Karl Popper pops RPE

[JJ23]

Should an experienced coach, and / or have you in your extensive coaching experience, adjusted working set weights either up or down, based on your perception of an athletes performance...

A coach is using objective observations from an outside perspective whereas RPE is entirely subjective and from an internal perspective. Not sure how someone so set on debating the topic can miss this obvious and important distinction.

[Matt James]

Correct me if I'm wrong, coach, but don't the folks who recommend RPE based training always couch it as a way to deal with "performance variability." In my limited experience, performance variability is almost always a recovery issue. At least in a well designed program. I guess in a poorly designed program it probably is a recovery issue too, just one that can't be overcome by eating/sleeping/resting properly.

Maybe RPE programming makes it easier to remotely coach someone who refuses to eat enough to make consistent progress from week to week?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Correct me if I'm wrong, coach, but don't the folks who recommend RPE based training always couch it as a way to deal with "performance variability." In my limited experience, performance variability is almost always a recovery issue. At least in a well designed program. I guess in a poorly designed program it probably is a recovery issue too, just one that can't be overcome by eating/sleeping/resting properly.

Maybe RPE programming makes it easier to remotely coach someone who refuses to eat enough to make consistent progress from week to week?

"Performance variability" is a factor that everybody deals with. RPE deals with it one way, and training deals with it a different way. If you deal with what you perceive to be a "bad day" by backing your numbers off instead of actually trying the numbers generated by your training history that you today perceive to be difficult beyond your ability, you are not training. You're just fucking around in the gym. The process so far has generated data that indicate your ability to do the 5 more pounds, yet you'd rather not risk missing a rep, so you adjust downward to lighter weight, therefore missing the opportunity to learn something and generate actual data. All because a remote coach doesn't want to do the job you're paying him to do.

[Matt James]

I hope you don't think I'm advocating for it. I've been fortunate to have a coach who's willing to put in the work. Of course, he is an SSC.

[Bigredbull]

"Performance variability" is a factor that everybody deals with. RPE deals with it one way, and training deals with it a different way. If you deal with what you perceive to be a "bad day" by backing your numbers off instead of actually trying the numbers generated by your training history that you today perceive to be difficult beyond your ability, you are not training. You're just fucking around in the gym. The process so far has generated data that indicate your ability to do the 5 more pounds, yet you'd rather not risk missing a rep, so you adjust downward to lighter weight, therefore missing the opportunity to learn something and generate actual data. All because a remote coach doesn't want to do the job you're paying him to do.

Absolutely spot on. Sums up the whole RPE deal.

[dalan]

I've heard Ripp mention this before, I'm willing to believe it but I don't have a good reason to believe it. I don't want to take for granted that what RPE was actually designed for. Did Rip talk to the developers of RPE and has historical knowledge that this is true?

I asked who originally developed RPE but I guess it didn't make the cut to be posted. I did look it up though and it was developed by a Swedish researcher named Gunnar Borg in the 1960's. It was to measure a person's level of physical exertion and the original scale wasn't 1-10 but 6-20. He later added the 1-10 scale called the Borg CR10 scale. I'm not sure what the original intent of it's use was but it seems that it was not for strength training. Anyway, if we want to ask him directly what his purpose was, he died in 2020 so we can't. But that's who developed it decades ago.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I asked who originally developed RPE but I guess it didn't make the cut to be posted. I did look it up though and it was developed by a Swedish researcher named Gunnar Borg in the 1960's. It was to measure a person's level of physical exertion and the original scale wasn't 1-10 but 6-20. He later added the 1-10 scale called the Borg CR10 scale. I'm not sure what the original intent of it's use was but it seems that it was not for strength training. Anyway, if we want to ask him directly what his purpose was, he died in 2020 so we can't. But that's who developed it decades ago.

It was developed for aerobic/endurance activity, like everything else in Exercise Physiology.