The Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) is a self-assessment tool that allows athletes to gauge their intensity level during training, using a scale from 1 to 10. This scale helps determine how hard they’re working based on how they feel, rather than relying solely on external measures like heart rate or weight lifted, typically expressed at a percentage of a 1 Rep Max.
For example:
RPE FOR LIFTING:
RPE 1-4: Feels like an easy warm-up, could do 6-9 more reps at current weight.
RPE 5-6: You’re working, but it’s still sustainable, could do 4-6 more reps at current weight.
RPE 7: Could do 3 more reps at current weight.
RPE 7.5: could do 2 maybe 3 more reps at current weight.
RPE 8: could do 2 more reps at current weight.
RPE 8.5: Could do 1-2 more reps at current weight.
RPE 9: could do 1 more rep at current weight.
RPE 10: Could do no more reps or no more weight. Think max effort attempt at given weight or volume.
RPE FOR CONDITIONING:
RPE 1: Minimal effort, could do all day.
RPE 2: Light and easy, could maintain for hours.
RPE 3: Comfortable pace, Can maintain a conversation.
RPE 4: Comfortable with some effort, slight push but still at a pace in which you can speak a few sentences.
RPE 5: Progressive pace, a pace that requires some pushing to maintain, but can still speak a clear sentence.
RPE 6: Hard activity, labored breathing, uncomfortable but could maintain for 30-45 minutes.
RPE 7: vigorous activity, can speak a sentence but is hard and uncomfortable to do.
RPE 8: Hard intensity, requires focus to maintain, could speak 1-2 words.
RPE 9: Very hard intensity, could maintain pace for around 1 minute before significant drop off.
RPE 10: All out effort, think sprints.
One of the most significant advantages of RPE is that it adjusts to how you’re feeling on any given day. On days where you’re tired or stressed, an RPE 8 might mean lifting less weight than usual, but you’re still putting in the same relative effort. Conversely, on a day where you feel fresh and recovered, your RPE 8 might correspond to heavier loads or faster paces.
This makes RPE particularly valuable for hybrid athletes and tactical populations, whose recovery might fluctuate due to external stressors, such as lack of sleep, irregular eating patterns, or demanding job responsibilities.
RPE is also a valuable tool for gauging intensity especially for tactical athletes training for selection pipelines into special units. In these environments, athletes won’t have access to watches to track paces during timed or scored runs and rucks. Instead, they must rely on their ability to assess effort by feel, and RPE trains them to do exactly that.
RPE vs. Standard Loading Protocols
In traditional strength training, Standard Loading Protocols rely on training percentages derived from your 1RM (One-Rep Max). This system is based on the maximum amount of weight you can lift for one repetition, and workouts are prescribed using a percentage of that value. For example:
70% of 1RM might be prescribed for volume work, usually around 8-10 reps.
85% of 1RM is typically reserved for heavier, lower-rep sets, around 3-5 reps.
While effective, standard loading protocols can be inflexible. They assume you’re always working in optimal conditions, which is rarely the case for hybrid athletes or tactical athletes who need to balance multiple forms of training like endurance, strength, and skill work.
How Does RPE Fit In?
RPE offers a more adaptable framework that accounts for the day-to-day variability in performance. For instance, if your program calls for squatting 85% of your 1RM for 5 reps, but you didn’t get enough sleep or are recovering from a tough conditioning session, that weight might feel like an RPE 10—max effort. Instead, you can aim for an RPE 8-9 and adjust the load down slightly, ensuring that you’re still working at an appropriate intensity without pushing into overtraining territory.
The Advantages of RPE
Adaptability to Daily Performance: One of the biggest advantages of using RPE is its adaptability. Training isn’t always consistent, and factors like fatigue, stress, sleep quality, and nutrition can influence your performance on any given day. RPE accounts for this variability, allowing you to self-regulate your training intensity. This flexibility is crucial for athletes who juggle multiple training modalities.
Prevents Overtraining: By listening to your body and adjusting intensity levels, RPE helps athletes avoid pushing beyond their capacity and risking overtraining. Especially for tactical athletes, who face physical and mental stressors outside of training, overtraining can lead to diminished performance, increased injury risk, and even burnout.
Works for All Experience Levels: Whether you’re a beginner learning to listen to your body, or an advanced athlete fine-tuning your performance, RPE scales with you. Beginners often struggle to hit exact percentages, while advanced athletes benefit from adjusting loads based on how they feel that day.
Combining RPE with Percentages: The beauty of RPE is that it can work in conjunction with percentage-based programs. In fact, many successful hybrid training programs use a blend of both. For example, you might perform sets at 80% of your 1RM, while also targeting an RPE of 7-8. This ensures you’re hitting the right intensity for your strength level, while allowing flexibility for fluctuations in performance.
Example:
Let’s say you have a 400-pound deadlift max. You’re programmed to lift at 80%, so you aim for 320 pounds. However, if your RPE feels like 9 (indicating that you’re nearing failure too quickly), you might reduce the weight to 300 pounds, still getting the right training effect while staying within your limits.
Auto-Regulation & Fatigue Management
RPE is deeply tied to auto-regulation, a principle that allows athletes to adjust their training intensity based on real-time feedback from their body. Hybrid athletes, who frequently switch between strength, endurance, and skill work, need to be able to auto-regulate their training load to ensure consistent progress without overreaching.
How RPE Helps Manage Fatigue:
Immediate Feedback: RPE provides a built-in feedback loop during training. On days when you’re feeling good, you can push toward a higher RPE. On days when fatigue is high, you scale back while still putting in meaningful effort.
Long-Term Progression: Over time, using RPE allows you to push when you’re feeling strong and recover when needed, ensuring that you maintain a consistent upward trajectory in your training without burning out.
Preventing Burnout and Fatigue
For tactical athletes, the risk of burnout is real due to the physical and mental stress they endure. RPE provides a protective buffer against overtraining by allowing athletes to scale back when necessary without feeling guilty for not hitting prescribed percentages. This self-regulation is crucial for sustainable performance.
RPE for Accessory Work
Accessory work refers to exercises that complement your primary, compound lifts. These exercises target specific muscle groups or movement patterns that need strengthening, balance, or injury prevention. Accessory movements aren’t meant to replace compound lifts like the squat, deadlift, or bench press, but rather to support them by improving weak points, increasing muscle hypertrophy, or aiding in overall movement efficiency.
Some common examples of accessory exercises include:
Dumbbell/Barbell Rows: Helps build upper back strength, which can improve your deadlift or bench press.
Bulgarian Split Squats: Targets quads, glutes, and stabilizer muscles to support your squat and overall lower body strength.
Banded Face Pulls: A shoulder health movement to improve posture and strengthen the rear delts and upper back, often to balance the pressing volume.
Bicep Curls: Isolation exercise to increase arm strength and endurance, which aids in pulling movements like chin-ups or rows.
Unlike compound lifts, it’s rare to know your 1RM for these movements, making traditional percentage-based programming difficult or impractical. This is where RPE shines.
Using RPE for accessory work allows you to self-regulate intensity without needing a fixed reference point like a 1RM. For example, instead of trying to calculate the exact weight for 8-10 reps of dumbbell rows based on arbitrary percentages, you can simply target an RPE of 7-8—where you have 2-3 reps left in the tank at the given volume and intensity. This ensures you’re working hard enough to drive progress without overloading the smaller muscle groups involved in accessory work, which could lead to fatigue or injury.
Key benefits of using RPE for accessory work:
Scalability: Since accessory work is typically done for moderate to high reps (8-15), it’s easier to use RPE to regulate intensity. For example, you can aim for an RPE 7 on a set of dumbbell rows, meaning you stop with a few reps in reserve, while still accumulating enough volume for muscle growth. For Example, if you r workout called for 3x8 @RPE 7, this would mean you could technically 11 or so reps at that weight if you had to.
Individualized Effort: Everyone’s strength curve is different for accessory movements, making it impractical to use a one-size-fits-all percentage. Simply put, it meet's the athlete where they're at.
Standard Loading Protocols vs. RPE: When to Use Each
Standard Loading Protocols, which typically rely on percentages of your 1RM (One-Rep Max), are highly effective for structured strength progression. These protocols are especially useful during phases where precise loading is needed to achieve specific goals, such as maximal strength, hypertrophy, or power development. By using a fixed percentage (e.g., 85% of your 1RM for 3 reps), you can ensure that you're working within the ideal range for strength gains.
However, RPE provides a flexible alternative that is especially valuable in certain situations where percentage-based training may fall short. Knowing when to use RPE versus standard loading is key to optimizing your training and making continual progress, especially when dealing with hybrid or tactical athletes who have varying training demands.
When to Use Standard Loading Protocols:
Strength Blocks: In a dedicated strength-building phase where predictable progression is necessary, using fixed percentages ensures that you’re consistently challenging your muscles. For example, a structured program might have you increase the percentage of your 1RM week over week to progressively overload your lifts.
Example: A 12-week strength cycle might start you at 75% of your 1RM on squats for 8-10 reps in Week 1, and gradually increase to 90% of your 1RM for triples by Week 12. This progression ensures that you're building maximal strength in a measurable way.
Competition Prep: When preparing for a competition where you’ll be testing your 1RM (power lifting/olympic lifting), standard percentages are ideal. These allow you to peak at the right time and ensure you’re working at the appropriate intensity during the final weeks leading up to the event.
Example: In powerlifting, it’s common to work up to 90-95% of your 1RM in the weeks leading up to a meet. This percentage-based approach guarantees you’re hitting the necessary intensities to peak on competition day.
Predictable Progression: Athletes looking for linear progression or who want to track progress easily might prefer percentages, as they give a clear benchmark of success.
When to Use RPE:
While percentage-based training is effective, RPE often provides advantages that standard loading protocols can’t account for, especially when dealing with variability in recovery, fatigue, or external stressors. We don't live or train in a vacuum and here’s when RPE shines:
Fluctuating Recovery or Energy Levels:
If you’re feeling fatigued from previous workouts or dealing with external factors like lack of sleep, an 85% 1RM back squat might feel like an RPE 10 (max effort) instead of the intended RPE 8. In such cases, RPE allows you to adjust the load down while maintaining the correct relative intensity.
Auto-Regulation in Long Training Cycles:
For hybrid and tactical athletes, where training involves balancing multiple modalities (strength, endurance, conditioning), RPE is an ideal tool for auto-regulation. It allows you to adjust the intensity of your strength work without derailing the rest of your training.
Example: If you're doing a long-distance ruck march one day and squatting the next, RPE lets you modify the weight on the squat day based on how your legs feel. If you’re feeling fatigued, RPE helps you drop the weight down to avoid overtraining while still hitting an effective intensity and the intended stimulus.
Accessory Work:
As mentioned earlier, RPE is particularly useful for accessory movements, where exact 1RM percentages don’t exist or aren’t practical. For exercises like split squats, face pulls, or lunges, using RPE allows you to tailor the load based on how you’re feeling without needing an exact benchmark.
Injury Recovery and Avoiding Overtraining:
When returning from an injury or managing chronic fatigue, using strict percentages can lead to setbacks. In these cases, RPE is a valuable tool for self-regulation, allowing athletes to avoid pushing too hard too soon.
Example: If you’re recovering from a shoulder injury but want to start bench pressing again, RPE helps you adjust the intensity according to how the shoulder feels that day. Rather than risking re-injury by hitting a prescribed percentage, you can safely work within an RPE 5-6 range, focusing on good form and gradually rebuilding strength.
Peaking and Fatigue Management:
Even during a strength-focused phase, there are times when RPE might be more beneficial than percentages, especially during peaking. As athletes get closer to competition or a testing phase, their fatigue levels might be high. RPE allows them to adjust without losing intensity, ensuring they peak at the right time.
Example: During the final two weeks before a competition, you’re supposed to be hitting 90% of your max for singles. However, after heavy training, that 90% feels much harder than expected. Rather than forcing the load, aiming for RPE 9 keeps the intensity high without overreaching, preserving strength for competition day.
In strength and conditioning, both Standard Loading Protocols and RPE are invaluable tools, each offering unique advantages depending on the athlete’s goals, experience level, and current training state. Standard loading protocols provide structure, predictability, and a clear path toward progressive overload, making them ideal for periods where athletes need to build maximum strength or prepare for specific performance benchmarks, such as competitions or testing phases.
However, the strength of RPE lies in its flexibility and adaptability, making it a perfect complement to percentage-based training, particularly for hybrid and tactical athletes who face ever-changing variables in their daily routines. Whether it's lack of sleep, external job stress, or unexpected physical fatigue, life can throw curveballs that make rigid percentages impractical. This is where RPE becomes a game-changer, allowing you to auto-regulate your training based on how your body feels on any given day, ensuring you still hit the right intensity without overdoing it.
Furthermore, RPE opens the door for smarter training decisions, not only in main lifts but especially in accessory work, where 1RM data is rarely available or even necessary. By using RPE for accessory movements, athletes can focus on working hard without needing to calculate precise loads, ensuring continued progress while managing fatigue and preventing injury.
RPE also allows for intuitive adjustments during long training cycles or recovery periods. If you’re coming back from an injury or experiencing cumulative fatigue, RPE gives you a way to train safely and progressively without feeling locked into an unrealistic percentage. This is particularly important for athletes who are balancing multiple fitness qualities—such as strength, endurance, and skill work—and may need to adjust on the fly based on overall workload.
Even in phases where standard percentages might appear more beneficial, there are instances where RPE can still be the smarter choice. Whether you’re peaking for competition and dealing with high levels of accumulated fatigue, or simply recognizing that not every day will be perfect for heavy lifting, RPE offers the flexibility needed to continue making gains while protecting recovery and avoiding burnout.
Using RPE alongside traditional percentages, you’ll not only maximize strength and conditioning but also enhance your ability to adapt to the unpredictable demands of training and life. This is critical for tactical athletes, who need to be ready for anything and must maintain performance across a broad spectrum of physical abilities.
In the long run, using RPE is a training philosophy that prioritizes sustainability and longevity. When you understand that not every day needs to be about max effort, but rather consistent effort over time, you’ll achieve the results you’re looking for while staying healthy and injury-free.
Whether you're looking to push new PRs, improve your conditioning, or just become more in tune with your body's signals, RPE can help you take your training to the next level—ensuring that you're ready for anything, day in and day out.
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