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I think you’ve got the right idea for finding that 5 rep max.
If the weight you’ve chosen feels too light by the third rep, stop and move up. 3 reps at under a 5rep max weight shouldn’t impact a max effort set later on.
If you get to the 5th rep and have just a little bit more, do that 6th or even 7th (or 8th! You’d be surprised) rep and use that to estimate 5rm.
You’re right about starting a program too light not being a bad thing either. If in doubt, round down.
Good luck with it and have fun! Max testing is the best.
Ptown
Rather than half-arsing lifting, I'm committing to doing 5x5 properly.
I need to dial in my current 5 rep max, but I'm not sure how best to go about this.
I'm thinking of a standard warm up of progressive lifts from an empty / light bar with a lot of reps, to low reps / single lifts as I approach the main set weight, where the set weight is a little bit more than the weight I've been doing for 3x5s recently.
How do I do this without hitting the 5x5 set too fatigued, or choosing a weight that is too light.
Or doesn't it matter that much, and I should just fine tune as I go - My rationale being that, as long as I've got an overall upwards trajectory for the weights I'm adding in the program, the starting weights don;t need to be dialled in precisely. Particularly as the program has room to accelerate / decelerate the progressive weight increase.