Should warm-up sets count as volume in your weekly total?

Counting warm-ups is the quickest way to reach 20 weekly sets for chest without doing 20 hard sets for chest. So, should warm-up sets count as volume? No. The weekly set ranges lifters quote come from studies that counted sets taken to failure or close to it, and a set at 50 per cent of your working weight is neither. Top Sets never counts a set logged as a warm-up toward weekly volume, and its effective-reps model scores any set at RPE 5 or lower as zero whatever role it carries. The warm-up is for the lift. The total is for the work.

What the research counts as a set

Every weekly set target, including the weekly sets per muscle Top Sets shows for 14 muscles, descends from a small body of research that had to decide what a set was before it could count one. The 2017 dose-response meta-analysis pooled 34 groups from 15 studies and found that weekly sets, treated as a continuous variable, predicted growth in muscle size, with the higher-volume groups gaining about 3.9 percentage points more than the lower-volume groups [1]. Every set in those studies was a working set. Nobody logged the empty bar.

A later systematic review asked directly whether a count of sets is a fair measure of volume at all. Across 14 trials in lifters with at least a year of training, the authors concluded that the total number of sets is an adequate measure when the sets are taken to failure or near it and the reps fall between 6 and 20 or more [2]. That is the definition hiding inside every weekly set range: a set counts when it is hard and when it lands in a working rep range. A triple at 70 per cent rated RPE 4 fails both tests.

None of this says skip the warm-up. A meta-analysis of 32 studies found that warming up improved performance in 79 per cent of the measures examined, with little evidence that it did harm [3]. The ramp earns the top set. It does not get a line in the same column.

What a ramp looks like in the log

Take a lifter working up to 140 kg for five on the deadlift. The ramp the app writes for that working weight is five sets, and every one is logged as a warm-up. The last column is what the app's effective-reps model gives each set at its target RPE.

The model counts a set only from RPE 6 upward, four reps in reserve or fewer. Below that a set scores zero however many reps it had. The 70 per cent triple at RPE 4 has six reps in reserve, so it is worth nothing to the week, and that is the right answer: it is there to groove the pull and check the bar speed. The plate calculator will tell you how to load 97.5 kg faster than you can work it out between sets.

Logged as warm-ups, all five sets add zero to weekly sets and zero to tonnage, the single at RPE 6 included, because the role decides before the effort does. The 140 kg top set and whatever back-offs follow are the whole of that day's volume for the muscles the pull trains. For a lighter lift the ramp is shorter: an 80 kg working weight gets the bar, 40 kg for five and 55 kg for three, and those three sets are left out the same way.

When does a heavy ramp set count?

There is one case. The 90 per cent single at 125 kg is planned at RPE 6, and on some days it is an RPE 7. A single three reps from failure at 90 per cent of the working weight is close to the near-failure definition the research used, short only on reps. If that set matters to you, log it as a working set rather than a warm-up and it counts toward the week. A top set that followed a hard single was not done fresh, and the log should say so.

The honest default is to leave it out. A set logged as a warm-up stays out of the total whatever its RPE, so changing the role is a decision you make on purpose, not something a high rating does for you. The back squat progression guide runs the same rule through a full session: the ramp sets add nothing to the week, and the one top set carries the day.

Questions

Do warm-up sets count toward tonnage?

No. Tonnage in Top Sets is load times reps summed over working sets, and a set logged as a warm-up is left out of it the same way it is left out of weekly sets. A 140 kg deadlift session whose five ramp sets moved 1,167.5 kg of bar still records only the top set and back-offs in its total, which is why two lifters with the same working sets show the same tonnage however they warmed up.

Does a warm-up count if I rate it RPE 8?

Not while it is logged as a warm-up. The role is read first and the RPE second, so a hard rating on a warm-up changes nothing in the weekly total. If a ramp set turned into an RPE 8, something was off: the jump was too big, or the top set should move down that day. Change the set's role to a working set if you want it counted, and treat the top set that follows with suspicion.

How many warm-up sets should I do before a top set?

The app writes two after the bar for an 80 kg working weight, 40 kg for five and then 55 kg for three, and four after the bar for 140 kg, finishing with a single at 125 kg. The step count follows the weight, because a heavier top set needs more rungs between the empty bar and the first working rep. A lift you know well tolerates bigger jumps; a heavy single does not.

Does a set of five count as volume if the research used 6 to 20 reps?

Yes. The review's finding covered sets of 6 to 20 or more reps, so a heavy five sits just outside what it tested, not outside what counts. In Top Sets a working set counts toward weekly volume whatever its reps. The warm-up role is what keeps a set out. A triple at RPE 8 is a working set. A triple at RPE 4 logged as a warm-up is the ramp.