+- 1 rep to meet target rpe?

Hi BBM,
I am in the middle of the beginner template and I love it, already feeling better thanks to the lifting and conditioning, and love the rpe system.
Due to my work and family situation, very often I go in the gym already physically fatigued or at odd times. Also due to time constraints I always keep my rest periods 3min sharp.
Those two things makes it very difficult for me to gauge the weight for the prescribed rpe, mostly in the later set. For example: one day it can happen that a set is rpe7, then I add 10kg and the set after is rpe8, another day it can happen that a set is rpe7, i keep the same weight and the set after i get to rpe8 with one less rep.
What i was doing was not stressing about it and just select the weight i think is right and do the reps until the prescribed rpe. This can often result in ±1 rep respect to the template ones. After reading more carefully the pdf i realized this is not how you recommend to use rpe. But i have come to like this way (which I mistakenly thought was the consensus one) because it allows me to deal with my gauge problem without stressing too much. Then i think that ±1 rep won’t change the world. Am i screwing things up? or it is fine?

Thanks, and keep up the awesome work

Francesco,

Thanks for the kind words and the message. I agree with you that one rep more or less isn’t likely to affect much, especially if the effort level (e.g. RPE) is maintained. However, I think progression may suffer in some ways if we’re adding variables in a dynamic way.

I would recommend using your previous week’s performance to bracket your target weight for a given exercise, rep scheme, and RPE prescription. For example, if you did 140kg x 5 reps @ RPE 8, you would predict to be +/- 5% from there the next week unless significantly stronger or weaker.

Using this approach, I’d then plan on doing a final warm up set of -5%, e.g. 132.5kg x 5 reps, and rating the RPE. If it’s RPE 7, go up to 140 or 142.5. If it’s way less than a 7, think 142.5 to 145kg. If it’s more than RPE 7, stay the same.

That’s how I’d plan on approaching things with a fixed rep range, but there are of course other ways to do it. If you like using a dynamic rep range sometimes, that’s fine by me. :slight_smile:

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Thanks Jordan,

that’s actually very smart. If the -5% is rpe7 or above then it s the first working set. If it was rpe<7 then it s the last warm up set.