Rate of Perceived Effort was all we had before the introduction of GPS watches, heart rate monitors, lactate testing and power meters. The simple idea of rating a workout out of 10 ( or 20 if using the Borg scale ) with 10/10 being an all out effort and 1/10 being barely moving is a concept that seems easy to grasp. Yet it has its problems. How do you define a maximal effort ?
For example the end of a 5km race you might rate as a 10/10 or 20/20 on the Borg scale but you might also rate a 400m sprint as 10/10 and the closing stages of a marathon 10/10 when they clearly all are at different intensities. Whilst they all feel very hard the body is in very different physiological states in the three events. If we want to use a 1-10 scale we have to better d efine for our athletes what 10/10 actually is.
We need to anchor our rating with something tangible. This is not difficult for an experienced athlete – you might say 10/10 is an all-out 5 minutes or 10 minutes effort. An inexperienced athlete won’t have a good sense of what that feels like so you may need to let them gain some experience in speed sessions and use a verbal descriptor ( as discussed below ) before you can give them an anchor point. If they have done a recent 5-10km race you could also use that to define the max effort .
Some coaches like to use percentages , today’s run is an 80% effort but 80% of what exactly ? Unless you define what 100% effort is it leaves much open to the athletes’ interpretation. 100% could mean maximum effort for that duration of the race ( eg 10km or half marathon ) or could mean max effort at Vo2 max ( which is more like a 5-8 minutes all out effort ). Again you need to anchor the % to something.
Even if you define what a maximum effort is it still comes down to the athletes subjective assessment of that effort. Experienced athletes are likely to rank workouts easier than inexperienced athletes . If you have never done speed work before then you probably will rate your sessions higher than if you have been doing speed work for years and remember a few truly brutal sessions which you rank as max and anything else is below that.
An athletes perception of how hard a run is can also be affected by external factors. Eg how much sleep they had the night before, how well fuelled they are , whether they have fresh legs or fatigued ones, time of day to name a few. This means a session run at the same pace could feel comfortable one day and quite hard another. This is not to say that perceived effort is of no value . It can help give information about the physical and mental state of the athlete but it is subjective not objective.
So whilst RPE has a place I feel it’s better viewed as athlete feedback to the coach rather than the coach directions to the athlete. What I mean is avoid telling athletes that a session should be an 8/10 or run at 90% as its very vague and undefined whereas their feedback that a session felt like a 10/10 or 7/10 gives you information on the athletes physical and mental state .
So what can you use instead ?
Without the use of technology one of the best approaches is describing how well the athlete can talk during the session. For example a recovery run you should be able to talk in complete sentences. For a threshold run short sentences are just possible and for a 5km race even a few words are an effort. You can also use descriptions on how it will feel. Eg an easy run you should finish feeling like you could do it all over again. A threshold session you should finish feeling like it was a tough workout but had more to give if really pushed, and a VO2 max session (and don’t worry we will cover what the different types of sessions are and what intensity they will be run at soon ) you finish feeling like you have absolutely nothing left to give.
If your athlete does not have access to technology then you will need to spend some time developing their sense of perceived effort. Getting feedback from them as to how a session felt , could they have kept going , if so for how long. How hard were they breathing , could they talk at the end of each interval – all this information can help the coach determine if the athlete is pushing too hard or not hard enough.
Main Points
RPE is subjective and max effort should be defined so athletes have a basis of comparison
RPE is more for athlete feedback rather than coach prescription
Without technology use descriptions based on the ‘talk’ or ‘feel’ guidelines to guide the athlete as to what intensity the run should be