One of the first questions I get from new personal training clients is: “How much weight should I use?”
You’d think that’s a very straightforward question, but without context, it’s borderline impossible to answer. When I’m with a client, I can see how the exercise looks and give an estimate, but even then, it’s incomplete without their feedback.
That’s why at Nova Strong Personal Training, we introduce one of the most powerful tools for communicating, regulating, and prescribing difficulty during our Take Off phase. The tool is called RPE: Rate of Perceived Exertion.
If that sounds like fancy gym jargon, don’t worry! It’s actually a super intuitive way to make your workouts smarter, safer, and more effective. Think of it as your body’s personal feedback system, and you can put it in action as soon as you touch the iron.
What Exactly Is RPE?
At its core, RPE is a scale from 1 to 10 that helps us measure how hard a set feels.
- RPE 1: No effort at all (like sitting on the couch).
- RPE 10: Maximal effort, you absolutely could not do another rep with good form.
While we often use “reps in reserve” (how many more reps you could have done) as a starting point to understand the feel (e.g., an RPE 9 means you could do 1 more rep), RPE is far more nuanced. It’s about how hard the set felt in context.
For a beginner, an RPE 8 might mean they felt confident doing two more reps with good technique as they’re learning.
For someone coming back from rehab, an RPE 8 might mean they felt they could do two more without worrying about pain or overextending themselves.
For an athlete, it might mean two reps away from significant bar speed loss.
As long as you’re thinking in terms of your own goals and needs, RPE adapts to your unique situation.
Why RPE is a Game-Changer for Your Strength Training
At Nova Strong, we use RPE for a few critical reasons, especially as you embark on your fitness journey:
- Finding the Right Weight for You: Especially for new clients, telling you to lift a certain percentage of your max doesn’t make sense – you don’t have a max yet! RPE lets us be objective. We give you a weight, you lift, and then we ask, “How hard was that on a 1-10 scale?” Your feedback immediately tells us if that load was appropriate, too light, or too heavy for your current strength and skill level.
- Prescribing Personalized Loads: Traditional methods, such as percentage-based training, rely on knowing your estimated maximum lift, which isn’t always accurate or appropriate, especially when you’re just starting out or returning from time off. RPE cuts through that.
- Objectively Tracking Progress: This is where RPE really shines for tracking muscle gain and overall strength.
- If the weight you’re lifting goes up from last session, but the RPE is the same, it’s clear: you’ve gotten stronger!
- If you lift the same weight, but the RPE is lower, that also means you’ve gotten stronger! Without RPE, we might just be arbitrarily adding weight, unsure if our training is truly working.
How We Use RPE in Your Training (Especially During “Take Off”)
During your “Take Off” phase, your Nova Strong personal trainer will initially choose weights for you based on how an exercise looks and feels. After your set, they’ll ask, “On a 1-10 scale, how hard was that?” and “How many more reps do you feel you had left?” This helps you become introspective, developing a crucial “feel” for the lift and learning to communicate your effort. As you progress, you’ll slowly experience higher RPEs and become better at making these judgments yourself.
Once you have a good grasp, we’ll use RPE to guide your progression. For example, you might add 5 lbs to your squat every week until you consistently hit an RPE 8. At that point, your coach might “reset” the progression, making strategic changes that allow for continued, safe gains.
We might also use a double progression method: if a set is prescribed as “6-10 reps at RPE 8,” you’d use the same weight until you can hit 10 reps at that RPE. Then, the next week, you’d go up in weight and work your way up to 10 reps again. RPE acts as your governor, ensuring you don’t lift weights that are too heavy, keeping your personal training both challenging and safe.
We also ask contextual questions about how the lift felt – how much control you had, if anything felt off. The primary goal here is to develop your body awareness, which not only enhances your ability to judge RPE but also yields superior results.
For more advanced clients, we may actually use RPE as a way to prescribe exactly how hard a set should feel. For example, your coach might program 8 reps at RPE 6/7/8/8. This means your first set should feel like an RPE 6 (relatively easy, like a warm-up), then you’d add weight to hit an RPE 7 for the next set, and then increase the weight again to hit an RPE 8 for your final two sets, which will feel difficult but doable.
Each RPE point generally represents about a 5-10% difference in load for the same number of reps (e.g., an RPE 6 is 5-10% lighter than an RPE 7). And remember, higher RPEs are often easier to judge, but they also create more fatigue, which might cause RPE to rise on subsequent sets within the same workout.
RPE & Your Real Life: Managing Fatigue & Preventing Injury
One of the greatest benefits of RPE for our busy personal training clients is its ability to adapt to their daily lives.
- Had a terrible night’s sleep?
- A super stressful day at work?
- Body feeling a little beat up from gardening all weekend
These factors affect your recovery and, therefore, how hard a weight feels. If everything feels harder (your RPE is naturally higher for a given weight), RPE tells you to appropriately reduce the load or performance for that day to accommodate your fatigue. This flexibility helps prevent overtraining and keeps you healthy, consistent, and moving towards your fitness goals.
The Most Important Part: Consistency & Honesty
We want to encourage open discussions about RPE between you and your coach. Remember, everyone is different, and what’s crucial is that we are consistent and honest with how we rate our RPE.
The moment we start choosing numbers because we want to go heavier than last time, rather than honestly reflecting on how it felt, is when we risk plateaus or injury. Being honest about your RPE keeps you safe and ensures we can make the best, most effective decisions about your training.
Ready to understand your body better and take control of your training? Reach out for a free consultation to learn about how RPE will be used in your personalized program, and experience the power of truly smart strength training in Fairfax, VA.