Ratings of perceived exertion

Abstract

The general aim of using rating of perceived exertion (RPE) is to quantify an individual’s perception of exertion as a means of determining or regulating exercise intensity. The RPE is commonly used to complement physiological measures of exercise during graded exercise testing and prescribe intensity levels in healthy and clinical populations. On the basis that RPE alone may be used to regulate exercise intensity, perceptually regulated exercise testing was proposed as an alternative method of estimating maximal exercise capacity and training status. Psychosocial factors can influence up to 30% of the variability in an RPE score. In both Borg’s RPE and CR-10 scale, semantic verbal anchors and their corresponding numbers have been aligned to accommodate for the curvilinear nature of human physiological responses. The horizontal distance between increments is successively reduced to create equidistant intervals on the vertical axis, which allows for linear analyses and interpretation of RPE and other data.