Your ‘RPE’ is all that matters

A spin on RPE. We all know ‘Rate of perceived exertion, mainly used in the gym and on training programmes with a scale of 1-10 it used to gauge effort levels put into a rep or a set of reps, 1 being easy, 10 being to failure and more often or not around ‘8’ being the magic number.

But what if there is a bigger picture or scale that we can all use it on? What is RPE could be the main metric for everything we do? What if your personal RPE outweighed any external results?

Race times, race positions, run time, max lifts, the amount of hours we work in a day, how tired we are or how stressed we are, are all measure on personal RPE before the usual comparable external metrics. This doesn’t mean i think external metrics should be invalidated on any stretch of the imagination, race times or run times and positions should always be celebrated.

But what if the amount of effort you put in was celebrated or used as a reference point just as much?

Don’t let comparison be the thief of your joy, your exhaustion or your celebrations.

I speak to countless people every week about training plans, race results, running distances, the amount of work we do and something a hear a lot stuck with me. Due to my work load and training schedule i hear comments like this ‘you worked 12 hours today in a manual labour job and then you ran 15km and i only worked 8 hours in an office job then ran 5km so i cant be as tired as you’. The way i look at it is if we have both done all the work at our personal and respective ‘8 RPE’ then we have both achieved the exact same that day and we both have the right to be as tired one and other. The amount of hours we worked, the distance we ran, the pace we ran, the weights we lifted regardless of external measurements if our efforts where equal then the should be celebrated the same.

Now i think the same concept applies to racing and especially Hyrox, we will use person ‘A’ and person ‘B’ and bare in mind race day RPE is generally higher and this is for illustration purposes only…

Person A works for 3 months at ‘8 RPE’ and on race day runs a 60 minute Hyrox at at their maximal effort of 10. Smashed it. Person B works for 3 months at ‘8 RPE’ and on the day runs a 90 minute Hyrox at their maximal effort of 10. Smashed it. External metrics would clearly state that ‘A’ had a much better race. Both racers put their all in the the training and the race day so therefore both should be celebrated just as much. Obviously im not here to compare race times, external achievements or say anyone is better than the other just simply saying that if you put the correct efforts in, that should be measured first.

Don’t let comparison be the thief of your joy, your exhaustion or your celebrations.

Work at your ‘RPE’ and celebrate it.