skipped my warm-up once and instantly regretted it

Right so I basically used to just walk in and go straight to whatever I had planned. Seemed fine for a while tbh. Then one session I went straight into squats and my knees felt awful the whole time. Like not injured but just wrong, stiff and clicky and I could not get low at all. Took me a bit to connect the dots but I think that was the problem. I've been doing like 8-10 minutes of movement before lifting now and it genuinely feels different. I actually managed my best squat depth this week which I know sounds small but for me that's a big deal. Still figuring out what works — I just do some leg swings, hip circles, bodyweight stuff basically. Nothing fancy. But I'm not skipping it anymore.