Do you really need to warm up before a strength training workout? Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher kick off a brand-new series titled Principles of Exercise Design. In this series, they’ll break down the key components that make every workout safer, more effective, and better aligned with your goals.

In today’s episode, they explore one of the most debated topics in fitness: the warm-up. You’ll learn what science says about warming up, when it’s truly necessary, and why strength training might already include everything your body needs to prepare.

Tune in to hear how understanding the purpose behind warm-ups can help you train smarter, reduce wasted time, and focus on what actually drives results.

• Dr. Fisher starts by asking whether a warm-up is really necessary before strength training. 
• He explains that extensive research shows no real need for a separate warm-up before lifting. The very nature of strength training includes a built-in progression that prepares the muscles safely and effectively.
• Dr. Fisher explains that most people don’t begin their first repetition at maximum effort. Instead, the gradual increase in resistance and intensity throughout the set gently primes the muscles for heavier loads.
• Dr. Fisher highlights how progressive recruitment within a set serves as a warm-up. As you perform each repetition, your body gradually activates more muscle fibers. This process raises muscle temperature, enhances coordination, and makes an additional warm-up unnecessary.
• Amy and Dr. Fisher explain why some exercises, like sprints, need a warm-up. 
• Sprinting is an all-out movement that demands maximum force right from the start. To avoid injury, the body must be prepared through light activation that prepares the muscles and joints.
• Dr. Fisher highlights that strength training is controlled, not explosive. Exercises like leg presses or chest presses never begin with maximal effort or range of motion. The gradual increase in load throughout the session replaces the need for stretching or separate warm-ups.
• Amy explores the logic behind warming up. She points out that it’s sensible before activities demanding sudden force or unpredictable motion. But in strength training, your first repetitions are never your hardest, so the warm-up happens organically within the session.
• Dr. Fisher explains why good personal trainers skip long warm-ups. The goal isn’t to fill time; it’s to let your muscles warm naturally as resistance and effort increase.
• Amy and Dr. Fisher break down the two types of warm-up: general and specific. A general warm-up involves light activity, like cycling for a few minutes, to increase circulation and muscle temperature. It feels good, but it isn’t essential before resistance training.
• Dr. Fisher describes a specific warm-up as targeted preparation for a heavy lift. This means gradually increasing load with lighter sets before attempting a maximal effort. It’s useful when working toward top performance in compound lifts like deadlifts.
• Learn how personal training keeps you from overdoing your workouts. Dr. Fisher explains that a good session should be structured so your body adjusts safely, reducing fatigue and building strength without unnecessary strain.
• Dr. Fisher discusses whether wearing warm clothes affects muscle readiness. 
• He clarifies that feeling warm doesn’t mean the muscles are functionally prepared. True readiness comes from gradually increasing effort, not from external temperature.
• Amy concludes by summarizing the key insight from today’s episode. In strength training, the warm-up is already built into the structure of the exercise itself. The progressive loading and fiber recruitment at the start of each set make a separate warm-up unnecessary.

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We go into the studio, we start a leg press, a chest press, a pull down, whatever exercise it might be. It’s never going to be maximal range of motion. There’s no need for stretching. And it’s never going to be maximal effort.

What you just described is, you know, the theoretical purpose between why somebody would warm up. Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well -being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co -hosts are Brian Sagan, co -founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence -based strength training.

And now for today’s episode.

Hi, everyone.

Welcome back to the Strength Changes Everything podcast. Today, we are kicking off a series entitled Principles of Exercise Design. So in this series of episodes, we’re going to be describing different components of exercise design and why each one is important in order to gain the maximum benefit from your exercise session. Today, we are kicking off this series by discussing the concept of a warm -up. It’s a very common question we get asked about, is a warm -up necessary prior to a strength training workout? Why would somebody choose to warm up versus not choose to warm up?

And how should we think about that in terms of the need to warm up prior to our strength training session? So we’re going to address this question, and Dr. Fisher is with me today. Dr. Fisher, Where would you like to start in answering this question, you know, do I need to warm up?

Yeah, it’s a question that’s been an ongoing debate, you know, for a long time. And there’s actually a wealth of research around the concept of warm -ups within strength training and it all points back to the same thing that there’s absolutely no need to do a warm -up prior to a strength training workout and in fact the way I typically talk about this is that actually you do do a warm -up when you do a strength training workout because seldom will somebody go and begin a strength training workout with a maximal effort movement in their very first repetition of their very first exercise. So, if we think logically that I start the workout with a leg press, let’s say, or a chest press, you know, a multi -joint movement, and as soon as I start to lift the weight or apply force to the movement arm, It’s not maximal efforts. It’s very much submaximal because it’s the first repetition. And even if the eccentric component is harder, which of course it is in Xbox devices, um, it’s still not maximal.

So there’s kind of progressive, uh, recruitment as we will talk about later on about muscle fiber recruitment. There’s that progressive recruitment during that set of exercise that is in itself a warmup.

Yeah, it’s like the difference between an explosive movement and a gradual loading, right?

Exactly, exactly. And of course, strength training, we’ve talked about this before, speed of movement and things like that. And we’re looking for control. We’re looking for muscular tension to be key during an exercise. So there’s a huge amount of control within that strength training set or exercise or however you want to think about that. And it’s certainly not analogous to a sport or a sprint or anything like that.

If I’m going to go and do a sprint, well a sprint by its very nature is maximal effort. So I’m going to push into the ground as hard as I can, I’m going to stretch my legs as hard as I can, I’m going to apply high forces through my muscles, through my joints, through the tissues, my ligamentous tissue around my joints and so forth. So I’m going to need my body to be prepared to do that. So I might do some warm -ups and ready my muscles and I might do some stretches to prepare my joints and my mobility and allow my muscles to lengthen and so forth. But that’s not what a strength training workout is. And of course, if we think about in terms of a sport, if I go and play basketball, everybody on our basketball team will go through a warmup and it serves multiple purposes.

For a start in a team sport, there’s a cognitive component to it where we’re all interacting, we’re talking to each other, we’re all gauging each other’s own movements. But I’m also preparing my body for a game where I will now do a maximal vertical jump or a maximal change of direction or a high force sprint or something like that. Um, you know, the very unpredictable nature of sports in and of itself. And of course that applies across every sport we can think of really. It’s not just basketball, whereas strength training is far more controlled. So we go into the studio, we start a leg press, a chest press, a pull down, whatever exercise it might be.

It’s never going to be maximal range of motion. So there’s no need for stretching and it’s never going to be maximal effort. Now at the end of the set, there’s high effort and in later exercises, there might be higher effort, but certainly not at the start of the session.

If you think about it, what you just described is, you know, the theoretical purpose between why somebody would warm up. So what you’re saying is, you know, it makes sense to warm up before an event where you are going to place a heavy demand on your muscles or surprise them with quick, heavy loads or forces due to the nature of the event. But in a strength training session, you really cannot give everything you can give the very first second of any exercise anyway. You sit down and you begin the exercise and you begin to recruit those muscle fibers as you work harder and harder and harder. But the first rep is really, it’s almost impossible to actually give a hundred percent on the first second of the first rep anyway. You’re building that up.

It’s baked right into the session itself. Each new muscle group you do. Is that fair?

Yeah, that’s completely fair. That’s completely fair.

Perfect.

So what you’re saying then is there’s no research that suggests that it’s important to warm up prior to a strength training session, especially one that’s controlled and where you’re being coached to gradually build up effort over time into your maximum.

Yeah. All the research that’s looked at warm ups prior to strength training, there’s nothing that suggested that a warm up is necessary. Now, it’s worth just getting into a bit of detail, actually. There’s two types of warm -up. There’s what’s called a general warm -up and a specific warm -up. And a general warm -up would be, let’s say I’m going to go into the studio and do a session, a resistance training session, but I want to just warm up my body.

So I might get on the bike for five minutes. or I might go for a jog for a few minutes beforehand. And that’s a general warmup. And we think of that in terms of getting blood pumping around our body and warming up our muscles and so forth. And of course, that would never be sufficient to prepare you for a maximal sprint or a maximal vertical. anyway but it does feel good because it warms up muscles and it gets blood moving and so on and so forth.

The alternative would be a specific warm -up which says okay i’m going to go and do a maximal effort deadlift let’s say for example so before i do a maximal effort deadlift i’m going to do some submaximal repetitions. So if I can deadlift 500 pounds, I might do a deadlift of 100 pounds and a few reps at 200 pounds and gradually work my way up to that maximal effort deadlift. Well, if you watch powerlifting competitors, they will never start with their maximal weight. So they will always do a submaximal lift.

But that’s because they’re focused on that single maximal repetition.

Okay. So If you go and do a normal strength training work -up, the general warm -up doesn’t give you anything more than the first few repetitions of an exercise anyway, because that’s exactly what’s going to get blood going, it’s going to get your muscles warm and so forth. And because you’re never going to do that single maximal repetition, you don’t need to do multiple sets beforehand where you do a lighter load. If we think about it in that analogy, The initial repetitions are the specific warmup that lead to the final maximal repetition. So yeah, there’s just, the research is very clear.

There’s absolutely no benefits to a warmup prior to a resistance exercise workout. I love that. Yeah, that makes total sense. If you think about that same logic, right? The best warmup for a chest press at maximal effort is a chest press at slightly submaximal effort, which you’re going to do with the first rep. And so you are, you are getting prepared specifically in the most precise way possible with your beginning reps. That makes a lot of sense.

Do you have any other comments to leave listeners with about this?

Yeah. So the only other thing that I often, I often help people think about, or I see is that people will begin exercise, maybe wearing more clothes than they will often finish exercise. So they might start a workout when they feel a bit colder. And of course, if you do that, if you want to start a workout, wearing a hoodie or wearing a, you know, a long sleeve top of some kind to, cause you feel warmer in doing that, then you should absolutely do that. And if that helps. your temperature go up that bit quicker, that’s absolutely great.

But you should also be mindful that as your temperature rises, you might then want to take off that hoodie or that long sleeve top or whatever it might be so that you don’t get too hot during the workout. Now, of course, in contrast, you can start wearing just a t -shirt or a training top, whatever that might be, and feel that bit colder.

Or you might feel that bit colder from a temperature point of view, but you can be safe in the knowledge that your muscles are going to warm up during those initial repetitions anyway, and pretty soon you’ll be up to temperature. Yeah, that’s actually an interesting. I haven’t really thought about it that way.

So is being physically warm mean your muscles are warmed up though? Well, this is of course the point and being physically warm doesn’t necessarily mean that your muscles are physically warmed up, ready to go because our body maintains a pretty, pretty narrow margin as far as its core temperature anyway. But when we move blood in and out of a muscle, we certainly prepare that muscle to produce energy and to contract and relax. There tends to be a perceptual feeling that if our muscle is warm, we’re more ready to contract out. Although it would be interesting to look at the research around the perceptual response to warmups.

I don’t think that’s been looked at in much detail that I’m aware of.

Yeah.

Okay.

Perfect.

So basically what we’ve learned today here in this episode is that when it comes to a strength training workout, There isn’t another type of warmup that is necessary prior to engaging in a strength training workout because the type of loading that we’re doing and the type of muscle fiber recruitment that we are doing is baked right into the beginning of the exercise set itself. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for explaining that, Dr. Fisher, and I look forward to the next set of episodes within this series as we break down other concepts behind the workout and behind the most effective ways to exercise as we continue our series on principles of exercise design. We look forward to seeing you next week, and until then, we hope you remember, strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend.

You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverything . com. Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss another episode. Here’s to you and your best health.