When working with a coach or trainer, or by just browsing around the internet for fitness info, you might come across the RPE scale and wonder what the heck that is when it comes to fitness.

What is RPE? What does RPE mean? How can the RPE scale be applied to your training?

We’re going to talk all about that in this week’s blog, as through my own personal training experience and the experience of people I’ve worked with, the RPE scale can be a critical tool for success.

RPE is defined as “Rate of Perceived Exertion” and it quite simply relates to the amount of effort/intensity/difficulty an athlete experiences while training. The RPE scale is a rating between 1-10 that helps us gauge the work we’re putting in during workouts.

This scale can be summarized pretty easily with an example…

At some point in time, we’ve all turned to a friend and said, “rate this on a scale of 1-10.” We do it for how food tastes, how good a movie was, or how happy or mad we are based on a certain event.

Well, the RPE scale is essentially just that. Say you throw weight on the bar to do a barbell back squat and bang out a few reps. If the set was significantly difficult, you might rate it as a 9 or 10. If it was super easy and you went through the motions, it might be more like a 4 or 5.

The RPE scale is a way for the ease or difficulty of training to be documented and quantified. It customizes an effort rating to each and every athlete, which can be super helpful to convey programming from coach to athlete, or athlete to coach. While I can’t squat the same amount of weight as, say, NFL linebacker James Harrison, we both know what it’s like to be at or near our max. Thus, we both know what an RPE 9 or 10 feels like.

This scale helps make things relative for each and every person.

 

RPE Scale Example:

You can do a Google search for RPE scale and find hundreds of RPE models. Generally, they are all just about the same. I’ve detailed my interpretation of the RPE scale below.

RPE Number	RPE Meaning
0	No effort
1	Extremely Easy
2	—
3	—
4	—
5	Moderate difficulty
6	4 reps in reserve
7	3 reps in reserve
8	2 reps in reserve
9	1 rep in reserve
10	Your 1RM

By “reps in reserve,” it can be interpreted as: you had that many reps left in you. If your coach assigns you to lift at an RPE 9, that means you should lift a weight where, at the end of the set, you’d have the energy/ability to do one more rep. Or, if you lift a certain weight for five reps and at the end of the set you feel like you could bang out three more, that would be recorded as an RPE 7 for the set.

While not directly detailed in the table above, you can scale RPE for endurance training as well. If you go on a two-mile run and it was significantly difficult, you might rate it as RPE 9. If a month later you do that same two-mile run and it’s easier, you might rate it as RPE 7 or 8. It’s all relative and a way to add context to our training.

You can incorporate halves into this scale, too, if you want to drill down to be ultra-specific, but the regular round numbers normally seem useful enough.

 

Application:

The RPE scale can be applied in two ways. A coach can use it as a tool to regulate the amount of work his or her athlete is being put through on a daily/weekly basis. An athlete can also use it to document certain sessions or individual lifts as a reference point.

Either way, using RPE for your fitness can be extremely valuable. If you document RPE along the way, you’ll have reference points to better understand how you’re progressing (or, if you’re not progressing). We constantly seem to focus on improving our one-rep max, but the reality is we hit tons of PR’s along the way and never know it. If you squat 225 pounds at an RPE 9 and two months later squat 225 pounds at an RPE 8, you just PR’d. You didn’t test out your max, but you improved and got stronger. Voila!

From a coaching perspective, athletes can be given a program that lists RPE’s instead of specific weights, or some combination of the two. The concept of weight or RPE listed for a given set makes sense as well. For instance, “squat 225 pounds or an RPE 8 for 4 reps.” This allows the lifter to squat 225, or possibly back the weight down if on that given day it feels too heavy.

A recent study by Halperin and colleagues found if a coach gives some level of autonomy to his or her athlete, it’s likely to result in improvements in “motor learning, performance, and adherence,” further providing value for utilizing something like the RPE scale. The effectiveness of this autonomy seemed to increase with training experience and familiarity with the task among athletes.

 

Takeaways:

The takeaways here are pretty simple…

1. The RPE scale is a tool that can be very useful if utilized correctly.
2. Athletes can use the RPE scale to document their training and develop benchmarks for future use.
3. Coaches can use the RPE scale to assign programming or offer a sense of autonomy to the athlete to regulate training.

So, give the RPE scale a try for a while and see if you like it. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me for help.

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Thanks for reading!

CG