I’m quite new to RPE and trying to find a good weight in the different varations of the main lifts.
Paused squats i use 92 % of what i would use if it was normal squat
CGB 91 %
303 squats 86 %
Rackpulls 116 %
Approximately what did you guy use?
Normally I do it trial and error and after about 1-2 weeks I already know, but during warm-up you can already asses by the speed and difficulty of the weight via RPE
I don’t figure it out with percentages, I just warm up and find the RPE for the day.
Paused squats 85 %
CGB 104 %
303 squats 71 %
Rackpulls 92 % (I know this doesn’t make sense, but I suck at rack pulls and don’t find them any easier than deadlifts. Or maybe the 7 reps fatigue me so they don’t represent a good 1RM. Or maybe I’m just not pushing them hard enough.)
Your squat percentages seem extremely high to me. Maybe I just suck at those too. I also suck at the 1 second pause bench. Close grip with a touch n go style is definitely easier for me. And my close grip is a full 10 inches closer too (18 vs. 28).
I still don’t understand how this is possible because the lower the RPE the harder it is to rate it, then you are basing your important and easy to rate sets on the least important and hardest to rate set. Also, say if I am to warm up until I hit @6 then base my weights for the day on that. You’ve said previously that you don’t need to rest between warmup sets, but if you don’t rest before your @6 set then it wont be a true @6 due to fatigue (or at least it won’t be for me). So I must rest before the @6, but If I am just blazing through my warmups, not knowing when I will find @6 then how do I know when to rest? What I have been doing so far is to set target weights for @6,7,8 (or 7,8,9) take a rest first and adjust the @7 (or not) based on how the @6 felt and so on until I’m at my top set.
I’m not trying to argue with what works for you. I’m just not sure how to make it work for me or if I’m understanding it properly.
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RPE scale is roughly based on ~5% changes in weight (so an RPE 7 becomes an estimated RPE 8 when adding 5% more weight to the bar). Unless something crazy happened that impacted your recovery the weight shouldn’t change outside of 1-2 RPE #s.
RPE helps controls your stress; don’t get hung up on the weight on the bar. If your opening sets feel fine and it’s just the final set that feels hard that is normal; your last set shouldn’t be easy.
Even with RPE, we all have an idea of what our warm ups and first sets will be, and that’s because we are building on previous work. I don’t go into the session with ZERO idea of what I’ll do, in fact I have goals based on the previous week and the previous sessions and the planned rep ranges. But I don’t take the time to calculate my percentages because there is no need for me to do that.
Then it is just fine to take some time with your @6 if you’d like. People routinely complain that training takes too long, and not resting between warm ups is one of the first places to save some time. You don’t NEED to do that though. I am not fatigued from my warm up sets, and I really don’t mean that as anything special or anything, but you too will see your work capacity and your confidence in what you can do that day increase with practice. However, it sounds like you are figuring things correctly. I’d guess that if you look at your work over several weeks, you’ll see a pretty consistent pattern with your @6 sets, and the more you see that and work with that, the more you’ll be confident in calculating your RPE for the day.
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Thanks Leah. I guess what I need most is to develop the work capacity to blaze through those warmups without throwing off my RPEs.
Well, even if you haven’t developed that work capacity yet, RPE still guides you and forces you to lower the weight on your sets until you do. That’s kind of the beauty of it all.
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