03/16/2023
You don’t need to follow percentages to avoid injury and make gains.
By using your perception of the difficulty of your training, you can determine if your training is effective enough to make desired changes, but not overloading you.
Enter RPE - Rate of Perceived Exertion. This is a number 0-10 that YOU get to determine based on how your body is feeling to you on any given day.
0 = nothing, 10 = max effort
By tracking these ratings throughout your training weeks and over the course of a month, you can find how hard your training is week to week compared with the overall average of the month.
If you see weeks with an increased workload compared to your month overall, this could indicate overtraining. Nothing to worry about, just something to keep in mind.
You can assess how your stress levels were that week, if you drank much water, if you ate protein to support your body, or if you got carried away adding weight to the bar.
While this won’t necessarily prevent injuries or aches from happening (that’s ok), it’s a great way to gauge your efforts week to week and month to month to know that you’re on the road to gains by training with optimal intensity.
