RPE, RIR, Percentages…. Huh?
A week late but wanted to give a special shoutout to Josh and Ashley Peter for hosting Burns Night. A night filled with poems, haggis, and good company. If you are unfamiliar with Burns Night, it’s a Scottish celebration to honor the poet Robert Burns and similar to that of Thanksgiving here in the United States. We had an amazing time celebrating with everyone, down to the very last bit of sticky toffee pudding.
If you didn’t know what Burns Night was, neither did we. Anything that involves food and time together though, I’m pretty much in. Well how about RPE and RIR? Maybe some of you are familiar with these abbreviations, along with their relationship to percentages when discussing programming within lifting and physical therapy. Today we’re diving into the differences between the two and why I prefer RPE versus RIR and percentages.
RPE or Rating of Perceived Exertion refers to a scale of 1-10 how difficult an exercise or set feels to someone.
RIR or Reps in Reserve is used to identify intensity by describing how many more repetitions you could perform before technical failure in an exercise or set.
Percentages describe what percentage of your max in the lift.
Here’s why I prefer RPE over RIR or percentages for my patients in my programming and rehab.
1) Autoregulation
Sleep, stress, work.... it all affects how we perform when lifting. By creating a decision making model based off of RPE, we can account for all of it, making the best choice for OURSELVES that day.
2) Adaptable
Can be used in the context of pain, intensity, apprehension, you name it. We can use it just as much in our heavy compound lifts as we could in sled pushes without ever knowing someone's max.
3) Accountability
RPE allows us to be intentional and accountable to a given objective. Did we achieve the desired training effect? Strength development, hypertrophy, or maybe speed or confidence.
While RPE isn’t the end all be all when it comes to programming. I certainly use RIR and Percentages when called for. But the bread and butter remains RPE and its application throughout our decision making at Tundra.
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