Should You Log Warm-Up Sets?

Quick answer: No, not in your main log. Warm-up sets exist to prepare you for the working sets, so recording them adds noise to the numbers you actually use to judge progress. Note the top warm-up weight if it changes often, keep the rest out, and reserve your log for the sets taken close to failure.

You finish your last warm-up on bench and reach for your phone. There are already three entries in there: the bar, 40 kg, 60 kg. None of them was remotely hard.

Then you open that log a month later and cannot work out which line was the set that mattered.

What counts as a warm-up set and what counts as a working set?

A working set is one taken close enough to failure to drive an adaptation. Roughly zero to four reps in reserve, depending on the exercise. It is the set your body responds to.

A warm-up set is everything before that. Lighter, deliberately easy, and stopped long before it gets hard. Its job is to raise tissue temperature, rehearse the groove, and let your nervous system meet the load before the load matters.

The distinction sounds obvious until you are standing there with three sets already done and no clear sense of which ones counted. A simple test: if you could have done five or more extra reps, it was a warm-up.

This matters for logging because every progress calculation you will ever run, whether that is estimated one rep max, weekly volume, or a simple "did I beat last week", assumes the entries are working sets. Feed it warm-ups and the average drags down.

Why do warm-up sets pollute a workout log?

Because most tracking maths treats every set as equal. Weekly volume counts sets. Volume load multiplies weight by reps and sums it. Neither knows the difference between a bar-only set and a set at 85 percent.

Say you bench 80 kg for 3 sets of 8, with warm-ups at 20, 40 and 60 kg for 8 reps each. Your real working volume load is 1,920 kg. Log the warm-ups and it reads 2,880 kg, half again as much, from sets that cost you nothing.

Now do that for six months. Your volume chart trends upward whenever you add a warm-up set, which happens naturally as the working weight climbs. The chart is measuring your warm-up habit, not your training.

Set counts break the same way. The dose-response research on weekly sets, a meta-analysis by Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger covering 34 treatment groups from 15 studies, found each additional weekly set was associated with roughly 0.37 percent more muscle gain. That relationship is built on hard sets. Counting warm-ups toward your weekly total tells you that you are doing 18 sets for chest when you are doing 12.

If you want a number that means something, count only the sets that were hard.

Do warm-up sets actually do anything?

The evidence is mixed, and the load matters more than the count. This is worth knowing, because "should I log them" and "should I do them" often get tangled together.

A 2020 study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health put 40 resistance-trained men through 3 sets of 6 at 80 percent of their max after three different warm-ups. Heavier warm-ups won. Six reps at 80 percent of the training load produced the best squat velocity, and a two-set ramp of 40 then 80 percent worked best for bench press. Warming up with a few light reps was not enough.

Earlier work found nothing at all. A 2014 crossover trial in Perceptual and Motor Skills had 15 men perform 4 sets to failure on bench, squat and curl under four warm-up conditions. Total reps and the drop-off between sets came out the same in every condition.

So warm-ups are worth doing, mostly for joints and rehearsal, but they are not where your results come from. That is exactly why they do not deserve a line in your progress history.

The one warm-up detail worth writing down

The top warm-up weight, when it is unusual. If your last ramp set before a heavy squat is 100 kg and that feels like the right springboard, one short note saves you rebuilding the ramp from scratch next week.

Write it as context, not as a set:

Squat (ramp to 100) 140 5,5,4 RIR1

One parenthesis. It never enters the numbers, and future you knows where the ramp topped out.

How many warm-up sets should you actually do?

Enough to reach your working weight without accumulating fatigue. Two to four ramp sets covers most lifters on a heavy compound. One is usually enough for an isolation exercise late in a session, when you are already warm.

A workable default on a barbell lift:

• Bar or empty machine, 8 to 10 reps. This one is purely movement rehearsal.
• Around 50 percent of your working weight, 5 reps.
• Around 70 percent, 3 reps.
• Around 85 to 90 percent, 1 or 2 reps. Only on genuinely heavy days.

Reps come down as weight goes up. If your warm-ups leave you tired, you did too many reps, not too many sets. How to warm up before lifting covers the general prep that goes before all of this.

The second and later exercises for the same muscle need almost nothing. You warmed up for bench; incline press needs one feeler set, not four.

Which logging setup handles warm-up sets best?

The one that lets you leave them out without a fight. Rigid apps often insist every set is entered, then let you tag some as warm-ups. That is two decisions per set when you wanted zero.

Paper and notes apps get this right by accident: they only hold what you type. Their weakness shows up later, when you want a clean per-exercise trend and have to build it yourself.

A simple starting plan

1. Decide your cutoff before you lift. Anything with five or more reps left in the tank is a warm-up. Do not relitigate it mid-session.
2. Ramp in two to four sets, dropping reps as weight rises. Bar, half, seventy percent, near-working. Stop there.
3. Log the working sets only. Exercise, weight, reps per set, reps in reserve.
4. Add the ramp top in brackets if it moves around. (ramp to 100) and nothing else.
5. Check one exercise chart after four weeks. If the trend line looks like your real training, your logging cutoff is working.

Keep logging the way you already do

If you write your sets into Apple Notes or a notebook, you already have the part most people never build. The gap is what happens afterwards: plain text cannot separate a warm-up from a working set, so nothing gets counted for you.

Gym Note Plus reads the lines you were already writing and turns them into per-exercise history:

• Type your working sets in plain text, exactly as you do now.
• Every exercise gets its own progress chart, built from what you wrote.
• Estimated 1RM updates as you log, so your ramp percentages stay current.
• Your full history is searchable, including exercises you have not trained in months.

Want to see what your own notes look like as structured data? Paste a recent session into the free notes to workout translator, or plug your top set into the one rep max calculator to set tomorrow's ramp.

A log is a record of what was hard. Warm-up sets, by design, were not hard, which is exactly why they do not belong in it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should you log warm-up sets in a workout log?

No. Warm-up sets should stay out of your main workout log because progress calculations such as weekly set counts, volume load and estimated 1RM assume every entry was a working set. Including warm-ups inflates those numbers without reflecting any extra training stimulus, which makes long-term trends misleading.

Do warm-up sets count toward weekly volume?

Warm-up sets do not count toward weekly volume. Volume recommendations from hypertrophy research are based on hard sets taken close to failure, typically within four reps of it. A set stopped with five or more reps in reserve contributes little stimulus, so counting it inflates your weekly total without changing the training effect.

How many warm-up sets should you do before a heavy lift?

Two to four warm-up sets is enough for a heavy barbell lift. Ramp from the empty bar to roughly 50, 70 and 85 percent of your working weight, cutting reps as the load rises. Later exercises for the same muscle usually need one feeler set, since the muscle and joints are already prepared.

Does skipping warm-up sets hurt performance?

Skipping warm-up sets can cost performance, though the evidence is mixed. A 2020 trial in 40 trained men found heavier warm-ups improved squat and bench press velocity, while a 2014 crossover trial found no difference in total repetitions across four warm-up conditions. Warming up is low cost, so most lifters should keep doing it.

What is the difference between a warm-up set and a working set?

A working set is taken close to failure, usually within four reps of it, and drives the adaptation you train for. A warm-up set is deliberately light and stopped well short of hard, existing only to prepare joints, tissue and technique. If you could have added five or more reps, it was a warm-up.

Final Takeaways

• Log working sets, not warm-ups. Your log should record what was hard, because that is what your progress numbers are built from.
• Warm-ups distort every metric they touch. Volume load, weekly set counts and estimated 1RM all assume hard sets.
• Use one bracket, not extra lines, if your ramp weight is worth remembering: Squat (ramp to 100) 140 5,5,4.
• Ramp heavy, not long. Two to four sets with falling reps beats five easy sets at light loads.
• Set your cutoff once. Five or more reps left means warm-up. Decide it before you lift and stop thinking about it.