Why I Hate RPE – And What You Should Do Instead It’s Not Autoregulation. It’s Abdication.
- JHEPCxTJH
- 2 days ago
- 23 min read
Why I Hate RPE – And What You Should Do Instead It’s Not Autoregulation. It’s Abdication.
The Illusion of Precision
Have you ever missed a lift because it felt like an RPE 8 - until it wasn’t?
Maybe the bar moved fast. Maybe your last warm-up flew. Maybe you were told to “go by feel.” Then suddenly you’re stapled under a weight that should’ve been smooth. That’s not a rare mistake. It’s baked into the very system people swear is precise.
RPE, once touted as a smarter way to autoregulate training, has become one of the most overused and under-questioned systems in strength programming. It promises personalisation but often delivers confusion. It’s especially popular among online coaches, spreadsheets-for-hire, and lifters who want to believe they're training intelligently - but not necessarily hard.
This article unpacks where RPE actually came from, why it was never meant for powerlifting or strongman, and how it’s been misapplied for years. What started as a clinical scale for managing heart rate has been awkwardly forced into the world of maximal effort strength training. It’s become a shortcut for avoiding decisions, a way to pretend coaching is happening when it isn’t.
The reality is that most people aren’t equipped to use RPE effectively, and most coaches aren’t offering enough structure for it to mean anything at all. What you end up with is a vague, shifting target that undermines confidence, disrupts progression, and hides behind the illusion of individualisation.
We’re going to break all of that down - and then show you what to do instead. Because real autoregulation isn’t guesswork. It’s accountability, structure, and intelligent feedback built into the system itself.
Where RPE Actually Came From (And What It Was For)
Before it became trendy shorthand for how hard a lifter thinks a set felt, RPE had a very different origin - and purpose. The concept was first developed by Swedish psychologist Gunnar Borg in the 1970s, and it wasn’t aimed at barbell training at all. Borg’s original Rating of Perceived Exertion was created for use in aerobic exercise testing and cardiac rehabilitation. It was a way to gauge how hard someone felt they were working during steady-state cardiovascular activity, particularly for populations where direct physiological monitoring (like heart rate or VO₂ max) wasn’t always feasible.
The original RPE scale ran from 6 to 20. Why those numbers? Because when multiplied by ten, the rating roughly aligned with a healthy individual’s heart rate. An RPE of 13 meant a heart rate of around 130 bpm - useful for guiding training zones in patients recovering from cardiac events or building endurance in runners, cyclists, and rowers.
Later, the system was simplified. The familiar 0–10 or 1–10 scales emerged to suit broader applications in general fitness. But the roots remained the same: endurance, cardiovascular stress, and self-reported effort across extended time domains.
Here’s the problem: RPE was never designed with barbell sports in mind - especially not with heavy singles, high-force movements, or limit-strength expression. The physiological and psychological demands of maximal or near-maximal lifting have nothing in common with the activities RPE was created to monitor. Lifting weights isn't a linear, time-under-tension stressor like jogging on a treadmill. It’s volatile, spiky, and governed by biomechanics, arousal state, motor pattern quality, bar speed, neural readiness, and technical consistency - none of which are captured by a vague number plucked from someone’s imagination after the fact.
Yet somehow, this endurance-born tool has been retrofitted onto lifting by people who want it to behave like a programming metric, when at best it’s a loosely informed guess - and at worst, a cover for lack of discipline, poor coaching, or avoidance of hard choices in load selection.
If you're going to base your training decisions on perceived effort, it's worth knowing where that framework actually came from. And whether it ever belonged in your squat session to begin with.
Let me know if you’d like to follow this with a section on how RPE has been misapplied in strength sports or how you handle autoregulation without it.
What RPE Became in Powerlifting
The modern use of RPE in powerlifting usually refers to a 1–10 scale designed to reflect how hard a lift felt. In practice, it’s often described through the lens of “reps in reserve.” An RPE 10 means a maximal effort - no reps left in the tank. RPE 9 implies one rep in reserve, RPE 8 means two, and so on.
At a glance, this seems like a practical way to keep training adaptive. Rather than chasing arbitrary numbers or pre-written percentages, RPE appears to adjust loading based on real-world readiness. It lets the lifter call the shots based on how they feel today, not what the spreadsheet said last month.
That premise gained serious traction through the rise of online powerlifting culture - particularly via coaching collectives like Reactive Training Systems (RTS) and the broader “emerging strategies” crowd. These approaches prioritised perceived effort and individual response over rigid intensity plans. In theory, they offered a sophisticated system for managing fatigue, long-term planning, and sustainable progress.
But in the hands of most lifters and coaches, that theory got watered down. Fast.
The Slippery Slope of "Feel-Based" Programming
Here’s how it usually plays out:
You hit a triple on squats and call it RPE 8.
You think you had two more reps in the tank.
So next week, maybe you add 2.5kg.
Or maybe not - because it felt a bit off today.
Or maybe the bar moved well but your back was tight, so you undershoot.
Or maybe your coach says, “Hit another RPE 8 and we’ll see.”
That loop repeats for months.
Instead of producing progressive overload, you end up spinning your wheels in a vague grey zone of “pretty hard but not too hard” work that never pushes, never tests, and never commits. The lifter second-guesses themselves. The coach offers reassurance without direction. Training becomes a negotiation.
This is where RPE loses its edge. What was once a method to regulate effort becomes an excuse to avoid effort entirely. The system that was supposed to be individualised morphs into something barely anchored to anything at all.
From Tool to Crutch
Originally, RPE was framed as a way to keep lifters honest: train hard enough to drive progress, but not so hard you burn out. But instead of demanding precision and discipline, it became a workaround. Lifters who didn’t want to max out intensity, commit to heavier percentages, or risk failing a rep could simply label a lift “RPE 9” and call it good. Coaches, in turn, could avoid hard conversations about effort, recovery, and actual progress by programming loose targets that no one could really get wrong.
That’s not autoregulation. That’s deflection.
The more vague the system, the more room there is to justify anything. And when the definition of success is based on perception - not performance - training stops being measurable. It becomes a constant game of interpretation, framed by how things seem rather than how they are.
The reality is that most lifters don’t need more freedom to assess their own effort. They need structure. They need limits. They need clarity about what matters, how progress is defined, and when they’re under-delivering. RPE doesn’t give them that. Not reliably. Not repeatedly. Not at scale.
It was supposed to be a precision tool. It turned into a padded glove.
Big Problems with RPE (The Core Critiques)
RPE isn't just a harmless tool that gets misused from time to time - it introduces structural problems into programming, coaching, and athlete development. What follows are the core critiques of using RPE as a primary load management system in strength training, particularly for competitive powerlifters and strongman athletes.
1. It’s Subjective and Inconsistent
“Perceived exertion” doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It fluctuates wildly based on factors that have nothing to do with actual performance:
Mood: A lifter in a low state of motivation will rate sets as harder, even if performance is stable.
Fatigue and sleep: A well-rested lifter might rate an actual RPE 10 as a 7 because they feel sharp. The same lift after three nights of poor sleep might feel like an 8 before they even touch the bar.
Environmental noise: Music, lighting, temperature, bar whip, knurling, humidity - any of these can influence how heavy a lift feels.
Stimulants: One extra scoop of pre-workout can make an otherwise grindy set feel like a breeze. The bar moved the same, but perception changed.
Time of day: Many lifters rate sets heavier in the morning and lighter in the evening, regardless of bar speed or absolute load.
On top of this, personality traits skew results. Type A lifters underreport effort to prove they’re tough. Anxious lifters overreport and underload to avoid failure. Some chase false PRs; others self-sabotage out of fear.
And perhaps most importantly: most beginner and intermediate lifters are terrible at rating their effort accurately. They either think everything is a 10 (because their technique breaks down under load) or they claim an RPE 6 was an 8, just because it felt slower than they expected. Without a highly trained eye - or external feedback - RPE becomes an unreliable data point dressed up as precision.
2. It Discourages Real Autoregulation
The common defence of RPE is that it's “just a form of autoregulation.” That’s only true on the most superficial level. What RPE actually does is replace structured, feedback-driven programming with a floating guess made in real-time.
Real autoregulation isn’t just reacting to how you feel on the day. It’s built on data. It’s the coach noticing a trend over weeks: bar speed slowing, technique breaking down, mood dipping, recovery lagging. Then they adjust the next block, the next wave, or even the next set based on that feedback.
RPE, on the other hand, tells the athlete: "Decide for yourself in the moment what the right weight is." There’s no anchor. No reflection. No calibration.
In practice, this often leads to either overcaution or recklessness. One lifter undershoots and stalls because “it didn’t feel like an 8.” Another blows past technical thresholds because “I felt strong today.” Both miss the point of autoregulation entirely.
A well-built program should autoregulate itself - not rely on guesswork from a tired lifter mid-session.
3. It Removes the Coach’s Responsibility
Here’s where the rot really sets in.
When a coach writes “3x5 @ RPE 8. Add weight if it feels good,” what they’re really doing is outsourcing the coaching job to the lifter.
There’s no objective plan. No mapped-out progression. No built-in overload, no target weight range, no strategy for bar speed, no coaching cue, no context - just a vague suggestion wrapped in a pseudo-metric.
This is how you get entire programs that look like copy-pasted skeletons with RPE numbers stapled on. The lifter isn’t being coached; they’re being given a choose-your-own-adventure game dressed up as “individualised programming.”
Worse still, when the lifter stalls or regresses, the blame shifts: “Well, maybe your RPE rating was off.” The coach avoids accountability by claiming the lifter didn’t autoregulate properly.
A good program doesn’t require the athlete to do all the interpretive labour. That’s the coach’s job. And when coaches lean too heavily on RPE, they’re often dodging it.
4. It’s Not Actually Individualised
One of the most repeated claims in support of RPE is that it makes programming more personal. That every set is tailored to how the lifter feels that day. In theory, that sounds great.
In practice, it assumes the lifter is a flawless judge of their own performance at all times. They’re not. Nobody is.
You might call a set RPE 8, but it moved like a 5 on video.
You might hit an all-time PR, rate it a 10, and then get told to deload next week - even though bar speed was identical to the prior week’s triple at 90%.
You might lift in front of a crowd at a meet, and hit an “RPE 9” opener that feels like a 5 because of adrenaline.
These mismatches happen constantly. Yet the system relies on the lifter’s self-report being correct, meaningful, and usable as the basis for decisions. When it’s not, things break down - and the “personalisation” becomes just a new form of guesswork.
5. It Stalls Progress for Strength Athletes
For lifters chasing absolute strength - especially in competition - RPE creates a quiet ceiling.
Training at “RPE 8” every week sounds smart on paper. You’re always working hard, but not too hard. You can recover. You can stay safe. But what often happens is stagnation:
You never grind, so you never build the skill of pushing through sticking points.
You don’t develop arousal tolerance, so heavy attempts feel alien on meet day.
You learn to fear the slow rep, because you’ve trained yourself to associate anything grindy with failure.
And when that RPE 8 doesn’t budge for four weeks straight? You’re told to be patient. That your perception will improve. Meanwhile, the bar’s not moving any faster - and neither are you.
The deeper problem is that RPE systems often avoid the very thing that makes you stronger: confronting technical breakdown under fatigue, experiencing how limits feel, and building the mental armour to push through them. That’s not reckless. That’s sport-specific. And it’s what separates strength athletes from casual lifters.
6. Even Advanced Lifters Get It Wrong
A common defence of RPE is that it’s “only a problem for beginners.” The logic goes: once a lifter has enough experience, they’ll be able to judge effort accurately, use RPE as intended, and reap all the benefits of real-time autoregulation.
But that assumption doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
Cognitive Bias Doesn’t Disappear With Experience
Even elite lifters aren’t immune to misjudging their own effort - especially under fatigue, pressure, or emotional volatility. Reps in Reserve (RIR) estimation studies have shown that trained athletes still routinely misreport how many reps they had left. In one 2017 study, experienced lifters underestimated their true proximity to failure by an average of 2.1 reps, even in compound lifts they regularly performed.
Fatigue and emotion skew perception. So does music, crowd energy, arousal level, and even camera presence. It doesn’t matter how many years you've been under the bar - your nervous system can still lie to you. And when you build an entire training framework around that internal guess, you’re amplifying those biases, not correcting them.
Self-Limiting Patterns Masquerade as Maturity
Experienced lifters are often more cautious, not more accurate. They know the cost of injury. They’ve built patterns of training that feel sustainable. But that can lead to chronic under-reaching, even if they’re convinced otherwise. What feels like “smart regulation” might actually be a quiet avoidance of the grind - the exact exposures they need to keep progressing.
We’ve seen lifters run months of RPE-based programming where nothing gets tested, no limits are approached, and every set feels good - but nothing moves. It’s not that RPE caused the stall. It’s that it allowed it to happen unnoticed. And by the time the plateau is acknowledged, it's been months since the lifter touched anything near their true capacity.
This is where RPE fails even the experienced. It assumes that feeling in control means you're progressing. But true adaptation often lives at the edge - and RPE keeps lifters away from it just as reliably as it does beginners.
What to Use Instead (Actual Autoregulation)
Autoregulation isn’t the enemy. In fact, when it’s done properly, it’s one of the most powerful elements of a well-designed strength program. The problem isn’t the idea of autoregulation - it’s the way it’s been lazily offloaded onto lifters through RPE.
If you want real adaptive programming - the kind that responds to fatigue, effort, technical quality, and long-term development - there are more effective, more honest tools available. These methods don’t rely on subjective guesswork. They’re grounded in observable performance and strategic design.
Let’s walk through the four that consistently work across powerlifting, strongman, and other maximal effort sports.
1. Max Effort Work (Rotated Weekly)
The clearest, most reliable form of autoregulation in any Conjugate-style system is weekly Max Effort (ME) work.
You work up to the heaviest single you can hit today, based on how you feel, how you move, and what you can express. The variation you use - whether it’s a Safety Bar squat, deficit deadlift, or floor press - automatically regulates load and recovery demand. A front squat with a pause will never let you overshoot the same way a straight bar squat might. The movement itself is the control mechanism.
This gives you real-time performance data every single week. You find out what’s improving, what isn’t, and whether you’re adapting to the training system.
Compare that to RPE, where you might go 4–6 weeks without ever knowing if you’re actually stronger - just that your sets “felt” better. Max Effort work makes it obvious. And because the lift rotates weekly, you’re not burning out the competition movement or accumulating excessive fatigue in one plane.
Autoregulation doesn’t get more effective than: “Go as heavy as you can today – on a lift that naturally regulates how aggressive you can be.”
2. Bar Speed, Velocity, and Movement Quality
If you want to measure effort without relying on gut instinct, you need objective feedback.
Bar speed is one of the best available tools here - even without a velocity tracker. You can use simple tools:
Video review: Watch the first rep versus the last. Any obvious slow-down? Technique breaking down?
Tempo awareness: If a “speed set” takes five seconds instead of two, that’s a red flag.
Cue sharpness: Are your cues still landing? Are you mentally crisp between sets, or foggy?
When paired with experienced coaching, these signs become invaluable. If bar speed tanks, if movement quality collapses, or if focus fades, it tells you far more than any RPE score ever will.
With velocity-based training tools (like OpenBarbell, Vitruve, or Flex), you can go further. Set thresholds, track drop-off, and build real autoregulation systems into both Max and Dynamic work. But even without tech, coaching the eye and brain to watch for objective changes beats relying on “how did it feel?”
3. Waved Percentages and Built-in Deloading
One of the biggest myths about autoregulation is that it means ditching structure. In reality, well-built waves already autoregulate intensity across weeks.
Take a classic 3-week intensity wave:
Week 1: 85%
Week 2: 90%
Week 3: 95%
This structure builds up gradually, then resets. The total training stress is balanced across the wave - with predictable recovery and overload cycles. There’s room to push, but also planned relief. You don’t need RPE to tell you if you’re tired in Week 3. The programming accounts for it.
Even better, you can embed optional top sets, back-off ranges, and volume targets that respond to bar speed or movement quality. You get all the flexibility people claim RPE offers, but grounded in something measurable.
Internal load - how hard training feels - still plays a role, but it doesn’t dictate the plan. Instead, it’s a signal used to adjust bar speed cues, rest periods, or technical corrections. Not a reason to abandon progression entirely.
WHILE WE ARE HERE - RPE Harms Motor Learning and Technical Mastery
One of RPE’s more insidious failures is what it does to attention.
Every time a coach or spreadsheet asks, “How did that feel?” it subtly hijacks the athlete’s focus. Instead of thinking about bar path, breathing mechanics, bracing, or cue execution, the lifter is now inside their own head - assessing. Not executing.
That shift might seem harmless. But over time, it’s catastrophic for skill acquisition.
Perception Steals Focus from Precision
In technical lifts - like squats, cleans, log press, and even deadlifts under fatigue - external attentional focus is one of the most powerful tools we have. The athlete who thinks, “push the floor away,” or “snap under the bar,” learns faster than the one thinking, “how hard does this feel right now?”
That’s not just coaching philosophy. It’s well-documented in motor learning research.
Studies in neuropsychology consistently show that external focus of attention enhances motor learning, movement efficiency, and long-term retention. Conversely, an internal focus - on body sensation or perceived difficulty - slows learning, increases error rates, and interferes with automaticity.¹
When RPE becomes the primary feedback loop, lifters are trained to monitor their own discomfort instead of refining skill. They become emotionally entangled with the bar, interpreting every grind or pause as a signal of failure. Instead of asking, “Was the technique sound?” they’re asking, “Did that feel like an 8?”
Over time, that creates reactive lifters - not technical ones.
Skill-Based Sports Require Skill-Based Feedback
In sports where bar speed and brute strength aren’t the only variables - like Olympic weightlifting, strongman, or even high-level raw powerlifting - precision matters. Bar path, tempo, balance, timing, and kinetic sequencing all dictate success. You don’t fix a poor log clean by asking, “How hard was that rep?” You fix it by diagnosing the footwork, the hinge, the clean catch, and the press timing.
RPE actively gets in the way of that process. It conditions lifters to anchor their training decisions to emotionally filtered signals, rather than observable feedback or mechanical improvements.
And even when technique is being coached, RPE muddies the waters: A rep that looks solid might feel like a 9, so the lifter backs off - missing the opportunity to reinforce a new pattern. A rep that feels “easy” might have obvious form breakdowns - but gets greenlit because it was “only RPE 7.”
In both cases, RPE adds noise where there should be clarity.
¹ For example, Wulf & Lewthwaite (2016) highlight that external attentional focus leads to more efficient movement patterns and enhanced learning compared to internal focus. This has been replicated across strength tasks, motor acquisition, and rehab settings.
4. Performance Indicators and Diagnostic Lifts
One of the smartest forms of autoregulation is pattern recognition - not perception.
Certain exercises consistently predict outcomes in the main lifts. A good coach knows these patterns. For example:
When your 3RM Safety Bar Squat climbs, your deadlift usually follows.
When your close-grip incline improves, your bench speed off the chest sharpens.
When your front-loaded stone trainer PRs, your atlas stone run gets faster.
These diagnostic lifts serve as embedded tests. You don’t have to test your competition lifts every week - you let these indicators tell the story. This is real autoregulation: recognising what your body is doing, what’s translating, and where your weaknesses still lie.
Even the better “emerging strategies” systems try to use these principles - watching trends across movements to spot adaptation windows. But the key difference is that this isn’t left up to gut instinct or post-set journaling. It’s based on what actually happened in training.
Progression isn’t theoretical. It’s in the numbers.
Together, these four systems give you something RPE never could:
Feedback based on expression, not emotion.
Structure without rigidity.
Adaptation with accountability.
Autoregulation isn’t about how things feel. It’s about how they work. And the systems that work best are the ones that keep you grounded in what your body does - not what your brain guesses.
RPE Doesn’t Deliver: Performance Trends and Comparative Data
Let’s shift gears. So far, we’ve broken down RPE’s theoretical flaws: it’s vague, it removes structure, and it harms motor learning. But here’s the knockout blow:
It underperforms.
For all the claims about personalisation and autoregulation, RPE-based training systems consistently lag behind more structured alternatives in actual strength development - especially for intermediate and advanced athletes.
And we’re not just talking anecdotes. There’s data.
Study: %1RM-Based Loading Beats RPE for Strength Gains
In a 2020 study published in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research,² trained lifters were split into two groups:
One followed a percentage-based progression (% of 1RM).
The other used RPE to self-select training loads.
After 8 weeks, the percentage-based group saw significantly greater strength gains in both squat and bench press. On average:
Squat: +10.2 kg in %RM vs. +5.6 kg in RPE group
Bench: +6.8 kg in %RM vs. +3.7 kg in RPE group
Why? Because structured progression drives exposure to higher intensities more reliably - and doesn’t depend on how the lifter “feels” today.
📈 VBT > RPE: Better Consistency, Higher Output
Velocity-based training (VBT) offers another direct comparison. Several studies³⁻⁴ have now shown that:
Lifters using bar speed thresholds make faster week-to-week progress
Force output remains higher, even in submaximal ranges
Training consistency improves due to immediate feedback and auto-calibrated loading
Compared to RPE groups, VBT athletes spend more time in productive intensity zones - not because they feel stronger, but because their performance output says they are.
And unlike RPE, velocity doesn’t lie. It doesn’t fluctuate based on mood or music. It’s a signal, not a sensation.
🧪 Case Example: RPE to Conjugate Transition
We’ve seen this countless times in coaching - but here’s a specific pattern:
One lifter ran a 12-week RPE-based bench program from a popular online coach. Final test: +2.5kg PR after three months. Mid-block progress was inconsistent, with multiple RPE 9 sets showing no load increase week-to-week.
After switching to a Conjugate-based setup with weekly Max Effort rotation and waved DE work:
First 4 weeks: +5kg PR on close grip incline
Week 6: matched prior bench PR with cleaner bar speed
Week 10: new paused bench PR at +7.5kg
Total gain: +10kg in 10 weeks, with fewer missed reps and better pattern retention
What changed? Structure, exposure, feedback. Not just “feel.”
RPE Creates a Submaximal Ceiling
All these patterns point to the same conclusion:
RPE-based training rarely pushes lifters to meaningful exposure at or above 90%
It stalls progression by misidentifying fatigue or mistaking difficulty for failure
It removes tension, volatility, and exposure to intensity - all of which are required to get stronger in maximal sports
Whether it’s weekly ME lifts, bar speed feedback, or percentage-based wave loading, structured systems outperform RPE almost every time.
And if your system gets outlifted by nearly every serious alternative? It doesn’t matter how scientific it sounds - it’s not doing the job.
Coaching Without Abdication: How to Reclaim Programming
Coaching isn’t about outsourcing decisions. It’s about owning them. The job of the coach is to build systems that function under stress, adapt to feedback, and develop the athlete over time - not to hand over the steering wheel and hope the lifter figures it out on their own.
RPE-heavy programming blurs that line. It places the weight of judgment onto the athlete mid-session, in real time, under load, and then calls that “autoregulation.” But what’s really happening is abdication - not just of load selection, but of long-term strategic thinking.
When a lifter is asked to make every important decision as they go - how much to load, how close to push, whether today counts as “on” or “off” - you’re not empowering them. You’re exhausting them. Decision fatigue creeps in. Uncertainty builds. Sessions lose their edge. And over time, the system collapses into a vague cycle of "did it feel heavy or not?"
That’s not coaching. That’s roulette.
The Role of the Coach Is Systems, Not Suggestions
Programming isn’t a buffet. It’s a system of interlocking decisions, built around progressive overload, motor pattern refinement, recovery capacity, and phase-specific objectives. It’s not about writing what might work that day - it’s about laying out a process that makes this week, next week, and the next block all serve a cohesive purpose.
Great coaches don’t just choose exercises and rep schemes. They anchor the work. They establish intent, clarify thresholds, calibrate effort through observable markers, and provide structure that holds up whether the lifter’s tired, excited, distracted, or dialled in.
Coaching means forecasting risk, planning constraints, and setting boundaries that allow for autoregulation within limits - not a free-for-all based on guesswork.
Responsibility Shouldn’t Be Punted
When the coach punts key decisions back to the athlete - “Just work to RPE 8 and see how it goes” - they’re shedding responsibility. If the lift stalls, they’ll say the lifter wasn’t accurate in their rating. If fatigue piles up, it’s because the lifter misjudged an earlier set. If performance drops, it’s framed as a flaw in autoregulation - not in the system.
But accountability flows uphill. If the coach claims the title, they own the outcome.
Coaches who reclaim programming responsibility don’t need their athletes to be perfect judges of perceived effort. They don’t need lifters to micromanage load selection. Instead, they build a system that responds to trendlines: bar speed, rep quality, rate of force development, recovery markers, movement breakdowns. These are things you can coach. Things you can fix. Not a number invented halfway through a set.
Clarity Is the Real Source of Trust
Athletes don’t get better by guessing. They get better when they understand the plan, can trust the system, and know their job is to show up and execute - not constantly second-guess how heavy to go today.
Structure doesn’t mean rigidity. It means orientation. It tells the lifter where they’re going, why the current week matters, and how today’s effort ties into next month’s total. That kind of clarity builds confidence. It creates adherence. And it frees the athlete to focus on what they’re actually supposed to be doing - lifting.
When the lifter has clarity, they stop flailing. When the coach has structure, they stop hiding behind guesswork. And when both parties take responsibility for their roles, progress becomes predictable again.
Where RPE Falls Apart in Practice
The theoretical flaws of RPE are one thing. But in applied settings - especially within strength sports - the system breaks down in ways that can’t be patched over by better guesswork or more athlete “education.” Below are several real-world contexts where RPE simply doesn’t hold up.
It Doesn’t Work for Technical Lifts
Olympic weightlifters rarely, if ever, use RPE as a meaningful training tool. And for good reason.
In lifts like the snatch and clean, bar speed and load are only part of the picture. Bar path precision, timing, turnover speed, catch mechanics, and foot placement all dictate success. A technically botched 90% lift might feel “light” because it was rushed and looped - but it would be judged a miss in comp. Meanwhile, a technically crisp 85% might feel heavier due to exacting form and tighter positions.
RPE ignores these distinctions. It tries to reduce a multi-factorial, skill-intensive lift down to a feeling. In reality, the more technical a movement is, the less helpful RPE becomes. That’s why serious weightlifters use bar speed tracking, positional diagnostics, and programmed percentage waves - not perceived effort.
It Amplifies Personality Biases
No two lifters perceive effort the same way. But the differences aren’t random - they often map directly onto personality traits.
Overthinkers, anxious lifters, and those prone to perfectionism tend to undershoot. They second-guess their own effort, fear technical breakdowns, and convince themselves that sets were “too slow” or “not perfect enough” to count.
Ego-driven lifters, adrenaline chasers, and people with poor self-assessment skills routinely overshoot. They chase PRs when they shouldn’t, mislabel 10s as 8s, and rely on hype to justify aggressive loading.
When RPE becomes the primary load management tool, these biases don’t get corrected - they get baked into the program. Instead of coaching them out, the system entrenches them.
🏋️♂️ Elite Lifters Don’t Use Raw RPE
It’s also worth noting that the best lifters in the world almost never rely on raw RPE ratings to drive their training decisions. Advanced athletes - especially those competing at international or professional level - use:
Bar speed and video feedback
Technical breakdown as an effort gauge
Long-term progress metrics
Instinct refined over thousands of reps
They know when to push and when to hold back - but they don’t need to attach a number to every set. Their autoregulation is grounded in pattern recognition and outcome tracking, not guesswork.
The idea that a lifter needs to label every effort from 1 to 10 is a crutch for imprecise systems, not a sign of sophistication.
🪨 Strongman: The RPE Graveyard
Nowhere is the absurdity of RPE more obvious than in Strongman.
How do you assign a meaningful RPE to a log clean & press for reps, where the clean alone can make or break the entire set?
How do you RPE a car deadlift when the frame whip, handle position, and foot angle change between competitions?
What does “RPE 9” even mean during a sandbag medley, when your heartrate is 190 bpm, your lungs are cooked, and you're sprinting between platforms on uneven ground?
In Strongman, the events are chaotic, externally loaded, and demand repeatable performance under fatigue and variance. Effort perception doesn’t track cleanly across implements or settings. The idea that you could regulate training through a subjective internal dial completely misses what the sport demands.
Real strongman programming deals in time, reps, distances, transitions, loading mechanics, fatigue resistance - not vibes.
A Brief Word on RPE as a Journaling Tool
There is one limited context where RPE may hold some value: post-set reflection.
A few experienced lifters use RPE after a session - not to select weight, but to log how a set felt relative to performance norms. Over time, that reflection might reveal recovery trends, fatigue markers, or shifts in work capacity.
But let’s be clear: That’s not programming. That’s analysis.
It doesn’t justify basing set-by-set decisions on internal perception. At best, it supplements real data. And at worst, it still leans on a highly fallible metric for insights that could be gathered more effectively through bar speed, rep quality, and actual load progression.
The Final Case Against RPE
Let’s bring it all into focus.
RPE didn’t start as a strength training tool. It was borrowed, bent, and rebranded. Along the way, it promised individualisation and precision - but delivered uncertainty and diffusion.
Its core issues remain unresolved:
Poor for Beginners
Newer lifters are the least equipped to judge how many reps they had left - yet they’re often the ones told to rely on RPE the most. They confuse discomfort with difficulty, mistake bar speed for failure, and rarely build the confidence to push when it matters. What they need is direction, not discretion.
Misused by Coaches
Too many coaches now lean on RPE as a way to offload decision-making. Instead of building adaptive, responsive programs, they hand lifters vague targets and call it “freedom.” That’s not coaching - it’s management at best, and negligence at worst. If your only instruction is “hit RPE 8,” then the plan isn’t a plan. It’s a shrug.
Fails Under Fatigue
The more tired you are, the worse your perception gets. In sport, in lifting, in life. If your system relies on accurate self-assessment - especially when you’re exhausted, stressed, or under pressure - then your system has a flaw. RPE doesn’t teach you how to adapt under fatigue. It hides behind it.
Illusory Precision
An RPE 7.5 with a bar speed of 0.38 m/s and two reps in reserve means… what, exactly? What does it do for your training trajectory? Most lifters couldn’t replicate their own RPE calls week to week, let alone use them to create meaningful load progression. It feels scientific - until you look closer. Then it’s just a number and a feeling, loosely tethered to nothing.
The Better Way Forward
If you want true autoregulation, use tools that respond to performance:
Max Effort rotation: Adaptive intensity built into the lift variation.
Feedback-based systems: Bar speed, movement quality, and sharpness.
Structured progression: Waved percentages, diagnostic indicators, clear targets.
These systems don’t just react to the lifter - they shape them. They teach pacing, patience, intensity, and resilience. You’ll know when to push, when to pivot, and when to pull back - not because it “felt like a 9,” but because your training gave you the signals.
So here’s the final word:
Train harder. Smarter. With purpose - not perception.
² Helms et al., 2020. “Effects of RPE vs. %1RM-Based Loading in Resistance Training.” ³ Orange et al., 2019. “Velocity-Based vs. Traditional Loading on Strength Development.” ⁴ Banyard et al., 2021. “Monitoring Load Using VBT: Effects on Adaptation and Performance.”
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