Truly customized rehab: the RPE scale.

Usually when I see a client for the first time, I’ll have them try out an exercise and they’ll typically stop at 10 reps.  

This is because we’re all conditioned to think 3 sets of 10 is what we should do when we work out.

While 10 is a pretty number (I personally like 11 better, though!) other rep ranges are just as (or more!) effective at getting the results you’re after. 

If you’ve ever trained for a race using a training plan or a coach, you may have heard them say “go at your easy pace.” This is an internal cue. 

Only you know what your easy pace is, because “easy” is subjective. They may have you do the talk test (talking to someone while you run at your easy pace to determine if it’s truly easy) for more objectivity, but easy is something that’s relative to us all. 

That’s why internal cuing is really important. It makes things more individualized to you!

While the majority of training runs should theoretically be easy (most experts agree that about 80% of your mileage should be easy,) the majority of your strength training should be hard.

This is because, for true strength gains, current research suggests that, when we’re working a specific muscle group, we need to choose a weight that gets us near-fatigue at around 1-6 reps (1.) 

That weight will be different between you, your best friend, your sibling and your spouse, because everyone is different! 

To figure out which weight for which specific exercise is right for you, I use the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale. 

The RPE scale allows you to report exactly how you felt with a given activity at a given volume with a given level of resistance.

The scale is from 0-10, where 0 is like sitting on the couch eating a donut & 10 is an all out sprint. (An easy run, for example, would be a 3 or 4 out of 10 on the RPE scale.)

When I’m programming my clients’ workouts, I’m very choosy with how I use the RPE scale for different populations and different situations. 

For my folks who have been active for a while and need strength for more endurance during running or to prevent future injury, I tell them to choose a weight at the gym that gets them to an RPE 7 to 9 out of 10 for typically about 5 to 8 reps. But they need to be truly fatigued by the end of that 5 to 8 reps. 

When they see these instructions, they know they have to experiment with weights to see which amount of external resistance will get them to the target RPE level at that small amount of reps.  

What’s fun is that for a given person and a given exercise, the number of pounds that gets you to the specific RPE and rep range may change day-to-day, and that’s normal!

When we’re coming back from illness, haven’t slept well, or are going through a stressful period, the weights may feel heavier than they did last week. 

For my folks who have an active injury, we use the RPE scale to say “do things that are light and don’t hurt or are tolerable and safe,” like an RPE of 5 or 6, used in conjunction with the 0-10 pain scale. We still want to get near-fatigue for each set when we’re exercising with injury. 

For my clients who don’t have an injury but have never been consistently active with resistance training or running, I also start with a lower RPE and higher rep range while we build up - with full intention to get them to the high RPE and low rep range soon! Throughout the process, though the rep scheme changes, these clients are always getting to near-fatigue with their exercises. 

The biggest takeaways I want you to get from this are: 

1. Strength training needs to be fatiguing, and it needs to be progressive - it should progressively get more challenging as we go along. 

2. Everyone is different, and you need to find the level of resistance that works for you to get you to your specific goals. 

3. You’re probably much stronger than you think. Next time you go to the gym and are tempted to do 10 reps of something, see if you can do more. You will most likely surprise yourself and realize you can do a ton more. (And that means you need to go up in weight!!)

*There are caveats to this with periodized training, when we program different intensities to different weeks of training. There are also caveats when we’re just going with the flow of life in general! Sometimes we’ll have down weeks or days that we can’t lift as much as we did the last day. I personally love a down week after 3 weeks of heavy stuff!

When you’re getting into lifting or running, I highly recommend having a trusted professional with you to guide you towards which targets you should be aiming for. I am always here to help if you have questions!

References: 

1. Shoenfeld BJ et al. Loading Recommendations for Muscle Strength, Hypertrophy, and Local Endurance: A Re-Examination of the Repetition Continuum. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7927075/