# The Ten-Minute Warm-Up That Doesn't Eat Your Session

> What to actually do in the ten minutes before you lift, and why the stretching you were taught at school makes your first working set worse.

Written by Ahmet Abiç (Founding editor). Reviewed by Dana Holt (CSCS, strength coach). Published August 11, 2026.

Source: https://gritwright.com/strong/ten-minute-warmup/

---

Most people either skip the warm-up entirely or spend twenty minutes on it and
arrive at the first working set already tired. Both are the same mistake:
treating the warm-up as a separate event instead of the first part of the lift.

Ten minutes is enough. Here is where they go.

## The first five minutes: get warm, literally

The point is body temperature, not flexibility. Anything that raises your heart
rate and moves your joints through their range works: rowing, cycling, a brisk
incline walk, or the movements themselves with no load.

What does not work is sitting on the floor holding a hamstring stretch. Held
stretches before lifting reduce force output for a while afterwards, so you
arrive at your first heavy set weaker than you would have been.

## The second five minutes: rehearse the lift

Now do the lift you are about to do, starting with the empty bar and adding
weight in steps. For a working weight of 60 kg that might be:

- Empty bar for 5
- 30 kg for 5
- 45 kg for 3
- 55 kg for 1

Each of those should feel easy. They are not training, they are rehearsal:
you are teaching your body the pattern at increasing load so the first real set
is not the first time the movement happens today.

## What changes on later lifts

Nothing general. Once you are warm you stay warm, so the second and third lifts
of the session need one or two light sets each and nothing more. The full ramp
is only for the first lift of the day.