Hey all. Been lifting for about a year and a half and I’ve been using and tracking RPE the whole time pretty much. Most of my training has been for strength in lower rep ranges, and about a month ago I moved over to the Hypertrophy I template. I’ve noticed that my assessment of RPE has been a little inconsistent in these higher rep ranges. For most of the assigned compound and DB lifts in the 8 - 10 rep range, I’m able to notice definitively when my tempo slows down, which indicates that I’m close to RPE 8ish. However, for the machine based exercises that are assigned in the 12 - 20 rep range, I’ve been noticing that I am able to do all of the reps at a nice tempo (I try to “explode” and then do slow eccentrics) but when I get tired and start to slow down, I’ll just take a 5- 10 second break and then bang out a few more (good) reps. It’s MUCH easier to do this for machine exercises because I’m not going through the trouble of racking weights. However, it has made me wonder if my “true RPE” isn’t really being hit for other compound exercises if I’m able to take a little pause, and then get a few more good reps in.
Any feedback around this? Am I getting “the most” out of the exercises that I might not be doing as close to failure as possible? I’ve heard that some programs include something called an RPE audit that can help people get a better understanding of what RPE 8, 9, and 10 actually feel like, and I’m wondering if that could help me out here. I guess more specifically I’m wondering if I should try adding “mini breaks” of 10 seconds or so to be able to get more quality reps in.
I’m not generally a perfectionist, but, I always appreciate learning something that might improve the quality of my workouts. Thanks!