Let's talk about the range of perceived exertion orRPE as an element for quantifier and that will help us coaches understand a little better what effort our athlete has perceived..

From the outset, it is good to know the limits that each individual has regarding the workload., At the same time, we know that these limits will increasingly grow as a result of the improvement in our state of fitness.. An example would be that for a cyclist maintaining an increase of 25' at 320w in the month of November when his preseason begins will not be the same as maintaining these 25' at 345w in the month of July in the middle of his sports calendar..

That is why it appearsRPE o Rating of Perceived Exertionwhich will be a system to assess the effort or intensity we exert in a workout, regardless of the sporting discipline we practice.

This perception of effort must be quantified based on some tables, with values ​​of 1 al 10 in most cases (British cycling in the image for example) or Borg scale (1982) that would go from 6 to 20 to quantify the highest numbers at the most intense efforts, At the same time, lower values ​​provide softer and lighter workouts..

In the case of the British Cycling table where we follow so that our athletes quantify their training, we can observe some values ​​along with the sensations that the athlete should have in training. Even so, This response will be very individual for each athlete and will be conditioned by the athlete's experience and years of training along with their self-knowledge to quantify these training and their perception.  Even so, The response that the athlete must give must always be the most sincere possible.

The RPE as we have said before, can be used in all sports and for everyone (athlete and coach) It is a very easy and objective way to easily interpret each training session that the athlete has done.. It could be a way ofquantify internal load of each session along with other indicators that we have previously talked about in other posts (heart rate for example).

Having correct periodization is key to achieving the best possible performance in the most important sporting events of a season, but we must also see how the athlete adapts and how this scale of perception of effort evolves after each training or work week..

We can say in conclusion then thatthe use of RPE  It is a versatile method to measure exercise intensity which will allow us to individualize each training session of our athletes as much as possible.. This effort perception scale will also allow us to measure the intensity based on the physical state of the athlete at that moment, as we have previously mentioned..