When the working weight is the empty bar or close to it, the first working set is its own warm-up.
Heavy working weights. The jump from 80% to 100% grows with the weight. At 140 kg it is a 28 kg jump. Many lifters add a single rep at around 90% to make the last step smaller:
| Step | Raw | Rounded | Per side | Reps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Empty bar | 20 kg | none | 10 |
| 2 | 56 kg | 60 kg | 20 | 5 |
| 3 | 84 kg | 85 kg | 25 + 5 + 2.5 | 3 |
| 4 | 112 kg | 110 kg | 25 + 20 | 2 |
| 5 | 126 kg | 125 kg | 25 + 25 + 2.5 | 1 |
| 6 | 140 kg | 140 kg | 25 + 25 + 10 | As planned |
More steps are a matter of preference and of the day. The principle stays the same: reps fall as weight rises.
Fewer warm-ups for later exercises
The full ramp is usually reserved for the first heavy exercise of a session. By the second or third exercise, the muscles involved have often already worked.
Common practice is to shorten the ramp accordingly:
- Same muscles as the previous exercise (bench press, then incline dumbbell press): one set at roughly 50 to 60% of the working weight, sometimes none.
- A different area (squats, then overhead press): two short sets, for example about 50% for 5 and about 75% for 2 or 3.
- Small isolation exercises late in the session: often a single light set to find the movement, or straight into the working sets.
How much you need varies with the person, the exercise, the temperature of the room and how the previous session went. Treat these as starting points, not rules.
Logging warm-up sets
Whether to write warm-ups down is a matter of taste. If you do, mark them as warm-up sets so they stay separate from your working sets; otherwise they inflate your volume totals and clutter the answer to “what did I do last time”. How to keep a lifting log covers set types and the other fields worth recording.
If you would rather not do the percentages by hand, Quintal, an iPhone lifting log, has a warm-up set calculator that turns a working weight into a ramp of loadable weights.
This guide is general information, not medical or personal training advice. Ask a qualified professional about your own situation.