I completed day 1 of the beginner program this evening and established my estimated 1 RMs. I am completely new to RPE so it was a bit difficult for me to judge a real difference between an RPE 6 and RPE 7 for example. As a result, I feel like I sandbagged my squat a bit and didn’t go as heavy as a could have. I feel pretty good about my bench and deadlift numbers I hit - they felt accurate for the most part. My question is, should I just roll with the numbers I got for the squat? Will the program auto-regulate this (for lack of a better word) as I continue or should I try to get a more accurate number for my squat tomorrow?
We would recommend using previous performance data (e1RM) to help you predict your workloads going forward. However, we think that each day’s subjective RPE should trump past performances. In other words, use your e1RM to ballpark where you should be session to session, but let the RPE for the specific exercise on that day determine the load you put on the bar. Some weeks/days you’ll add more weight than others if your performance level is high. Conversely, on days you just don’t have it- you may reduce the weight. In sum, this is not a linear progression and while we’d love for you to add weight to the bar each time you train, we know that’s unlikely to happen for an extended period of time.
The accuracy of the RPE doesn’t matter, but the precision does. This means that if your RPE isn’t bang-on perfectly gauged that’s ok, provided you use a similar scale and rating strategy each time you train.
With respect to actual weights, we’d hope they’re somewhat accurate (e.g. they weigh what they’re supposed to weigh). However, if you’re using the same weights each time you train then even if the weights are accurate, they’re precise.
Got it, thanks. Hopefully this is the last RPE related question, but let’s take week 1 day 1 of the beginner program just as an example. For back squat, I’m supposed to do 3 sets of 4 reps at RPE 6,7, and 8 respectively. What if I make too big of a jump when transitioning from warm up sets to the first working set and wind up hitting RPE 8 for my first set which was supposed to be RPE 6? At that point, do I just back off a bit and try to hit the other two sets at RPE 6 and 7?
