Free warmup sets calculator with plate loading: enter your work weight and get every warmup set with the exact plates per side — lb or kg, your bar, and only the plates your gym stocks.
Quick answer
Enter your working weight and the tool gives you the ramp up to it, with the exact plates to put on each side.
Choose kilos or pounds and the bar you are lifting on — a standard 20kg/45lb bar, a women's bar, or a training bar. Getting the bar wrong throws off every plate calculation that follows.
Type the weight of your actual working sets, not your one-rep max. This is the number the warmup ramps up to.
Select the plates actually available on your rack. The tool only builds sets it can load from those, so it never hands you a warmup you cannot physically make in your gym.
Different schemes ramp differently — more sets for heavy singles, fewer for lighter work. Pick the one matching your programme rather than the default, because the number of ramp sets decides whether you arrive at the work weight fresh or already tired.
Each warmup set shows the weight and the exact plates per side, so you can load the bar without doing arithmetic between sets when your attention is somewhere else.
Every lifter knows the moment: you are three warmup sets deep, slightly gassed, and trying to work out what 80% of 237.5 is and which plates build it. That arithmetic is exactly what goes wrong under fatigue — and loading errors are how you end up grinding an accidental PR during a warmup. This calculator does the whole ramp in advance: every set, its weight, its reps, and the exact plates per side, using only the sizes your gym actually stocks.
| Weight (lb) | Per side (45 lb bar) | Weight (kg) | Per side (20 kg bar) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 95 lb | 1×25 | 60 kg | 1×20 |
| 135 lb | 1×45 | 80 kg | 1×25 · 1×5 |
| 185 lb | 1×45 · 1×25 | 100 kg | 1×25 · 1×15 |
| 225 lb | 2×45 | 120 kg | 2×25 |
| 275 lb | 2×45 · 1×25 | 140 kg | 2×25 · 1×10 |
| 315 lb | 3×45 | 160 kg | 2×25 · 1×20 |
| 365 lb | 3×45 · 1×25 | 180 kg | 3×25 · 1×5 |
| 405 lb | 4×45 | 200 kg | 3×25 · 1×15 |
Computed by the same loader the calculator uses — standard full plate sets.
The purpose of a warmup ramp is practice, not exhaustion: each set rehearses the exact bar path at a weight light enough to recover from in seconds. That is why good schemes cut the reps as the percentage climbs — five reps at 40%, a single at 90%. The 5/3/1-style option stops at 60% for programs whose first work set is itself submaximal, and the quick scheme covers lunchtime sessions. Pair the ramp with the tabata timer for conditioning finishers, or the bodyweight workout generator for days away from the bar.
Two 45 lb plates per side on a standard 45 lb bar — the famous "two plates". Three per side makes 315, four makes 405. The calculator shows the per-side breakdown for any weight, including the awkward ones like 185 (one 45 + one 25 per side).
The classic ramp: empty bar for reps, then roughly 40% × 5, 60% × 3, 80% × 2, 90% × 1, then your work sets — fewer reps as the bar gets heavier, so you groove the movement without burning energy. The calculator builds this automatically and rounds every set to weights your plates can actually make.
Tap any plate size to exclude it and every set recalculates with what remains. The smallest jump you can make is always twice your smallest plate, and the calculator tells you when a target is unreachable and loads the closest weight below it.
Yes — switch to kg for the standard 25/20/15/10/5/2.5/1.25 kg plate set on a 20 kg (or 15 kg) bar. 100 kg loads as one 25 and one 15 per side; the milestone chart shows lb and kg equivalents side by side.
Warming up slightly lighter than the plan costs nothing; warming up heavier eats into your work sets. So every percentage rounds down to the nearest loadable weight — only your work set is shown exactly as entered.
