RPE Calculator

What does RPE mean?

Everyone is aware of the importance of exercise to good health. Exercise is crucial, but you also need to pay attention to how hard you're working. Utilizing the RPE scale, or rate of perceived exertion scale, is one technique to monitor your effort. The Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion scale is another name for this approach to gauging activity intensity.

• Easy intensity, RPE 1 to 3. You are able to breathe regularly, converse normally, and generally feel at ease.
• Moderate intensity, RPE 4 to 6. Your breathing is more laborious and you can only speak in brief bursts, but you are still in your comfort zone.
• RPE 7 to 9: Very challenging. You're working outside of your comfort zone, you're breathing excessively, and you can hardly speak.
• RPE 10: Maximum level of effort. You're unable to speak, struggling to breathe, and operating at or above your physical capacity.

What is perceived exertion?

Based on the physical sensations you feel when exercising, you may gauge how hard your body is working. For instance, during exercising, your heart beats more quickly3, your respiration quickens and deepens, you perspire more, and your muscles start to tyre. These emotions aren't as objective as they would be, say, if you actually took your heart rate. But even without any equipment, they can evaluate your heart rate and zone of exercise intensity.

How to calculate your RPE?

Choose a number between 1 and 10 based on your level of muscle exhaustion, heart rate elevation, and breathing rate rise to establish your RPE. The workout was more strenuous the higher the number. While an RPE of 10 is considered a peak effort, or as hard as you can go, an RPE of 1 is frequently referred to as barely any exertion, just above rest.

Try wearing a heart rate monitor if you're using the Borg scale and want it to match your heart rate. By following these procedures, you can also take your heart rate manually.

• On the thumb side of the inside of your wrist, locate your pulse.
• Press lightly over the artery using the tips of your first two fingers—not your thumb.
• To get your beats per minute, count your pulse for 30 seconds and multiply the result by two.

You'll need to pause every so often to check your feelings if you're using the scale without also monitoring your pulse rate. Afterward, compare using both scales.

What are the benefits of RPE?

Although the RPE scale is straightforward, it shouldn't be taken lightly. One benefit is that it might be an easy method to make sure you get the 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise per week that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services advises. Your moderate-intensity goals will be met when your rating of perceived effort (RPE) is five or six, and your vigorous-intensity goals will be met when your RPE is seven or eight.

RPE also emphasises how you are feeling rather than your heart rate, breathing rate, or speed. If your body is telling you to cut back on your workouts, you could feel more at ease doing so without the strain of your fitness tracker numbers. It is simple to switch gears and keep pushing in the gym without being constrained by a rigid system thanks to RPE's fluid approach to training intensity.

What is scale in RPE?

Swedish scientist Gunnar Borg developed the Borg scale in the 1960s. He was interested in understanding the relationship between how someone perceived or felt their exertion and how their body physically responded. The 15-point scale goes from 6 to 20, with 6 signifying little effort and 20 signifying the most effort. The degree of exertion that a person feels is correlated with each point on the scale. The bodily signs that a person may encounter contribute to perceived exertion. These consist of:

• higher heart rate
• accelerated breathing
• fatigued muscles and increased perspiration

It's crucial while utilising the scale that a person considers how they feel overall rather than concentrating on one specific sign.

Learn the numbers if you want to gauge the intensity of your workouts. The numbers represent the level of workout intensity simply put. When a heart rate monitor is not available, this is useful for gauging how hard people are working. And anyone, regardless of fitness level—from beginners to experts—can use it. to comprehend how the numbers relate to particular actions.

• You are lying on the couch if you have a 1 on the RPE.
• A RPE of 10 indicates that you are pushing an automobile up a difficult incline.

The ideal level of exercise intensity varies from person to person. The suggested exercise parameters often correspond to a Borg RPE score of 12 to 14.

What is the difference between borg rpe scale and rpe scale?

Both scales work well for determining intensity. Because it looks simpler to use or makes more sense to you, you might choose one over the other. Both scales, however, estimate intensity depending on how the exerciser feels, which is the same thing they both do. Depending on the exercise being done, each scale has a different set of advantages.

Although it is only an estimate, the Borg RPE Scale shows a strong link between a person's rating level multiplied by 10 and their actual heart rate. A person's predicted heart rate will be about 130 if they rate their level of exertion as 13, which is considered to be moderately hard. Of course, the precision of this estimation will be constrained if the patient is on beta-blockers. The ability to roughly track one's training heart rate while engaging in aerobic activity can therefore be quite helpful for users of this scale.

The number of reps held back or the number of additional repetitions a person might perform with proper form before failing correlates with their rating level on the 1–10 RPE scale. As an illustration, if someone assesses their degree of effort as an 8 out of 10, they probably have 2 reps left over. As a result, using this scale to gauge intensity could be quite helpful for lifters.