HOW TO DESIGN AN RPE BASED PROGRAM WITHOUT ALL OF THE CONFUSION

HOW TO DESIGN AN RPE BASED PROGRAM WITHOUT ALL OF THE CONFUSION

By Shane Robert

Modern weight training programs have adopted a style of programming that leaves many people feeling lost. This programming style is called R.P.E and leaves the trainee to autoregulate, potentially, many factors of their training, from the load used to the amount of reps or even sets. The seeming lack of structure can seem like lazy programming, ineffective, or confusing. Once you work through the various ‘@’ symbols and jargon of load drop, rep cutoffs, etc., it is actually quite simple and effective.

ORIGIN OF RPE

The concept of R.P.E. (Rate of Perceived Exertion) was first introduced in the 1960s by psychologist Gunnar Borg as a quantitative, in other words subjective, measure of perceived exertion during physical activity. The original scale rated exertion, confusingly, from 6 to 20 before Borg created a new scale that was 1-10. This scale gained wide use in medical settings as a way to gauge a patient's exertion during a test for the severity of diseases. Endurance sport coaches were the first to adopt the scale as a way to assess the intensity of training and competition for each individual athlete.

It wasn’t until the early 2000s that powerlifter Mike Tuchscherer, a member of the US Air Force who likely learned of the scale from his time in the service, started applying the scale to powerlifting as a way to autoregulate his training, rather than simply sticking to preset percentages and sets/reps. He eventually turned his experiments with RPE into the highly successful training company Reactive Training Systems (RTS). Since that time, RPE has taken over the training world, which speaks to its efficacy.

UNDERSTANDING THE RPE SCALE

The second version of the Borg scale, 1-10, not the 6-20 nonsense, looked like this:

By itself, this scale is pretty useful, and someone could easily build a program around it. There has been a lot of work done on adjusting the scale to lifting and what the numbers represent. The scale that is the easiest to understand is the one Tuchscherer and RTS uses:

PROGRAMMING WITH RPE

As with all training concepts, there are a million and one ways to create a program using RPE. Reactive Training Systems wrote the quintessential manual on this style, which should not be surprising given that they popularized RPE for lifting, and should be deferred to for the most in-depth exploration. Our goal in this article is to keep it simple and give an example of one way to program using RPE that is applicable across as many populations as possible.

The program that will be laid out below uses RPE in combination with the simple concepts of the tried and true approach of Western Periodization, starting with lighter weights and higher volumes, working toward heavier weights and lower volumes. Where it differs is a lack of prescribed weights, sets, or the assumption that all progress will be linear week to week or workout to workout, as well as keeping an emphasis on heavy weights, with at least one heavy set each week.

The following is an example of what a 16+ week training program might look like. This plan is intended to be used for the main movements of the training program; for simplicity, we will stick with squat, bench and deadlift. However, it can just as easily be whatever lift you may want to emphasize. 

In this example, we start with 5 reps in the first block, 3 in the second, and 1 in the third. This format works with any rep range and can just as easily work with 8 or 12 reps as it does with 5 (the advantage of 5 reps is that the heavier weights carry over to both muscle hypertrophy and strength better than higher reps). The core concept to understand is, once your progress stalls with a given top set goal, drop the reps and repeat the volume sequence. This can even be extrapolated into a format that follows a very traditional Western Periodization of a block of 10s, a block of 8s, 5s, 3s and finally 1s. Doing something like this can potentially provide a very long training cycle, easily exceeding half a year, depending on how many reps you cycle through.

One note: If you are the type of lifter that needs to have more frequent practice with heavy singles, then work up to 1 @7 after the main top set of the 5 and 3 blocks.

SUPPLEMENTAL & ACCESSORY MOVEMENTS

Since there is so much volume being done on the main lifts, there isn’t a huge need to do a significant amount of work on supplemental and assistance movements. However, they should still be included for hypertrophy and structural balance.

For supplemental work, pick 1-2 movements that have a high degree of carryover to your main lift, something like a high bar or safety bar squat if you are a low bar squatter, or close/wide grip variations for bench, etc. For accessory movements, pick things that are good for hypertrophy, such as machines and dumbbells. We need even less volume for accessories so the emphasis is on effort. 

RPE programming is very useful to allow a lifter to autoregulate their training. On a day that they feel down, they are still getting a good stimulus without overdoing it, and on a day when they feel unstoppable, they will be able to push to higher weights to ensure that they don’t underdo it. Training is always right where it should be. 

By no means is RPE the only way to train, nor is it without its flaws. However, what it most definitely doesn’t need to be is confusing or complicated.