How to Gauge Your Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE), According to 3 Fitness Pros

You’re on a run, jogging at a comfortable pace and wondering if you should keep cruising or amp up to a faster speed. As it turns out, this internal effort gauge has a name: rate of perceived exertion. But what does it involve, exactly?

Well, rate of perceived exertion, or RPE, is a strategy that can be used during workouts to monitor and fine-tune your intensity. “It’s a great tool to help athletes stay connected to how their bodies are responding to training load or intensities,” says Peloton instructor Ben Alldis, who adds that he often uses RPE in his own workouts. If you want to use RPE effectively to level up your training too, here’s what you need to know

What Is Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE)?

In fitness, the rate of perceived exertion is a subjective, internal measurement of your effort level. It’s your own perception, rather than an objective marker like your heart rate, pace, or power output. It was developed in the 1960s by a Swedish researcher named Gunnar Borg who investigated the sensations evoked by exercise. 

“What they originally designed it for, was to be able to correlate [subjects’] heart rate with their subjective score without actually seeing the heart rate,” says Daniel Hague, a sports physical therapy resident at MedStar Health in the Washington, DC area. He points out that wearable heart rate monitors weren’t exactly widely available outside of research labs at that time, so it was helpful to have another way to judge how hard a workout was.

The Different RPE Scales

There are a couple of different ways to measure RPE. 

One measurement of RPE is the Borg scale, which (as you might have guessed!) is named after the researcher who invented it. It rates exertion on a scale of six to 20. That seemingly random set of numbers makes more sense when you remember it was designed to correlate with heart rate, says Jacob Goodin, PhD, an assistant professor of kinesiology at Point Loma Nazarene University in California. “You just throw a zero onto the end: Let’s say you rate something at a 20—well, you’re probably somewhere around your peak heart rate, which for most people on average is going to be around 200 beats per minute.” (Of course, this is a broad estimation—the exact numbers will look a little different from person to person.) 

For the average person, however, being told to rate your effort on a scale of six to 20 when you’re already busy panting and sweating can feel like suddenly trying to do calculus. That’s why, today, many people use the “modified scale” that rates effort from zero to 10, with five being moderate effort and 10 being your all-out-max. “That’s not correlated with heart rate,” Hague says. “It’s just a subjective measure of what an individual perceives their level of effort is.” 

For instance, here’s what the modified RPE scale might look like if you use a running-based workout as an example: 

Ben points out that this scale is much easier to use in general fitness settings since we’re more used to thinking of ratings from zero to 10 rather than six to 20. “It is more intuitive for athletes of all abilities,” he says.  

These days, the Borg scale is mainly reserved for special scenarios, like when scientists are monitoring athletes in clinical settings. “Really, research is where we use six-to-20,” Goodin says. “For almost everything else, I would recommend the zero-to-10 scale.”

Benefits of Using RPE

Working out based on your rate of perceived exertion can have a number of benefits. 

It Can Help You Manage Energy Levels

Ben points out that RPE can work across modalities—from strength training to cardio workouts like cycling and rowing—to help you regulate how much energy you’re putting into a given exercise. This can help prevent you from injuring yourself or simply burning out during a workout by going too hard too fast. Hague adds that RPE can especially come in handy when you’re dealing with cumulative fatigue if multiple workouts—and regular ol’ life—are making you more tired than usual. 

It Acts as a Personal Progress Indicator

RPE can also be a way to track your progress over time. For instance, if cycling your typical 20-mile route in an hour felt like a level-seven effort last month but now feels more like a five or six, that’s a sign of improving fitness.   

It Sharpens Your Mental Training 

There are also mental benefits of considering your rate of perceived exertion, Goodin notes. In particular, regularly thinking about our RPE can change our relationship to fatigue and discomfort as athletes. 

“That’s a really unique thing about RPE—the reflective process of getting used to and comfortable with the discomfort of training,” he says. “You start to get to the point in your race where these negative signals from your brain say, ‘Hey, you need to stop,’ and you interpret that as, ‘Oh, I’m doing exactly what I need to be doing because this is a 10 out of 10.’” Over time, you learn not to back off when you feel that satisfying muscle burn, but rather (when appropriate), to lean into it as a sign that you’re doing precisely what you’re supposed to. 

Of course, this distinction can take some getting used to. Always stop if you experience pain, injury, intense fatigue, extremely negative thoughts, or other red flags.

But There Are Some Drawbacks of RPE, Too

Clearly, there are plenty of benefits of gauging your rate of perceived exertion. However, Goodin warns that if you only ever work out based off of RPE, you could also cut yourself short. “If you only go based on feel, it’s much harder to hit objective goals that you set for yourself,” he says. 

For example, say you want to run a seven-minute mile: You’re going to need to hit an 8.6-miles-per-hour pace, no matter how hard or easy that feels to you. This is why many coaches have athletes use a range of measurements, including things like heart rate training zones and pace, so you can also see some objective markers of your performance along with RPE. 

And of course, it’s difficult to be perfectly accurate with such a subjective measurement. Goodin says that even elite athletes he’s worked with sometimes get overly optimistic and underestimate their RPE. “One of the hardest things is just being consistent,” Hague adds.

How to Calculate RPE

Putting an exact number on your effort level can feel a little tricky, particularly if you’ve never done it before. 

For RPE newbies, Ben says there are a few things that can help you figure out just how hard you’re pushing at any given moment during a workout. To gauge your RPE, he recommends paying attention to a combination of physical and mental cues while you’re exercising, such as your heart rate, breathing, muscle fatigue or burn, sweating, form, posture, and mental effort.

To get a feel for RPE, Goodin also suggests starting by doing a maximum effort test. “If it’s in the weight room, go do a one-rep max or a five-rep max where you actually go until you fail a set,” he says (but adds that, of course, you want to do this with a spotter to be safe). This will help you find what a 10 out of 10 feels like, then you can work backwards from there. For cardio workouts like running, you can do a race or time trial. “Whatever you felt near the end of that race or time trial, that was your 10 out of 10,” he says. “Do that, and then you can scale everything back accordingly from there.”

Once you’ve done that max effort test, regularly check in with yourself about your effort level during workouts. “Think, ‘What is this? Is this an eight? Is this an eight-point-five?’” Goodin says. “What it forces you to do is to reflect on those internal processes, your perception of fatigue.”

However, know that calibrating your energy this way requires patience. Hague warns that it can take awhile to get a feel for your personal efforts that relate to different numbers on the scale. “In large part at the beginning, it’s just practicing it, creating set references for yourself,” he says. 

When to Use Rate of Perceived Exertion

All kinds of workouts can benefit from paying attention to your rate of perceived exertion. 

Take cardio, for instance: If you want to do an interval workout, Ben says RPE “helps you gauge intensity during intervals where heart rate may lag behind actual effort,” while for steady-state cardio workouts, it “helps with controlling pacing without the need to monitor your heart rate.” 

Hop over to the weight room, and RPE also can help you to select the weights you want to lift during strength training or adjust the intensity mid-workout in functional training. Then, when it’s time for a recovery workout, RPE can help ensure you actually keep things light and easy, Ben says. 

There are also a number of scenarios in which Ben finds RPE-based workouts especially useful:

And if you’re a fan of using RPE, you may also enjoy Peloton’s Power Zone classes, which measure in watts how hard you’re working during a ride and aim to build endurance, strength, and overall performance.

The Takeaway

Although it has its limits, your rate of perceived exertion can be a helpful guideline to figure out how much effort to put into your workout, giving the right intensity based on what your body is capable of on that particular day—without getting overly caught up in the numbers displayed on your smartwatch. 

And, using it alongside more objective measurements like heart rate and power output will help you monitor how your fitness improves over time. “Paying close attention to RPE can help you train smarter, avoid setbacks, and gradually build up strength and endurance without putting too much strain on your body,” Ben says. 

Just make sure you’re being honest with yourself when you give your intensity a rating—over- or underestimating your effort level undercuts the whole point of RPE. “Sometimes athletes play these little games with themselves where they don’t want to think that they’re at maximal,” Goodin says. “But it’s best to call a spade a spade, and be realistic with it.”