If you train at Ritual, you’ve probably seen a version of this RPE chart on the wall:

It’s called an RPE scale, which stands for Rate of Perceived Exertion. Sure, there is some good research behind RPE scales, but our version is designed for 2 things: to help you build awareness, and to improve communication and personalization.

Awareness
Human beings are complex creatures, and busy people live complex lives. It is unrealistic to expect yourself to be able to perform at your best all the time. You can save yourself the frustration of ‘underperforming’ by learning to listen to your body, and by adjusting the intensity and complexity of your workouts accordingly. With the right awareness, you can simply shift your focus to something more purposeful. Your intention becomes clear: work to elicit an appropriate response through an appropriate training stimulus. In other words, you can learn to do what you’re ready to handle today. Building a greater awareness of how you can approach workouts differently and still get great results is helpful for anyone. Whether you’re new to exercise or smashing it 6 times per week, this is a great place to start figuring out how to encourage consistent training and consistent improvement, and reduce the chances of overuse injuries and fatigue. The RPE scale is one of many tools we use to try and subtly build in a little education so you get the most out of your ritual.

*Pic reference – A Primer on Pushing Hard

Personalization
Depending on how you feel, what your current fitness level is, what your eating habits are like, and your training frequency, amongst other things, there are quite a number of ways that you can manipulate your workouts to suit your needs. On a basic level, a coach can give you quick tips on how to approach today’s session if you give him or her some information on how you’re feeling before a session. On a deeper level, this is a great starting point to dig deeper when you get a chance to talk to a coach after a session or during a quarterly test. Helping to explore how you can tweak your approach to optimize your results is the kind of thing that the coaches love to do. And yes, we’re always mindful of your time, so we make sure to keep nuggets of advice bite-sized. Clients who’ve been with us for a while have found that the little tweaks can bring tremendous benefit. It takes a while to figure out the balance that works for you, and to learn to manoeuvre around the obstacles life throws at you, and getting advice from a coach simply helps you accelerate the learning process.

So if you’re curious, just ask!

Be Brave,

Ian