A few weeks ago I was talking about recovery.
In that post, I said, "To become stronger, fitter, faster, and better versions of ourselves we need to put our body through some stress to start the adaptation process."
Soooo, are you putting your body through enough stress when training? 🤔
When training it is easy to do one of two things. Go "too hard" or "too easy".
Too hard: We manage to get through the whole training but we have done too much and won't have the energy to train for a few days. We have started the adaptation process but it will take us so long to recover.
Too easy: This probably speaks for itself. You don't feel much when training. You just move... The adaptation process won't start.
Now, both have their purpose!
Let's say you run a marathon as fast as you can. That is more than likely a "Too hard" training. Well done for completing the marathon by the way. 😀
You then need to do "Too easy" trainings the rest of the week to try and recover from your "Too hard" effort.
But we can't continue week on week like this... Training like this will get us nowhere soon.
We need to hit a sweet spot.
Where we have just hard enough training that the adaptation process starts that we can repeat 3-4 times a week.
This is where RPE comes in.
Why & What is RPE?
RPE = Rate of Perceived Exertion. (We love a good abbreviation!😀)
This is a scale from 1-10.
1-2 = Hardly any exertion. Something you could do for hours and hours and hours and hours...
10 = Extremely hard exertion. You can't talk and can only do this for a short period of time.
The sweet spot is 7-8. Where exertion is borderline uncomfortable. However, you can say a full sentence and can keep going.
This 7-8 RPE, coupled with the odd RPE 9-10 is the sweet spot.
We have started the adaptation process. We can recover pretty fast from it.
This means we can keep going, week after week. Month after month. Becoming stronger, fitter, faster, and better versions of ourselves. Yes please! 💪
If you have been in a Kruunisactive class. You have probably heard us coaches say RPE. Next time you train, really aim for that 7-8 effort. If you are unsure... we will let you know.
If you haven't been in a class... come and experience it. 👇
Comments