What Is RPE And Why Should You Track It?
Rate of perceived exertion is a handy training tool for any runner
THINK ABOUT THE LAST TIME you did a long, hard run: was there a point where you felt you were going to collapse with the effort? Or die from it? If you’re reading this, you survived (congrats!) – and you probably finished the run, and perhaps walked another mile or so later that day to get beer or pizza. Or both.
That’s because exhaustion doesn’t necessarily come from physical limits (such as glycogen depletion or dehydration), explains coach and author Matthew Fitzgerald in his book How Bad Do You Want It? (VeloPress). Exhaustion is more of a psychological barrier, according to research by professor of sports science Samuele Marcora, who studies the psychobiology of endurance performance. You hit the wall when you reach the maximum level of perceived effort you’re mentally willing to endure.
If you’ve ever had a treadmill-class instructor yell at you about running at an effort of seven out of 10, you know what a rate of perceived effort or rate of perceived exertion (RPE) is. But is it something you proactively track? It should be.
What exactly is RPE?
Your rate of perceived exertion is a subjective assessment of how physically and mentally difficult an exercise is for you. ‘It’s not a number that you should be using in isolation to dictate a training plan, but it is something that can better inform your training so you can be more efficient and optimise your workouts,’ says Megan Roche, an athlete and endurance coach, and a clinical researcher at Stanford University, US.
Since the 1960s, sports scientists and coaches have used a scale ranging from 0 to 10 to subjectively assess effort, with 0 being no exertion and 10 being the highest level. Though it is admittedly rather arbitrary, it does give a runner a way to track performance without fancy tech and, at the same time, considering the many other variables affecting that performance. Yes, some sports watches and activity trackers are incorporating fancy new technology to track your training load, but ‘RPE clues you in to your body’s actual response to what you’re doing’, says exercise physiologist Polly de Mille. This is important because of the crucial role perception of effort plays in running.
Training helps your body get fitter, but it also helps your brain become more comfortable with higher levels of perceived effort, writes Fitzgerald in his book. In other words, you have to train your brain to be uncomfortable
just as much, if not more, than you train your body. ‘By training with your RPE in mind, you extend your ability to withstand that hard effort,’ says de Mille. When those higher levels of perceived effort become easier, that’s when you can start to push your running performance to the next level.
How RPE helps you
While a coach probably will not prescribe a training programme based on RPEs, you should be paying attention to your RPE while you run. That’s because running workouts shouldn’t be one-intensity-fits-all. Slower, easier runs serve as aerobic conditioning or recovery, while harder speedwork and intervals push your maximum heart rate and ability to sustain higher intensities for longer.
The more you take note of your effort level, the better you’ll be at accurately gauging it, says de Mille. And the better you can gauge your intensity, the more you can push yourself and the less likely you are to push yourself too hard.
That has two benefits: first, it means that you are unlikely to fall into the moderate-intensity trap, that comfortably efficient pace that inevitably leads to a rut because you’re never doing low- or high-intensity workouts – you’re just... running.
And if you have been following a training plan, but the same workouts are starting to feel harder, ‘that pattern of increased exertion is actually a sign that you are overtraining,’ says Roche. ‘If you’re tracking that, you can identify where it started and adjust your future training.’
Like pace and heart rate, RPE is just a tool in a runner’s arsenal – one that reminds you to trust your body and not just swear by high-tech devices. ‘Data, especially data in running, can be imperfect, which can negatively impact the course of your run,’ says Roche. ‘I really like athletes to run by feel because I think that it prevents judgments and provides a more holistic look at a run.’ Because solid training is about the big picture – not just the data points on your activity tracker.
‘RPE IS SOMETHING THAT CAN BETTER INFORM YOUR TRAINING SO YOU CAN BE MORE EFFICIENT’