Brady Holmer

Most people don't really know what that is.

And so there are other ways to measure intensities and use these zones.

One way is just your rating of perceived exertion or RPE.

And this is just a subjective measure of how hard you think you're exercising.

And this is typically on a six to 20 scale.

Now that might seem kind of weird for people like, oh, why is it not one to 10?

One to 10 is kind of typical.

What people use like, how hard is this scale?

But

It's called the Borg RPE scale.

And the six to 20 is essentially because initially the theory behind that scale was that you would just add a zero to whatever your RPE was, and that would correspond to your heart rate.

So say average person has a maximal heart rate of around 200.

If I give you an RPE of 18, that means my heart rate's probably around 180, which is a fairly high intensity.

Whereas maybe my RPE right now is a six,

Maybe my heart rate's 60.

That's like a resting heart rate.

So that's kind of the idea behind that scale.

So people kind of can understand what that means and why we're doing six to 20 versus one to 10.

Another way is to use the talk test.

And that's essentially just like, are you able to do a full conversation, barely get out words or not talk at all?