Formcast Fitness Free tools

Free tool

Warm-up set calculator

Enter your working set. Get the ramp from the empty bar up to it — percentages, reps, rounded weights, and the plates to load on each side.

Units

The bar is the floor: no warm-up set is ever lighter than the empty bar.

Your ramp—warm-up sets before the working set

Warm-up sets leading to your working set
Set%Weight (lb)RepsPer side

The ramp, already on the exercise card

Formcast Fitness shows this warm-up ramp on the lift you are about to do, pre-filled with your working weight, next to the rest timer and plate calculator.

Download on the App Store

iPhone only · free trial · subscription after the trial

How this calculator works

This is the warm-up ramp from src/services/warmupMath.ts in the Formcast Fitness app, ported directly. The default scheme is fixed:

  • 40% of your working weight × 5 reps
  • 60% × 5 reps
  • 80% × 3 reps

Each weight is rounded to the nearest loadable step — 5 lb or 2.5 kg, a pair of the smallest plates — and floored at the weight of the empty bar, because you cannot load less than the bar. The “per side” column is the app's plate calculator applied to each rounded weight.

Why you sometimes get fewer than three sets

Three rules drop sets, in this order:

  • A set that rounds to zero or less is dropped.
  • A set that rounds to at or above your working weight is dropped — it is not a warm-up any more.
  • A set that lands on the same weight as the previous one is dropped, which happens once the bar floor swallows two percentages.

So a 95 lb working set on a 45 lb bar gives you two sets, not three, and a working set of 50 lb gives you none at all. There is no warm-up needed to press an empty bar.

What this assumes, and where it is wrong

  • One scheme for every lift. A 40/60/80 ramp is a reasonable default, but a heavy squat usually wants more steps than a lateral raise, and a max-effort single wants several more singles on top of this.
  • It scales with load, not with you. Someone squatting 500 lb needs more intermediate jumps than the three here. Add sets between 80% and your working weight if the jump feels big.
  • It is not a mobility warm-up. This ramps the specific movement. It does not replace general warming up, and it says nothing about how long to rest between sets.
  • The reps are fixed at 5/5/3. They do not adapt to your working rep range.
  • Barbell-shaped. The bar floor and plate maths assume a barbell. For dumbbells or machines, use the percentages and ignore the per-side column.

If the ramp feels short, the fix is to add sets, not to add weight to the ones shown. Warm-up sets are cheap; a tweaked back is not.

More free calculators

All four use the same code the Formcast Fitness app uses, so the numbers match what you would see in the app.