How To Measure Your Training Intensity

house Jeannie Vo 2 June 2023 2 min read

A common question we ask every client after each exercise is: How hard was that exercise or session out of 10? It’s a completely subjective question and it’s the point of using Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE).

When we ask this question, we ask each client to rate their effort or how hard they worked doing an exercise on a numerical scale from 1 to 10 (where 1 = very light and 10 = maximum effort). This is what we call the Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) using the modified category-ratio scale from 0-10 (CR10).

Resistance training and RPE

Rating how hard each exercise or session feels, it provides another way to measure training or progress (in addition to load, reps, sets, etc.). For example, if you perform the same exercise and report a lower RPE every week, that means you’re improving as you can complete the same exercise with a lower perception of effort. This can be one way to track progressive overload.

To make it easier to understand how you would rate your RPE, here’s a quick visual that’s been adapted for resistance training:

Rating of Perceived Exertion

Extracted from Sports Performance Tracking.

Aerobic training and RPE

RPE has many other practical applications and can be used for various purposes and even different types of training. The example above highlights it’s application for resistance training but did you know you can also use it for aerobic exercise?

Strava, for instance, uses RPE as a metric you can add to your workouts. Except they use the RPE scale to measure effort through breathlessness. Here’s how they define the 0 to 10 scale:

  • Easy (1-3): Could normally talk, breathing naturally, felt very comfortable
  • Moderate (4-6): Could talk in short spurts, breathing more laboured, within your comfort zone but working
  • Hard (7-9): Could barely talk, breathing heavily, outside your comfort one
  • Max effort (10): At your physical limitations or past it, gasping for breath, couldn’t talk/could barely remember your name