Weights and Plates Podcast - #49 - RPE and Autoregulation

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

RPE is a commonly used tool for programming, and has continued to grow in popularity with the rise of barbell training, barbell sports such as powerlifting, and the online coaching industry. It's a novel tool which uses the lifters' perception of their effort (RPE stands for rate of perceived exertion) on a given set, on any given day, to influence programming decisions. It's an innovative way to approach programming, and certainly convenient for online coaches that don't have the benefit of watching lifters perform in real time, but is it actually useful? Coach Robert and Coach Trent debate the merits of RPE, and discuss the related concept of autoregulation, in today's episode.   Usually RPE is assigned to a set and rep scheme, such as "perform a single at RPE 8," and the lifter will choose the load depending on their perceived exertion level. If the lifter is feeling fresh and full of energy, they will go heavier; on the other hand if they go into the workout fatigued and low energy, they will go lighter. In both cases, the perceived exertion is the same. This is a form of autoregulation, an important aspect of programming for advanced trainees in which the programming must adapt to the fatigue level of the trainee from workout to workout. Performance becomes more unpredictable the more advanced a trainee becomes, and autoregulation is important to avoid injuries and overtraining during periods of high fatigue, as well as take advantage of good days when energy is high and the loads are moving fast.   For a novice trainee, however, RPE and autoregulation can be a minefield. Novices by definition lack the experience to understand what their level of exertion is on any given set, relative to what their total capacity for exertion. The process of linear progression, in fact, retrains the mind about what is possible as the lifter continually tackles heavier and heavier weights, often well past the point they thought they could go. Even for intermediate trainees, using RPE prescriptively to determine working loads can result in undertraining, or trainees spinning their wheels, if their weight selection does not involve regular progressive overload.   So... is RPE bullshit? Not quite. It can be a useful tool for the right lifter, but that lifter is probably fairly advanced and has accumulated a lot of time under heavy weights. For most people training in the gym, who are novices or perhaps early intermediates, it's not a great way to approach programming. At least Coach Robert and Coach Trent don't recommend it.   RPE Chart -- Reactive Training Systems https://articles.reactivetrainingsystems.com/2017/12/05/how-to-use-rpe-in-your-training-correctly/   Mike Tuscherer Interview with Mark Rippetoe https://youtu.be/PTCFaEPBWJQ     Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.jonesbarbellclub.com

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I'm your host, Robert Santana, along with my co-host, Trent Jones. Yo, what's going on, man? Not much, man. This is early for me, but, you know, felt like changing it up today. They say it's good for the brain, right? What'd you wake up like, uh, an hour ago? Uh, what is it? 12 here? Cause you look, you look well coiffed today. See, I can see them on, on video. Cause we, uh, we do these, we, we talk over zoom, but, uh, yeah. So I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt.

I'm going to say you've been up for an hour. Well, no up at about i want to say 8 8 a.m it's 12 p.m here so four hours all right and i said you know i thought we were doing it at one your time turns or my time thought we're doing it one my time but it turns out i agreed to one at your time and uh you know i didn't feel like getting started just yet you know I kind of drag my feet in the morning sometimes. So I start coaching anywhere between 11 and one, depending on the day. But, uh, yeah, man, I'm like a midday kind of started when I worked in clinical is the same thing. I'd start my dialysis work at like between 10 and noon. Yeah. Um, we had to, so this is good. So before you do all your coaching work today, we're going to get you nice and riled up here on the podcast. Yep. That's a, we're gonna get you, get you all heated coaching work today, we're going to get you nice and riled up here on the podcast. Yep.

That's going to get you all heated up. Yeah, we're going to talk about, you know, something that definitely gets me heated up, something I, you know, have learned to understand the use for, but I think it's real shitty in certain situations. We're going to talk about RPE. RPE. RPE. Or let's broaden that. We're going to talk about perceived effort and using perceived effort to drive training. Because every day somebody comes up with a new acronym to sell their scale that pretty much tells you the same shit. It's garbage in, garbage out. But you have RPE, rating of perceived exertion. You have RIR, reps in reserve.

And there's probably others that I'm not aware of, but what they all have in common is that they are a measure of your perception of effort. So highly subjective. I like the, I don't know what I'm, I don't know, I need to come up with a name for this, but I like the, sometimes I'll get clients and especially newer clients online and they'll, they'll tell me, uh, they'll write these like comments because I have a little comment box, you know, where they put in there where they have their exercises listed for the day. And there's a little comment box. They can tell me, you know, if, if I prescribe an AMRAP set, how many reps did they get? If anything went wrong, they tell me, right. But then sometimes people comment like easy, medium, medium hard. That was pretty hard, really hard, you know? And

I'm always like, okay, great. I'm, you know, it's supposed to be hard. That's, that means you're doing, you're doing it right. If it's hard, that's, that's kind of what we're, what we're doing here is, uh, you know, we're pushing the limit a little bit every day, but I, you know, they don't realize, I think that that information means very little to me, especially when they are novices, right? When they are pretty new to training. Um, if something is really hard, then I don't really care what their subjective impression of that set was. Now, on the other hand, and we're going to talk about this more here on this episode. On the other hand, if I have one of my clients that's been training with me for three or four years and they tell me like, wow, man, that set

was really fucking hard. And first of all, that's not a normal piece of information that they give me. So if they say that, that meant it was well beyond their expectation. And I listened to that because, you know, if they tell me it's hard, I know it was really hard. And it gives me an indication of, um, you know, maybe I need to make some shifts in the programming but i just always think that's funny there's like the the easy medium hard kind of hard but i could do it and i'm like well yeah that's the point you know i wouldn't put it on the paper if i didn't think you could do it i mean ultimately we all got to learn to go for the fucking rep you know yeah right and that's been lost in the last eight years, I'd say, maybe 10. And, you know, let's just give a endurance world when um measuring or estimating i should say vo2 max from a graded exercise test they would you know put a mask on the runner or

the cyclist depending on which test you were running you can do it on a bike you can do it on a treadmill typically there's other modes too but those the two most common in academic research. And that mask measures the amount of air you're expiring, you know, the air that's coming out of your mouth. And based on the composition of the gases in that air, and the composition of the gases in room air, which are known quantities, so they have these constants for those, you can estimate how much oxygen is coming in.

But for those of you who don't know, that test does not measure the amount of oxygen that is coming in. It is estimating it from the carbon dioxide oxygen that is coming out, right? And what we have in the room air. Nothing going in is being measured directly. So just FYI. If you want to measure that directly, you've got to run catheters up into the venous and arterial system. Nobody's trying to run catheters up to your heart while you're running.

I mean, it's been done, believe it or not. Oh, God. That sounds awful. I'm not it's been done, believe it or not, but... Oh, God. That sounds awful. I'm not signing up for that. Yeah. Up the femoral vein into the aorta and then up into the venous system as well. I can't remember where...

You're going to make me pass out on the show. I'm just going to start... If I go white and I hit the floor... Can you imagine running with holes poked in you? I mean, fuck, man. And then going to failure. You think they're actually going Can you imagine running with holes poked in you? I mean, fuck, man. And then going to failure. You think they're actually going to failure when they got holes poked in them? I have a hard time, you know, even getting blood drawn.

Oh, shit. Good God. No, they're threading this from your inner thigh up into your heart. God. You know, on both sides. I forgot which vein they go up. You know, I don't want to misquote. Yeah, we could cut this one off for me.

Anyways, anyways, when they're measuring all this, they're also asking the participant, the research participant, how hard it feels. And they have a scale of six to – I think it was originally six to 20, actually. Okay. it feels and they have a scale of six to i think it was originally six to twenty actually okay and uh it's on a big cardboard cutout and they usually have a graphical image of you know some cartoon and you know grimacing or whatever as it gets harder and then uh it'll say easy extremely easy and then my you know kind of hard hard you know there's different words they use for it and they put it like into those ranges you know so it's not like every single number has one of these one of these characterizations you know it's like every five numbers you'll see like hard extremely hard about to fail you know and uh right i think they just record this to get an idea of how hard the effort was when they failed, you know, to the person.

I think it's, you know, still bullshit, but it's an aerobic activity. It's pretty clear that somebody fails when they fall off a treadmill. So, right. You know, nobody, I think that we're going to try our hardest to not do that, even if, you know, if we don't have, what is it, mental toughness, fear will keep you from trying to fall off the treadmill. So if somebody falls off the treadmill, they probably went to failure, you know, whereas somebody will bail on a squat, you know, that's not a big deal. You sit on the pins and you get out of there, but you fall off the treadmill, you think you're going to jack your jaw. And as much as you want to trust the people behind you to catch you, you don't trust that as much as safety bars on a squat, you know? Right. So I think if you fall off the treadmill, you fail. So I think RPE is probably, on a graded exercise test,

it's probably pretty accurate if you're making the person go to true failure. But in the weight room, especially, you know, when you're a novice lifter, first time I thought a weight felt hard when I ran the linear progression, you know, when you're a novice lifter, first time I thought of weight felt hard when I ran the linear progression. I mean, I can't think years before that, but I remember I got to 275 for three sets of five and I was like, fuck, that was hard. And there was a quarter on it. So there's that psychological thing too. There's two plates in a quarter. But then, you know, you have to add, and, you know, I acknowledge that I'm not wired like many people, especially people that hire me. I'm not wired like the type of person who hires a coach.

I've hired a coach before. It's not an offensive statement I'm trying to make. It's just that, you know, I do this for a living. It's another way of me saying I do this for a living. I'm wired a certain way when it comes to this, you know. I want to go for it. Whereas, you know, thinking of the average guy that I work with, I don't want to throw out my back. I got to go to work, you know, I want to go for it. Whereas, you know, thinking of the average guy that I work with, I don't want to throw out my back. I got to go to work, you know? Yeah, right.

You know, as do I, by the way, but again, I kind of cut me, I go at this a little bit more competitively than the average person. Sure. Yeah. So, you know, I'm like, well, I got to add. And then 280, I'm like, this has got to be it. You know, I got 280, three sets of five, this has got to be it. Then 290, same thing. And then, you know, like, this has got to be it. You know, I got 280, three sets of five. I'm like, this has got to be it. Then 290, same thing. And then, you know, I started getting into the 300s. And, you know, I got it all the way up to 330. But it was at a point, or 335, the last run, it was at a point where I wanted to get it,

but then I didn't want to get it. You know, part of me wanted to miss so that it was over, you know? Right, yes. Yeah, yeah, uh, if I was assigning an RP to this, I would have never went past 275, which is kind of funny because when I was younger, I didn't like loading more than 275 on the bar, you know, like I would kind of stay away from that number, you know? So, yeah. So let's talk about before we go deeper into that. Cause I, I, I agree. I come from the same kind of mentality. Let's talk a little bit about RPE as applied to lifting. So that's interesting. I didn't realize that it was an aerobic measurement

first, but it makes sense, you know, that that came from that background. So I guess at some point, powerlifters started applying the same concept to rating perceived effort in the big powerlifts. And I first heard of this concept through Mike Tuescherer. Yep. Same here. Power lifter. He, you know, he, he runs a reactive training systems. Obviously really smart guy, super strong lifter. I think he just went, he just, he just competed again for the first time in a long time. I don't know that. Yeah. I think he, I mean, he pulled some pretty big numbers too, but anyway. so this is where I first heard of it myself. I don't know if he was the first one to bring it over to powerlifting. Probably not. It probably has been done formally or informally by people earlier than that. seen it on reactive training systems that shows a, it's like a flow chart, right? So RPE, the way that he conceptualize it is a rating from one to 10, but really the first five numbers are,

it's just like so easy that it's not relevant to the weight room, right? Like by the time we're in the weight room, we're at a five or a six. And we're talking about like five or six is like warm-up weights, right? Okay, so the flow chart really starts at five or six, you know, wherever you want to put it in the middle of that range. But what we really care about is more like the 10 and then counting back a few numbers from there. So 10 is absolute maximal effort. It means that, you know, I could put a gun to your head and be like,

or even better, I could put a gun to your head and be like or even better I could put a gun to your kids head and be like I'm gonna shoot him if you don't get this rep and you couldn't do it right there's absolutely no motivation in the world that could get you to do another rep your eyeballs are bugging out of your head your veins are you know you're blowing capillaries and then you can walk it back from there so an rpe9 well, did you have one more rep in the tank? Like for sure, another rep in the tank. Okay. That was really hard, but you had a little bit extra. Um, you know, could you have done two more reps? RPE eight. Right. And you can, you can back down there

three more reps. Okay. Or, or you could also think of it as like, was that a nice snappy, easy rep? Okay. Or, or you could also think of it as like, was that a nice, snappy, easy rep? Okay. That was an RPE seven. Right. And then from there, people have, you know, sort of added nuance to that, that, that grading scale and given half ratings. So you're like, well, I think I could do another rep, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. Okay. Fine. That was a nine and a half. Right. Or like, I think I had, I definitely had one more rep, but I don't know about that second rep. Okay. That was an RP eight and a half. So that's where I first heard about is this sort of flow chart. And the first thing I think about when I hear about this, this rating system where it's like 10 is the maximum and you got to like,

so, so basically like you got to go down from there. And then it's like, you think about how many reps you might be able to do past what you did, and that's how you get your score. It made me think of Dungeons & Dragons. Did you ever play Dungeons & Dragons? Similar stuff, not that though. Okay, so old-school Dungeons & Dragons had this concept. A lot of weird concepts, really.

They had this concept called THACO. It was an acronym, right? To Hit Armor Class Zero. That was the acronym. So in old school Dungeons & Dragons, this is like the second edition, if your character was going to be accurate with his weapon, right,

and you wanted him to hit the enemy when he attacked and not just whiff all the time you wanted to have a low faco right your faco score so it was like basically if you roll a 20-sided die your fac o score your fac zero score is what role do you have to make to hit an enemy with an armor class of zero so if your thaco is 15 you have to roll a 15 or better on the dice to hit an enemy who has an armor class of zero okay what if their armor class is lower than zero like minus five okay well you got to roll a 15 plus five you got to roll a 20 do you see how crazy this gets like it's already super confusing right yeah and you're like a long time ago.

Yeah, right. And then, like, armor class goes from, like, the lower it is, the better. So it goes from 20 is, like, basically you have no armor on to, like, zero is pretty good, but then you can go into the negatives. It makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

Thankfully, they've changed that in the game, but that's what RPE kind of, like, makes me think of is, like, I got to work backwards in my head. i'm already trying to rate something subjectively and then like the number thing just does not work for me well so here's the thing i think that so you've i try to work backwards and you know i think to share really believes in what he's you know saying so i try to like look at it from his point of view and see how he arrived at this conclusion and mike to share you know as an elite power lifter you know i don't know his exact numbers

but what in the eights squatting dead oh he's definitely yeah he's definitely dead lifting in the eights yeah is he squatting that too probably he i think he's a little bit older guy now he's been power lifting for a long time so he's he's probably a master's lifter now he was in his top peak probably in like 08 you know 06 to like 2012 right is that probably a good window that's probably fair to say yeah and probably before that he said he did it in high school and that you know i remember rip asking him uh you know do people come to you because you were playing football and ask you to powerlift, and he's like, no, I was power lifting, and the football coaches wanted me to play football. So that's a good interview on the Starting Strength website. I think it was 2012 they recorded that.

Yeah, it's an old one, but a good one. I try to think about his perspective. So if you are, and he was a 275, I believe. I don't think he was over 300. And he's tall, so he's like a jack 275. And you got to figure, this guy is squatting and deadlifting, triple body weight, possibly for more than a rep. And even if he's not, the absolute raw load is quite heavy. Let's forget that he's 275 for a second, because, you know,

if you've stripped everybody down to skeleton, I don't think that, you know, skeletons weigh that much more from each other, you know. I think a lot of our body weight comes from other tissues and whatnot, but, you know, our bones are probably, the margin of difference is probably not that huge. So, you think about five, six, seven, 800 pounds on the spine, right? You know, for a squat or that much, you know, pulling down on it on a deadlift, right? That's a lot of load and it's systemically stressful. And I'm nowhere near that strong, but I'm probably good in the mid 500s right now for a deadlift.

I'm getting closer and closer to 500 for the squat. And I can tell you right now that when I squat heavy, so like heavy for me, what I did 370 for eight last week, I'm probably not going to hit that again until next week or possibly the week after. The deadlift's probably a better example. My squat, I think I'm at the tail end of bi-weekly PRs. I probably need to go every three or four. And by that, I mean, then you also got to consider, I got to

look back at how many PRs in a row I get doing that, you know? So it's not like I'm on a linear progression here. But deadlift, for instance, right? You know, getting from 430 to 440 has been a pain. My PR is 435 for a set of eight. Finally hit 4.40. Two weeks later, I hit 4.45. So that's two PRs in a row. Two weeks later, I put 4.50 on, I get three reps. Yeah, right. So yeah, you're still carrying fatigue from that last 4.45 pull. Yeah. And let's not forget the 3.75 for eight squat that I did earlier that week, you know? So now the stress is accumulated. Now you magnify that, right? You got a lot more weight on the person, possibly drug use. I don't know if Tushir is on or not. You

know, there's people that I've talked to that believe he's not, you know, and that's none of my business. But irregardless, drug use or not, that's, you know, eight, seven, six, seven, 800 pounds that, you know, these people can do for several reps, right? That's incredibly stressful. So like you just saw, my trajectory becomes less predictable as I'm lifting more raw weight. I don't even want to say as I'm getting stronger. Obviously, I'm getting stronger, but as you're lifting more raw weight, because somebody lifting in the 200s, 300s, you're not going to see this, you know? You're not going to experience it. You start to see this irrespective of body weight, because I see it in big and small guys alike. Once you're squatting four, five, 600 pounds, you know?

Yes. I have a guy who, you know, he pulled 640. He was probably good for 675, you know, but he was doing a bunch of other stuff too. But he pulled 640. He pulled 585 for five. And he was very explosive, you know, and he was about 210. pulled 585 for five and he was very explosive you know and he was about 210 and uh as soon as he would squat over 500 the injuries would accumulate you know like hip would start hurting knees would start hurting a shit would just start happening so he had to spend a lot of time doing 400 or less

you know um in the context of what he was doing he's doing other stuff too but even before when he was just lifting same kind of problem you know he could not handle that kind of tonnage very often so you have to spread it out there's very various ways to approach that so to share believe that well since it's unpredictable let's add this subjective metric in there so we can adjust and allow our bodies to quote unquote auto regulate as they call it so let's say that he squats 700 for five, right? And then the week after 500 feels like bricks, you know, so he might end up doing, you know, I mean, I'm throwing numbers out there. I haven't looked at his training log, but let's, but I've heard 700 pound deadlifters tell me that 500 feel stapled sometimes. So that's where these numbers are coming from. So, you know, now he's

going to maybe do 450 for a set of eight, you know, or something like that, you know, and he'll get enough stress from it because it's still 450, you know, I mean, the raw weight cannot be ignored. So that's kind of, I could see how he arrived at that approach. My training is highly unpredictable because I'm reaching ceiling effects and the raw weight is very heavy. So I need to find a way to approach this logically, you know? Yeah, right. And it also, like you said earlier, it accounts for the this logically, you know? Yeah, right.

And it also, like you said earlier, it accounts for the fact that, you know, if you're a competitive lifter, you know, you're not just doing one lift. I think you could say the same thing for strongman, right? You know, the guys that are lifting incredibly heavy weights. You're never just training for one event. So the mix of other stuff you're doing besides the lift that you're trying to progress is going to affect your fatigue levels, right? And that's going to change, right? Your program is going to cycle through, like, you know, what you're doing on your deadlift is going to change. It's not always going to be exactly the same relative to when you're going after heavy squat attempts. And that will affect your heavy squat attempts. So yes, you have to have some way of regulating

the dosage of stress that you are trying to impart in the program at any given time. I always say that once you're no longer a novice, that's when the herd gets thinned because people get weeded out pretty fast in that second year or so, probably year two or year three at the very latest, because training becomes less predictable. Right.

And you become more sensitive to your lifestyle, you know, just to kind of put it all under one umbrella, right? Your lifestyle, some genetic limitations. I got a young man that I've been training for years who just has shitty connective tissue. So, you know, he's good for a 400 plus deadlift, a 300 plus squat. But the situation I just described, actually, you know, it's funny, this is a good time to talk about this. It kind of applies to him, right? Like I have to accumulate a lot of work under 300 pounds on the squat, under 400 pounds on the deadlift. And I have to spread out those real heavy pulls even though the raw load's not heavy and he's a big muscular guy like he's tall he's i think he's over he's like 190 i think

he's very top heavy so he's 190 i want to say he's taller than me it's like probably 5 11 6 foot maybe but you know he's very top heavy he's muscular like if you saw him you know you'd think he's muscular but uh for whatever reason connective tissue problems you know right yeah yeah so i have to adjust for that you know and i have to spread out the high intensity stuff and uh make sure things are light you know and if i'm having them do you know because i have them do some isolation stuff to kind of move those get some blood flow to those tendons but even that has to be carefully planned right right yeah yeah not everybody gets the same hand, you know, that, that surprises some people. You know, I, I primarily work with guys over 40 and all those same things are true. They just get exacerbated by the fact that they're older, you know? Yeah. So yeah, some guys get a

raw hand with their, with their back, you know, with their spines, with their elbows, with their shoulders, their knees. And yeah, you have to address that. You know, for a novice, it's really about like learning how to eat through those problems a lot of times. Learning how to sleep better, learning how to move better, move with better technique to manage those things. But eventually you nail down all of those factors. And then it's like, well, you know, I'm sorry, man, we're just going to have to like wave your training and you just not going to be able to push things as hard as often. No. And you see it with old, older, um, lifters as well. That happened very quickly in the first

few months. You know, I have, I've had guys go to one squat a week after two, three months, you know, just because that's where the recovery is. But, you know, do we want to give the lifter the responsibility of self-selecting a load? Yeah, right. I want to say no, you know. I want to say no because, especially novices and early intermediates, the experience isn't there to know what's actually hard and what's not, you know. Right, right. And, you know, I get— Let's talk about that really and what's not, you know? Right, right. And, you know, I get- Let's talk about that really quick.

Let's talk about that really quick, though. Okay, so like a novice, so, you know, one of the things we say in starting strength, in the starting strength methodology is we don't like percentage-based programs for a novice because in order to do a percentage-based program, you got to have a baseline that you're calculating your percentages off of, right? And you think back to high school football, what do they have you do at the beginning of the off season? We're maxing out, right? We're all going to hit one RMs, right? But you get a bunch of people, they don't even know how to squat to begin with. How the hell are they going to produce a one rep max whatever they do end up doing is not indicative of what they're

truly capable of right they don't have the skill to do it and then like you said yeah the subjective uh experience is not there like you said like for me it was the same thing 260 i remember was like a really big deal when i first squatted that for three sets of five. I remember when 315 went, I remember the first time I squatted 405 and that was like a whole different experience than it was 385 or whatever I'd done, you know, previously for a single. And it never, it just keeps going up, right? Like the, frankly, it was really different when I squatted 435 compared to 405. really different when I squatted 435 compared to 405. And so, but the thing is like, until you have been pushed to that RPE nine, nine and a half, 10 level, I'm not so sure that the average person can even get there by themselves. I think that's probably something that someone has to push you to do, whether that's a competition

and there's the stress of your peers, or it's just a really competitive environment with a lot of other very serious lifters who are more experienced than you, pushing you along or somebody yelling at you. Yeah, you have to have somebody pushing you to really hit that. I mean, I had a string of misses on my deadlift

and i missed loads that i've hit before and uh i couldn't understand it and i'm you know i'm more advanced and one of my members is like your grip doesn't look secure so i'm like well this shit ass chalk i gotta replace it and you know what i was noticing too was my back my low back was starting to round which is not something that i do and i'm like well this is all lining up with a grip problem but i just wasn't feeling that during the lift you know so i ordered a new chalk used it the next week and then resumed going up and that's how i've gotten these recent prs it's kind of funny but you know yeah you're not going to push yourself that hard you know and that can apply to any level so yeah right and and to wrap up my point there i think that's the thing is like until you have

been pushed to experience that i don't think you're going to get there on your own maybe some people can right there there are clearly some people who have just a hyper competitive you know ronnie coleman probably could do a RPE 10 by himself without any product from anyone. Okay. But, but he's, he's a special human being.

The average person is probably not going to do there. So I think the, like right off the bat, RPE for me requires that having been there, been pushed to that level so that you know what it feels like. And then maybe you can subjectively rate that afterwards. Yeah, 100%. So, I would completely agree with that. And I want to also highlight that when we're talking about RPE use in the weight room, and we're, you know,

oh, basically shitting on it right now. We're talking about it in the context of training, right? In the context of exercise, totally fine. Some people like to exercise with barbells. I've worked with a lot of them. And to remind those of you who may have forgotten or people new to the show, exercise means you're just going in the gym to get a good workout. You're not chasing any numbers. There's no objective to get stronger. And you may use a barbell to exercise. You may squat, press, deadlift, and bench press with no intention of making that heavy. And in that case, you are better off going in there and squatting whatever the fuck you feel like squatting than not squatting at all. So if an RPE gives you some sense of, okay, you know, how hard should it be today?

Fine. Use it, you know. And I've used it for plenty of exercise clients, you know, people exercising with barbells. But if you are training, which I was back in the day when I was prescribed an RPE, it's an easy way to fuck yourself up in terms of just wasted time in the gym. And, you know, some of my colleagues use it and disagree with me. That's fine. You know, we don't agree on everything. You know, if you're listening, that's fine. Keep using it. You know, I don't agree on everything. You know, if you're listening, that's fine. Keep using it. You know, I'm not going to tell you how to run your business.

But this is my opinion on the matter based on someone who was told to use it. And I'm also someone who's highly competitive. And just a bunch of time wasted. I wore out my back squatting. I couldn't deadlift anything. Couldn't get anything moving off the floor. It got my bench up because that was undertrained, you know. So I was just repping out set after set after set on the bench. So, you know, I think the volume that I ended up doing taught me that, okay, I need a little

more stress on the bench press. But, you know, basically what ends up happening with a lot of people with RP, and I saw this with myself, this was like 10 years ago, is that you sandbag the lifts you don't like and you start putting too much weight on the lifts you like, you know? Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, there's something about, you know, even for someone who's fairly advanced, there's something about having a progression on paper, where it's like, you know, even if you're like yourself, and you're adding weight to your squat once every three weeks, okay, but the fact that you have that extra two and a half or five pounds or 10 pounds, whatever your rate of progression is on the paper, that's like its own little taskmaster because it's staring at you in the face. And if you decide to change anything, if you're like, well, I did 370 last time. I don't know about today.

Maybe I'll just do 350. last time. I don't know about today. Maybe I'll just do 350. It's kind of like already mentally, you've, you've started to fail if you back down from 375, right? Cause 375, when it's on the paper, you're like, well, if I don't do that, then I am admitting right off the bat that I missed opportunities. It's just a mentality. It's, you know, it's a, it's a mental thing for sure. opportunities it it's just a mentality it's you know it's a mental thing for sure um yeah which which i think so that can be a very useful tool for a lot of people is just having the uh the the simple like the simple reality of progression staring you at the face you know oh you're accountable to it too and you're a cow you have to be it kind of makes you accountable to that number whether it's there or not you know absolutely i've had guys that have been doing this for a couple years several

years before they gave me the steering wheel on their programming and then they made tremendous progress simply because i was telling them to lift something that they would otherwise walked away from exactly by the way i have i have something that I've started telling people recently. Because I realize some people don't do this. I didn't, it never occurred to me, but I encourage everyone to keep a paper training log. Even if they're, you know, an online client of mine, keep a paper training log. But I realized, I was talking to somebody who I don't coach, but they were talking about like how they annotate their workouts. And they're like, I do the workout and then I write the sets

and reps down. And I was like, whoa, hope, red flag right there. If you do that, you're going to be able to talk yourself out of whatever you had mentally planned on doing. I was like, no, to talk yourself out of whatever you had mentally planned on doing. I was like, no, write down what you're going to do for your workout on the page first before you even start warming up, right? Okay. Last time I did 310. I got to do 315 today. Write it down. 315 for what? I'm going to do three sets of five. Okay. Bam. Write it on the paper because then if you don't do it, or if you, let's say you do two sets and you're like, oh my God, I don't want to do a third set. Okay. Well, if you make that choice, then you have to go back to your log and you have to scratch that out and say like, I only got two sets and you have to write that down. And for me, I've found I've caught myself doing this where the thought of

having to write down that I didn't do what I had written down that I said I was going to do. The thought of that made me go and do that extra set that I really didn't want to do, or it made me do that extra rep that I didn't want to do. It sounds stupid, but I've, I've seen that happen with people. And I think that's a, it's a great way to motivate yourself. Yeah. I'm really bad about my training log. I ended up filling it out after the fact, but I see what I did yeah at some at some point you have the the mental for you i think at this point the mental uh yeah thought of like not adding is probably going to be enough of a motivator but but you know if you hadn't developed that habit yeah you know showing up yeah showing up is the most important thing and i say that all the time but um so what do i do instead when I'm working with someone?

Okay. Yeah. Tell me. Well, if it's a novice, they're going to add weight to the bar every other workout on most of the lifts, every workout on the squat if they're squatting three times a week. And as they progress, that'll go to every four days, every seven days. Early intermediates, typically every seven days, then every 14 days and every 21 days. And then at some point in all this, it becomes less predictable and the PR spread out and things start to interfere and, you know, training becomes less predictable. So I went in last Friday. So I, the week before I hit 335 for two sets of five on the straight leg of deadlifts,

which meant that I had a deadlift last week. I got in there and I was like, fuck, I have to deadlift heavy today. So that never prevents me from making the lift. You know, that prevents a lot of people from making the lift. So try not to think that way. But you know, for me, when it's time to go, it's time to go. I might whine a little bit about it, but I'll get it done. Anyways, I load 450 on there, get three, and then it just stops. I'm like, well, fuck, I know that. I know what that means. That means I'm not recovered, you know? Yeah, right, right. Because when it flies up for several reps in a row and then just stops, you probably didn't sleep enough, didn't eat enough, got drunk, you know, did something else that took energy from you. Something got in the way. I think in my case, it was the squat I did three days ago,

but there are three days before that. Yeah. I hit a PR set of eight. Uh, that, you know, I may repeat with a side view for all these, you know, colleagues of mine that reminded me that might've been high. Well, might've been, might've not. The oblique angle is not good for judging depth, but I think one of them may have been high. So the oblique angle is not good for judging depth but i think one of them may have been high so next time you're getting two angles and if it's not deep i ain't fucking posting it so i better get down there um anyhow anyhow i was still carrying fatigue from that so i'm like well shit what do i do now oh i'm gonna do an rpe7 no i'm not gonna fucking do that i'm just like all right well last week I did what?

335 for my working sets on the volume. I just wasted a bunch of gas here doing this 450 for three reps plus a failed rep. So I'm just going to do 315. It's 20 pounds less than what I did the week before. We convert that into a percentage. So what is that? 315 out of 350? That's what, 90%, right? Yeah, that's 90%. So, you know, I took off, I don't know, 450, sorry. 315 out of 450. 450 is what I just hit. So we can't math here today. 70%. Yeah, so I took 30% off, you know, and hit that. And what you'll find too is that as you get stronger, the percentage of your max, assuming you've actually maxed, this doesn't count if you're a crossfitter and just decided, I'm going to max out today, bruh. No. If you've maxed out, you've carefully planned it, you've ran your triples, you've maxed out you've carefully planned it you've ran your triples you've ran your singles done your practice did a realization phase you're an intermediate advanced lifter that

competes whether it's in the gym or at a meet uh if you have legit maxes like i do um you know the higher those get the lower the percentages that you could use for productive work. Right. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So in my case, looks like a little over 70% is what I do for volume on pulls. So I went down below that because I'd just done a heavy triple. So I'm like, I want to do a few percentage points below what my working volume weight would be on the opposing week just to get some work in.

And that's what I did. And then this week I'll probably do 337.5 since I had a failed rep last week. I want to add a little bit to the volume week. So I'll just add two and a half pounds rather than five since I'm going to have to repeat the same intensity weight the week after, or maybe the third week, and do that for two sets of five. And that's going to be that, right? So that's one way to do it, you know? But how do I know this? Well, data, you know? I've collected data over the years. You can start to see where these offloads are. When my RDLs were at like the 365 to 375 range, I couldn't go heavy the following week. And then I tried ramping it up and doing like every three weeks and the same thing. So it was too much intensity on my volume weeks.

So I know that it has to be in that 70 to 75% range to be productive. Now, your max is improving as you're getting stronger. So these percentages actually get smaller if you're doing things right, because your next max is going to be productive. Now, your max is improving as you're getting stronger. So these percentages actually get smaller if you're doing things right, because your next max is going to be heavier. You know? Yes. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's a good example of how you can do it. And that's the way that I think, when I think about programming for people, I often think in those terms. I'll give you another example. I had this happen just yesterday. So I was supposed to deadlift heavy and I was going to pull a 410 for a set of five. So I was going to try to go

for a PR set of five for me. 405 is my PR. So add five pounds. My lower back has been killing me for the last couple of days. Now I'm very fortunate. I do not have back pain. I don't even have a little bit of back pain day to day. That's not normal for me, but I've developed some lumbar pain probably because I've just been sitting a lot. I've been working lots and lots of hours, have not been sleeping very well for the last week, and I have a lot of time sitting on my butt in the studio chair doing work. So that's probably what caused it. My lower back felt very compressed. And this was like, you know, this was like a few notches above baseline for me. Right. So not, not a good,

not a good situation. And for me, my lower back, when especially I'm pulling more than three reps, my lower back is usually the thing that starts to give out on the deadlift. So I'm like, well, it was significant enough. I'm like, I don't think pulling from the floor is a good idea today. But I want to pull heavy. I don't want to back down from that. So instead of deloading my deadlift, I decided to rack pull. I'm like, okay, I'm going to just shorten the range of motion

and kind of cut out that range of motion off the floor where I could potentially round my back and, you know, exacerbate whatever I have going on. So based on previous data, I could probably pull a rack pull of 445 for a set of five. So what do I do? I was like, well, 445, again, that would be a very, that would be a pretty maximal pull for me for a rack pull. So I walked it back from there. I decided to do 425. Okay. So I pulled 425, had a little grip issue thing. Cause the, I use a really shitty bar for rack pulls so I can bend it up and it has like absolutely no knurl on it. So thef slipped out of my hands after rep rep three i had to re-grip it but i did five reps and it was decently hard it was it was pretty dang

hard but i had another rep probably two in the tank okay so what i ended up doing there is an rpe eight right is that right rp8 or eight and a half or what see i can't even remember the numbers yeah if you in fact had two but okay so yeah so been three or four. Okay, so yeah, so it was an RPE8 set, right? And that's, so that leads me to the way that I use RPE. And I, so first of all, I don't use RPE, right? I don't, I have tried it a couple times in the past, and I end up using other terminology, but it's the same concept. When I have somebody that's dealing with a rehab situation or in a, just a acute tweak situation, like what I just described, I find it useful to give some sort of target like that. Like, but I tended to do it in the way that I described, like, okay, let's pick, you know, based on recent

training data, let's pick a number that would be, that would constitute a heavy set for you today. Um, but let's walk it back 5%. You know, maybe let's walk it back 10%. Right. And we end up arriving at the same point, I think. Um, just for me that, that allows me, that gives me a little bit more concrete number in my head because I'm dealing with hard numbers. Okay. 445 would constitute a P not a PR, but like an increase from what I rack pulled previously. Okay. That gives me a hard concrete number based on how I'm feeling today. That's probably not a great idea. So let me walk it back 5% from there. I can calculate that number and put it down on the paper 425. Okay, let's load it up and go. As opposed to with RPE, had I said, okay, let me do an RPE eight set of five on a rack pull. What is that? What is that number? Right? Then I have to start thinking about,

okay, what could I hit? Could I hit 445 for five? Yeah, I don't think I'd have anything in the tank there. So I got to go down from there. But see, it's just a little more abstracted off the bat rather than dealing with concrete numbers. And so that's my main beef with RPE. I actually like the concept and I do use it in specific scenarios but i don't like the way that that actual scale of seven eight nine ten works i think it's just too abstract for my brain well same here um i'm stealing that by the way next time, I'm going to go for a rack pull. But I think in a rehab situation, I can see the reason why someone would want to use it. But then I find that what an RPE 7 is, let's say, for a rehab situation, may be a 7 for your muscles but not your connective tissues.

So I find that guys are lifting light weights and then getting more pain because it needs to be insanely light for that connective tissue situation to improve. Right. I have to tell them, empty bar, or do a calculation. Let's do 30% of max if I have that data. I try to think, what's stupid light for this person? And I just go there. Right. Because I found that like, you know, a set they can do for 20, a weight they can do for 20, there's still too much on whatever joint is pissed off, you know, or connective tissue. Yes. So yeah, I actually, same scenario. I had a guy who, um, he popped

his hamstring a few weeks ago. It was a, it was a minor tear, but it was definitely a tear. We had bruising and swelling in the area. So we, you know, basically I put him through the star rehab protocol, right. Worked great. Um, three weeks later, he's feeling great, but I'm not going to just ram him right back up to, uh, where he was in the squat. The guys, you know, he's, he's over 50, his connective tissue. I don't, you know, I want to give it plenty of time to heal up. So what I did instead is after he got through the phase where he absolutely needed to lift very light weights, I would give him a range. I'd be like, Hey, listen, I want you to go, you know, I want you to load up 95 to 135 pounds today. And I'll let him pick, you know, and that

way, if he goes to the max, he's, there's still a governor on it. Right. Um, but if he's really feeling tentative, cause I don't know how he's feeling that day and how, you know, if he goes to the max he's there's still a governor on it right um but if he's really feeling tentative because i don't know how he's feeling that day and how you know if he's if he's feeling nervous or fearful about it then he can go 95 right i don't care we're going to get the progression in there either way yeah and uh again you're dealing with hard numbers and i think that hard numbers really what what this comes down to um the one area where i like to use rp with a trainee is when i have someone who is a train wreck from a technical standpoint and this only happens online if you're in the gym you know i fix this typically that day you know yeah if it comes back we fix it when it comes. But with an online coaching client who has not had in-person technical instruction but is workable, you know, like, okay, I could get you here, but it's going to take a couple weeks.

You know, if somebody's a complete disaster, I'll say you need an in-person coach, you know. Right. We've got to remind the audience that there are problems that are unique to the online sphere, the cyber sphere, and some that are unique to in-person. And when you're dealing with an online client, any program you put somebody on assumes that the lifts are being performed as intended. You and I request videos. We want to see what these people look like. We analyze movement. videos. We want to see what these people look like. We analyze movement. If I have somebody who's just rep to rep, there's variability. Day to day, there's variability. I'll put an RP in there, or I won't assign a load at all, or I'll assign the same load every time. I find that RP

works better than assigning the same load every time because psychologically seeing that pisses off the client. I've noticed people don't like to see that their numbers aren't moving you know so i think it's a useful tool psychologically to keep the person engaged because it's like okay i'm doing an rp6 you know or seven but you know we're working on form right whereas if it says 45 45 45 45 45 it's like oh i'm not going anywhere you know it's like there's a psychological component to all this shit you know unfortunately it makes it that yeah that's interesting it makes it their choice to add or not right with an rpe it could be 45 could be 50 yeah you know there's not a huge amount of difference you know in like a squat or deadlift and that um maybe that's a big difference

in press for you know someone but yeah but yeah it makes it their choice rather than you putting down 45 every time yeah and i haven't had a problem with people putting too much weight on uh guy who's going to do that's already strong it's a whole different issue but you know a novice who hasn't lifted a lot before they're not going to put 225 on the bar you know right yeah or whatever um typically they'll put a weight on that they're managing because they're also afraid of getting hurt at that stage and they're not going to put 225 on the bar you know right yeah or whatever typically they'll put a weight on that they're managing because they're also afraid of getting hurt at that stage in their training a lot of the time especially the type of people we get right um which is reasonable you know again you have other things to do these aren't you know we don't work with a highly

competitive audience you know from from the standpoint that they want to get on a platform and they're going to sacrifice their bodies you know know, they have other things to do. Right. But I like to use RPE when I'm trying to iron out technique issues to A, not discourage the client and show them the same number every time, B, from a safety standpoint. But the most important thing there is that once they're moving consistently, we're adding load. That RPE goes out the window, you know? Another place that I use if somebody's, look, man, I'm remodeling my house. I only got half my gym. I'm not sleeping, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Basically, training's taking a backseat. All right, we're going to put an RPE in there so you don't fuck yourself up because somebody in that situation is also probably not going to load up a bunch of weight and say, oh, I just put 500 on. That's an RPE 7, and their max is 505. You know, they're not going to do that, you know? Right. I mean, that can happen. There's outliers, but generally, it doesn't happen. Like, okay, I've just taken on a bunch of responsibility. My training is taking a backseat. I'm going from four days a week to two days a week. I only have time for two lifts, but I want to make sure I show

up. Now the shift, now the focus has shifted. I can't predict load in that situation. And this person has now went from training to exercise. He is trying to exercise to maintain as much as he can from his training while he gets through the life event that he's trying to get through. And that's a different situation. But the one area that we've consistently criticized RPE on is that, is using it in the context of actual serious training where you know you have the bandwidth to do it you're trying to push heavier trying to extend your limits all of that it just it just is not useful in my experience because it gives you an out it gives you an out and we don't want an out. We want an in because we want to get stronger. And as someone

who has continuously gotten stronger, uh, for over a decade, uh, you know, I think I'm entitled to an opinion on this matter. Right. Right. Yeah. Um, yeah. So I, I think a lot of it's just, it's psychology, you know, uh, the psychology of the lifter definitely comes into play. And a guy like Mike Tuchere, I don't think he needs to worry about pushing himself in the gym, right? It's just different psychology. We're not talking about him. He also correlated RPEs with percentages, which means that in his mind, he's not taking it too light.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have done that. Exactly. And I think he also, at some point, I hope I'm not confusing this with another lifter. I think he also correlated these numbers with bar speed that he had measured. Yeah, he had a 10W unit. A 10W unit, yeah. So, you know, this was objective data he was relying on. It's really... So, I'm not blaming, you know, I'm not criticizing Mike Toucheur's implementation of RPE. It's just how it's been used more popularly and broadly.

Now, I'll say this is an interesting experience I've had. So I don't have a strong opinion on this at this point. I need to run this longer to develop that, but I'll just give you some observations. For the last year, roughly, I've been running a handful of clients through a conjugate program. So, you know, it's kind of an adaptation of the Westside conjugate method. I've been running it very similarly to the way that Andy Baker describes how he runs a conjugate method. I've made a few little tweaks of my own. And it's pretty conservative. I don't do everything that Andy does and I don't do everything that, that Andy does. And I don't do,

I don't do everything that the West side guys do, but the heart of the conjugate program is the lifter every week performs a max effort lift for the upper body and the lower body, right? And the way that I do it 99 times out of a hundred is it's a max effort single for the for an upper body lift and a lower body lift every week and i control the stress week to week by selecting by exercise selection right so they start the cycle with a with the competition lifts low bar squat bench press press deadlift okay that's the first two weeks of max effort lifts. And then the following weeks will be lifts that are inherently less systemically stressful. So like a front squat, right? So of course they're going to be carrying, especially if they're strong, they're going to be carrying a lot of fatigue from those max effort lifts in the first

couple of weeks. But if they do a front squat and they do it for max effort, well, it's going to be a lot less stressful. It's something they can handle after having done a really heavy squat and a really heavy deadlift. And, um, the thing about a max effort single is, um, it, it, it is, it's sort of like RPE in the sense that the lifter has to choose the load. And I found for a, I'd call them a middle intermediate lifter, right? Where they've gone through some early intermediate program programs. They've done some periodization, um, already for a sort of middle intermediate lifter. It's great for developing the skill of learning how to approach singles. And we'll see how this works out. Actually, a few of these guys that have been doing the conjugate program are going to be doing their first strength lifting meet in about six weeks.

And so, you know, one of the benefits I'm hoping is that this conjugate program will, A, expose them to a bunch of singles. They'll have a lot of practice with doing heavy singles. So, you know, mentally, they'll be dialed in. Their form will be dialed in for performing a heavy single. They'll be dialed in. Their form will be dialed in for hitting a, for performing a heavy single. But I'm also hoping that it really gives us a lot of good data on how to approach their openers,

second attempts, you know, sort of like conservative second attempt, more aggressive second attempt, and then a reach attempt for, for attempt number three. And so I, I can really see the benefit of that approach,

which is, which is basically an auto-regulation approach where you're going to hit a maximum effort, not a particular number. Um, I I'm, I'm starting to see the benefit and the usefulness of that for a more experienced lifter, because that is a skill of lifting. You have to, like for me, when I made that call on the rack poles, that was based on experience of how much percentage I need to pull off the top to get the result that I'm looking for. Whereas I want to push myself pretty hard, but I need to back down from the utter limit, right? I knew that 5% was good

because I'd done this a lot and it only came through trial and error. So that's kind of, that's kind of one of the things that a conjugate method where you're doing these, these max effort singles that the lifter selects can do for you is it helps you develop that skill of knowing how you respond to different loads. Yeah, no, that makes sense. And again, comes back to experience, you know, as we've been saying. Yeah, I think we hammered that pretty good there. What do you think? Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, I think we hammered that pretty good there. What do you think? Yeah, I think so. So, you know, for me, right, I'm not going to sit here and say that I hate RPE or that RPE is complete bullshit or anything like that. I really don't believe that. I think auto-regulation is a very important and useful thing for the more advanced lifter that you have to pay attention to. Um, but RPE as it is popularly used, you know, with this number system, I don't use it and I don't really see myself using it anytime in the near future. Yeah. Yeah. Me either. Um, you know, like I said, I use it for people that are exercising or whose training is less predictable, but none of these people that have unpredictable training have unpredictable training because they're as strong as Mike Deshear. You know, that's not the situation. It's unpredictable for other reasons.

When it's unpredictable for that reason, that's a whole different animal. You're a 700, 800-pound squat and deadlifter You're seven, 800 pound squat and deadlifter, thousand pound squat and deadlifter, you know, things become less predictable and, you know, programming becomes even more of an art, but most of us aren't dealing with that and probably never will deal with that. So unless you are giving training a backseat, you need to hold yourself accountable to a load of some sort. That's kind of my position on it. Yeah, I totally agree. I will say the other thing that's been kind of funny in the past when I've had to use, like actually use RPE and I've tried to use it. What I've done is reps in reserve because I found that so much easier to explain. Just tell me how many

reps that you had left in the tank. And sometimes I still tell people, it's like, hey, listen, I want you to leave a rep in the tank or a couple reps in the tank. Right? Sometimes I do that still. So technically that would be using RIR or reps in reserve. But what I've found that's kind of interesting is when I've tried to use it in the past, my clients don't want it. They don't want to pick their own loads for the most part. There's a few that do, but, but like the, so the conjugate thing even is tough for people because some people are like, well, just give me a number. And I'm like,

well, no, no, no. You have to pick the number. It's part of the skill. You have to learn how to make these attempts. I'll give you some guidance, but you're going to have to like be accountable for the attempts that you make. But the vast majority of my clients, they just, they're just like, listen, just write something down on the page and I'll do it. Um, don't make me think like that's why I hired you. And so I think that's kind of funny. I don't think they would take well to RPE for that reason. So now that we've pissed off a bunch of people, um, yeah, there you go. There's our thoughts on RPE. Yeah. I hope you learned something. I hope you learned something. All right, now that we've pissed off a bunch of people, yeah, there you go. There's our thoughts on RPE. Yeah, I hope you learned something. I hope you learned something.

All right, let's close out here. All right. Thank you for tuning into the Weights and Plates podcast. You can find me at Weightsandplates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana. If you are local to Phoenix, you can find the gym at weightsandplatesgym.com or on Instagram at weights double underscore and double underscore plates. Yeah. If you live in the Phoenix area, you need to go see Santana, whether it's just for a form check or, you know, if you just need a light of fire under your training, hey,

he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a fiery guy. He's, he's good at yelling at you. He's going to get some results out of you. That's what they say. And, and push you. So you going to get some results out of you. That's what they say. And push you. So you need to do that. Well, you know where to find me. If you're interested in training online,

you can email me at jonesbarbellclub at gmail.com. All right, we'll see you again in a couple weeks. Thank you.