How to use RPE effectively

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hey guys! I’ve been away from the gym a long time due to strict quarantine in my country. So I’m back at beginner template again for some time. I will try to be as short as possible.
I want to know if I did the right thing asessing RPE:
Lets say my previous week OHP was:
4 reps @6 with 47.5kg SET 1
4 reps @7 50kg SET 2
4 reps @8 52.5kg SET 3 and 4
Nice week everything went according to plan.
Now this week I did my warm up like usual and waited 2 minutes before my first set @6 to correctly asses the RPE (I dont know if this is correct also)
4 reps @6 with 50kg set 1 (It felt like less than a 7 but not fully 6)
Now what I did was 52.5kg (5% more) which was supposed to be an RPE 7. But it was an 8. So i did one more @8 for a total of three sets (@6 @ 8 @8).

I wanted to know if this was the correct aproach or should I asses the RPE based on the @7 instead of the @6? So instead of going to 50kg @6 directly, I should keep the previous week 47.5 @6 and asses the RPE from the @7. So 47.5 @6 > 50@7 and if that 7 feels light then increase the plan of the @8. Hopefully i’m being clear.

Beside this:
What should my next week look like? Should I do again the 50@6? I feel that if I always overshoot on the sets I end up doing less volume, since I skip the @7 and end up doing only 3 hard sets.
What would be the ideal approach here?

Thanks in advance docs

2

Give this article a read first, as it goes into detail on how tot use this approach:

1 Like
3

Thanks Austin! It cleared a lot of the questions I had. The one thing I dont quite get is when the weight jump should be:
So If I do first set @6 and feels easy, still do the programed @7 (5% more), and ONLY if the @7 feels lighter than a true @7 then I increase the weight for the @8 right? My biggest worry is to overshoot often trying to improve my weights and every other week end up doing 1 less set of volume (which I assume would be counterproductive to get better adaptations).

Again thanks for the help!

4

Something I forgot: in this case I increase the programmed weight @8 because is the top set. In the case of a set @9 then the increase would be at that RPE.