As long as I'm warmed up, I don't see much reason to mess around too much with lighter lifts. To each their own I suppose, but I really don't get how you can be so bloody surprised that you would have problems with the heavier lifts when that is your warm up session. They are problematic because by the time you hit them, you're burned out. And when that is pointed out, you act(?) surprised and seem damned near offended by it.
I'm not offended by the suggestion that I might be doing too many warm-ups. In fact, a few posts ago, I openly accepted it as the likely reason behind my one-max-rep failure and have decided to perform 3-5 warm up sets in the future as opposed to 7-8. What I am offended - more surprised, really - is the dismissive attitude towards warm-up sets altogether.
Stretching, biking, or flailing your arms about for 15 minutes do not constitute as proper warm ups for the purpose of strength developing or even body building. It should go like this:
Stretch (few minutes) > Warm up sets > Work sets
ok, give me the physiological reasons why you need to do all those warm-ups then, if you've already got the joints limber and the cartilage softened from calisthenics, and already have your technique down and have extensive experience with heavy loads (i.e. you know what 80% feels like because you've lifted it many times before). There really isn't one. Less experienced trainees need the practice, because their form will look different on damn near every lift as the weight goes up. The more experienced the trainee, the less deviation there will be in their form as the weight increases, so less need for a longer warm-up. As I noted, I'm on the more experienced end, so I do less.
Now, the flipside to this is that very often 'more experienced' means 'older', and obviously the older you get in terms of training years, the more warming-up you should be doing generally. But there again, the experienced trainee knows their body, and knows when they're warmed up. If I'm feeling good after my bodyweight warm-up (which, no bragging and in all seriousness, most people would consider a full workout in itself), I'll ramp up fast. If I'm not feeling so good, or it's been a while since I lifted and the technique is slipping, I'll spend longer on light weights before moving up (maybe a set at 50% or 60% before going to 80%). What I NEVER do is crawl up in 10kg increments doing 5+ reps every time. That's meaningless volume that doesn't make you stronger and just tires you out. I did Starting Strength for 6 months-plus this way, and while my gains weren't quite linear (not being a teenager anymore, sadly), they were pretty close to it, with new PRs every week at least. And no injuries.
If you want to preach about avoiding injury and body-building, I have to question why you're even trying a 1RM in the first place. It's always a
test of will and capacity that carries no guarantee of success. Even if everything has being going well, you still won't make those lifts a lot of the time (especially after you've been training for a few years). Trying to lift a weight so heavy that you've never been able to do it before is an inherently silly and risky and unnecessary thing to do. I do them very occasionally, and for kicks only. If I don't make it, I don't get bummed out or throw out my whole training philosophy. Unless you are competing it doesn't really prove anything other than how good you were on that day. I've hit a weight one day, came back 2 days later and failed at 10% less. And vice versa. You get far more reliable results from 3s and 5s.
