Buzz
A few weeks back, I stepped away from my usual powerlifting routine to tackle a half marathon. I gave it my all during the race, and woke up the next morning dealing with intense delayed onset muscle soreness. Despite that, it was still a lifting day, so I pushed through the soreness and hit the gym for my regular workout. Surprisingly, it felt smooth and manageable, all thanks to RPE.
RPE, or the rating of perceived exertion, is a scale commonly used in fitness to measure effort. You might recognize it from the Borg scale, which gauges how hard you're working during cardiovascular exercise, for example.
Learn how to accurately assess and interpret your RPE to fine-tune your training and track your progress.
In weightlifting, RPE helps determine how challenging a set feels. For instance, imagine you're on the leg press and just manage to squeeze out eight reps. You've reached failure—you couldn't do another rep, even if someone offered you money. That would be a 10, the highest on the scale.
The number of reps doesn’t matter in this context. Whether you're doing 100 bicep curls with a light weight or a single massive deadlift, if your last rep was your absolute limit, it’s a 10.
The rest of the scale follows the same concept: it’s about how many more reps you could have completed.
RPE 10 - You couldn't complete another rep. This is the absolute maximum effort.
RPE 9 - You might have been able to do one more rep, but you didn't. It was incredibly challenging.
RPE 8 - You could have done two more reps. It was tough but not extreme.
RPE 7 - You could have done three more reps. It was a solid effort, but not too difficult.
RPE 6 - You could have done four more reps. This wasn’t a hard set at all.
When your RPE is below 6, it's not really necessary to assign a rating. For example, when you're warming up with bodyweight squats or the empty bar, it might be a 2 or 3, but you don't need to count it—just treat it as a warm-up and skip the number.
How to approach workouts designed with RPE in mind
What’s the purpose of RPE? Beyond helping you evaluate how tough a set truly feels, one of its key benefits is that lifting routines can be structured around RPE, giving you just the effort level to aim for rather than prescribing a fixed weight. For instance, after my race, the workout I followed had squats programmed like this:
6 reps at RPE 6
6 reps at RPE 7
6 reps at RPE 8
6 reps at 10% lighter than what I lifted in the RPE 8 set
This wasn’t a problem, despite the soreness, because I wasn’t given a specific weight to lift—just a target for the effort level. My weights were lighter that day, but that was perfectly fine.
And that’s the advantage of RPE: what you actually lift can vary from day to day, because you're a different person each day. In programs where a fixed weight was prescribed, I’d try to hit that weight regardless of how I felt, and on days when I was sick or tired, I might struggle and get discouraged. With RPE-based workouts, fluctuations are expected as you tune into your body’s needs. (Over time, your weights will still generally increase.)
Adapting to RPE can be tricky, but let's break it down. The key is understanding what 'one more rep in the tank' really feels like. This comes only through experience.
Getting familiar with RPE can be tough at first. However, if you've been lifting with a progressive program like Starting Strength, you've likely encountered the sensation of knowing when you have more reps left. This can make RPE 8 feel relatively easy, especially if you're used to intense workouts like CrossFit where exhaustion is a common goal.
If you've been following a routine like Starting Strength that encourages lifting heavier each week, you've likely learned the feeling of having more reps left to give. This might even make RPE 8 feel easier, like a break. A program with such intensity can quickly teach you what your limits feel like.
Getting feedback from a coach or a training buddy can be invaluable. Even though no one can know exactly how hard you're working, an experienced coach may challenge your self-assessment of RPE 8, especially if you lifted with little visible effort. Recording your lifts to review later, like I do with my online coach, offers useful insights. Sometimes, my perception of exertion doesn’t match reality. Reviewing deadlift videos, for instance, shows me I probably had more left in the tank than I thought. RPE is a learning process that becomes more accurate with experience.
In the meantime, you can use an RPE calculator, like the one found here, to estimate the appropriate weight to lift for a given RPE. To use it, you input your known RPE lift: for example, if your one-rep max deadlift is 225 pounds, enter 225 pounds for 1 rep at RPE 10. Then, at the bottom, enter how many reps you're aiming for and the desired RPE, like performing six reps at RPE 8. The calculator will suggest a suitable weight—say, around 175 pounds. This gives you an idea of what weight to load onto the bar, but ultimately, the only person who knows the true RPE you feel is you.
