Your rate of perceived exertion (RPE) is important to understand because it affects your overall impression of your workout. Your RPE is not about how hard you are working out, it’s not about your heart rate and it’s not about how hard your muscles are pumping – it’s about how you feel about your workout and how hard you are working.
The Psychological Factor
Your RPE is a psychological impression. Let me tell you a little story. A few years ago, my husband and a couple of our friends and I used to ride regularly and every weekend, we had the habit of taking the horses out for a good two or three hour trail ride. We explored a lot of our surrounding countryside in Virginia and sometimes we followed previously blazed trails and sometimes we didn’t.
Another friend of ours did not ride as often as we did, but occasionally she would join us for a ride. She averaged maybe once a month or every six weeks. While she enjoyed riding, when she went out with us, our rides were significantly shorter. On one of these days that we were out, we’d been out less than an hour, but she was red-faced, breathing hard and exhausted. We turned back and she still ended up walking the last quarter of a mile, leading her horse rather than riding.
When we got back to the barn, she asked if one of us could put up her tack and clean up her horse. She was exhausted after our ‘four-hour’ ride. I remember looking at my husband and he looked at me. Our ride hadn’t lasted longer than 50 to 75 minutes, tops. We weren’t even winded – in part we were more accustomed to these long rides and we were in better shape for them, but our rate of perceived exertion was significantly less than hers.
The Scale of RPE
If you work with a personal trainer, they are going to ask you how hard you feel you are working. This RPE is a good indicator for your personal level of fitness and exertion. Whether you are just starting out or you have been exercising regularly for a while – your RPE can help prevent you from overdoing it. Our rate of perceived exertion changes over time. The more used to a workout you are, the less your RPE is going to be.
So here’s a quick model for understanding RPE and remember, this is the number you apply to how you are feeling about whatever particular workout you are doing. For regular, day-to-day physical activities, you want an RPE of 4 to 6.
- 1 Very Weak – you feel pretty weak doing what you are doing (you may feel this way when you’re ill or exhausted
- 2 Weak – you don’t feel physically confident in what you are doing, you may be getting over an injury or you just aren’t used to what you are doing
- 3 Moderate – You aren’t weak and it may leave you feeling winded, but you can do it
- 4, 5, 6 – These are varying levels of strength – you may feel pretty strong about walking your kids to school and back, you may feel confident in power walking through the mall and you feel pretty strong about your basic, daily workout
- 7 Very Strong – When you are very strong, your basic workout is easy and you need to notch it up to intermediate or advanced to feel like you are challenging yourself
- 8, 9 and 10 – these are athletic levels of exertion perception – this is how you feel when you are performing in high energy exercise and feeling good about it
So what is your rate of perceived exertion?
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