Exercise intensity can be manipulated by adjusting the resistance, weight, speed, tempo, rest, and number of reps. But how do you actually measure your intensity?
While there are many ways to measure intensity of an exercise or workout, at The Vault, we love to use RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion).
RPE is a scale of 1-10 to determine how hard you are working, where ‘1’ represents hardly working and ‘10’ represents maximal effort.
intensity specific to you
RPE is great because it’s specific to you. You working at a ‘10’ would be a different intensity than someone else working at a ‘10’.
This scale also specific to you on a particular day. Ever have those days where you feel unstoppable and can conquer the world? In this type of day, your ‘10’ would be a different intensity than the days when you aren’t motivated, you’re tired and you’re stressed.
Applying RPE to Strength Training:
Whether you’re doing 8, 10, 12, or 15 reps, we often recommend clients train at an RPE of 8 or 9. This means that the final few reps are quite challenging, but they are still manageable with good form.
Some people love to workout at an RPE of 10 because they think it’s needed for the workout to be ‘awesome’, but we don’t recommend this. Mainly because it’s not productive to train at maximal effort all the time, it can possibly increase your chance of injury, it affects your recovery, and it can have a negative impact on your relationship with exercise.
Applying RPE to Cardio:
Rather than prescribing an arbitrary speed or bike resistance, we can prescribe an RPE for you to determine those values.
For example, if you are doing a longer and slower run on the treadmill, we may prescribe you to run at an RPE of 5 or 6 for 45 minutes. So now it’s up to you to modify the speed as needed throughout the run.
Or, if you are doing intervals on the bike, we may prescribe you to 60s at an RPE of 8 or 9, followed by 120s at an RPE of 5, repeat 7x for 24 total minutes. So now it’s up to you to modify the resistance for each interval as needed throughout the ride.
Summary
These are just a few examples of how we can use RPE to prescribe exercise. It can be a powerful tool to help ensure your training is effective. If you need an support, book a free ‘No-Sweat Intro‘ with one of our coaches to learn how we can help you reach your goals!
