Sculpting Your Workouts to Tone Your Body

What is Perceived Exertion?

Posted by on Feb 20th, 2010 | no comments home title

I wanted to touch on the best variable for you to gauge your workouts. Whether or not you are a beginner or experienced fitness junkie you have got to gauge your workouts some way. Now without diving in to talk about all of the more common “measurable” variables I want to discuss the best variable you can use for optimal fitness.

You see many people like to get sophisticated and buy all of the latest technical toys to measure their VO2 max, target heart rate, and calculate the number of calories burned after a workout. Now there is nothing wrong with all of that, but the bottom line is that if you aren’t raising your level of perceived exertion then you are wasting both your time and money trying to figure all of those other variables out. So how can you gauge your level of perceived exertion? The most common method is to use the Ratings of Perceived Exertion scale or RPE scale. You see the exertion scale is leveled out from 1 to 10. A level one is just about as exerting as me sitting here to write out this article for you.

A level 10 is the most intense hellacious workout you have ever had. A 10 literally feels like you are about to die if you go any further. Now the question is that when you are training where along this scale should you be? That is the true measure of how effective your workouts can be and that is also relative to the participant. You see I like to shoot for an exertion level floating around a 6 to 9 throughout my workouts. Now that doesn’t mean that if I touch a level 9 that I stay there long, but the work times are elevated while recovery is obviously a lower number. Once again this is all relative to the participant because a 6 for me might be more like a 9 for you or vice versa. The RPE is your true measuring guide to physical success. Use it and by the way it is FREE.

If you want to learn more effective training tactics such as the RPE scale and the implementation of highly effective training take the time to educate yourself. Feel free to access the rest of my articles on the matter for free. Remember that most anyone can train hard, but only the best train smart!