I learned something today............

[PowerBuilder]

I learned something this morning when doing a module of my STAC course. It's such a novel concept...that i feel like it was staring me in the face. It's the type of thing that once you learn it & believe in the concept...that if i were to ignore it, i'd feel like i would be doing myself a dis-service. A bit of background first though...

The likart scale is an easy tool to use to measure the amount of effort applied in an activity. For example if while on the treadmill & you would rate it a 3, it would pretty easy. If you rated it a 8, you'd be finding it pretty hard, though you'd be able to manage. It sometimes has a range of 1-5 or 1-10. I personally like 1-10 more.

Anyway...what I learned was that you can use the likart scale to rate an entire training session to give either yourself or your coach feedback on the actual session. For example....

Alan has just completed his thursday afternoon weightlifting session. Over the course of 60 minutes he worked on his snatch & back squat. He told his coach that in terms of intensity he'd rate it at a 7. The coach would take the number (7) and multiply it by the time (60), to get a score of 420. With that feedback, the coach then may want to tweek the workout, so next thursday...Alan may rate the workout as a 8.5, giving it a rating of 510.

You could also spread this method across an entire team. If Alan scores the first workout at 7, Max rates it at 8 & Sally rates it at a 4 (ok....sally's hardcore)...the team would have a score of 1,230.

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[moons]

So, uh

What actual use do you see for this?

The team thing is largely useless, different individuals will have different subjective assessments of a given stress.

So what use is the perceived effort for an individual?

I know when dealing with people new to physical activity, they subjectively rate the effort as much higher than it is relative to their capacity. For example someone new to exercise will have an RPE near maximal at an actual heart rate of around ~60-70% of their predicted max (this is for aerobic training where HR is a factor, obviously).

As a means of measuring progression for a non novice? I would prefer to use performance indicators (weight, reps, time, etc).

Curious as to the use you see for this.

 

[PTC]

Is this a piss take Pete?

You are seriously going to ask the lifter how he felt about the workout?

 

[joshcore]

1) it should be 10 every time.
2) results would be inaccurate for the most-part.

 

[Kyle Aaron]

As moons said, it's the rate of perceived exertion, and different people will perceive exertion in different ways. Just look at all the girls who can easily lift a weight yet say "no, that's too hard." Then look at the guys who'll do 20 rep breathing squats, lie down exhausted but say, "okay, what next?"

Today there was a young guy in the gym who asked for a spot on just about every lift. I explained that a spotter is for safety, you only need one if you can't safely dump the weight. (I didn't go into spotters for forced reps, he was benching 50kg, pointless.) So no, he didn't need a spotter for lat pulldowns or skullcrushers. He had low perceived exertion, but was still scared of it. Confidence matters a lot.

It's the kind of thing that looks really neat on paper. We had all that in our PT courses. In practice it's useless. A pity, but there you go.

 

[haz]

i think it could be a very useful indicator when used for a group doing the same workout. it is an indicator and not an absolute so it should be taken with a grain of salt, but if 90% of your team are saying 9-10 then you know the workout is hard.
also it could be useful for if you planned a easier session but everyone said it was 9-10 you know they may be under recovered.
also it could give indicators into weaknesses. for example jeff said that the conditioning workout was 10/10 but mark said it was 6 you can give mark a tougher workout. or program in more work for jeff.

RPE is subjective tho and you need to know your body, you also need to be motivated otherwise you wont work hard enough. all of us do this in our workouts, mainly on assistance. read any of the logs and you will see "cbf doing shrugs today" , "felt shagged after the squats so just went home" or "felt great today so i did some heavy partials or another set of 20 reppers.

kyle you would use rpe when determining what weight to use. you first have to teach them what hard is which i think is the problem for most women (on resistance training) and men when doing squat and deads.

RPE gives a indicator to how the athlete is feeling. weight, sets and reps may not give the whole picture, and may leave you wondering why all their times are down or playing bad when their completing your workouts.

 

[Kyle Aaron]

kyle you would use rpe when determining what weight to use. you first have to teach them what hard is which i think is the problem for most women (on resistance training) and men when doing squat and deads.

You don't need to ask them what their RPE is, you can just look at them performing the lift.

You don't find that if someone's max lift is 50kg, then 40, 45, 49kg are all perfect and quick, 50kg is perfect and quick, and then 51kg simply doesn't move at all. As they get close to their max they slow down and form starts breaking down.

Thus, if the reps are quick and the form good, then they are not exerting themselves much. If the reps slow and/or form breaks down, then they are exerting themselves strongly.

And you can look at their faces and responses, too.

Remember also that people have up days and down days. What's easy for someone today will be hard for them tomorrow. So the coach/trainer has to adjust according to the person's performance on the day.

Again, it'd be nice if we could put neat numbers to things, plan everything out. But people are just too complicated for that, we have to go by feel, adjust as we go. Or the plans we make have to err on the side of conservative, allowing for those down days.

 

[Goosey]

One mans roof is another mans ceiling, asking a neophyte "out of ten how did that feel can be useful and quite accurate.

First and foremost a beginner needs to learn the skill of movement, after that - you gradually increase the work load. It's not rocket surgery.
The more people you train and the more YOU train- you will get a feel for peoples tolerance to pain and work rate.
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