What About Weight Selection?

Hi again everyone, today I’m here to talk about something that can feel very daunting to some and will often cause folks to just abandon their programs or maybe not take them as seriously, weight selection. For me, I’m not huge on taking percentages of a certain person’s ‘max lift’ or the like. I’m also not one that’s going to be testing out right single rep max lifts. I think there is absolutely a time and a place to use them, certain athletes and populations truly need something like that, but that’s not a population I deal with much.
 
My preferred method for selecting weight is going by what many coaches refer to as RPE or Rate of Perceived Exertion or Rate of Perceived Effort. I’ll try to explain as briefly as I can. The scale works on 1 – 10, 10 being maximum effort, I usually say the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life and 1 being so minimal effort it’s passive, usually I refer to this as being asleep. The target for this is to be around a 7 or an 8, as it’s been best explained, that means if you do the given number of reps written down on your program, you should have 2 reps or so left in the tank, preferably not more and certainly not less. Example, if I were to have Goblet Squats programmed for 8 reps, I should feel like I could do up to 10 by the time I perform rep number 8, but not more, with the weight I have. Make sense mostly?
 

Here’s why I prefer this over percentages. There is this wild thing that most people have to deal with called life. When folks walk into 250 Cypress street, depending on what life has thrown at them, what felt like a 7 RPE on their Dumbbell bench press last week, might feel close to a 9 this week. With so many factors going into someone’s energy and ability levels for their workouts, sleep, stress, food, water, etc..., it allows folks to meet themselves where they are at for the day.
 
My hope today, is that the next time you walk into your workout, if that Kettlebell RDL feels like you could do 1000 of them, this system will help turn on that light bulb to say, “oh I should increase the weight”. Course, the same goes for if the weight on your Lunges is so heavy you can’t do a single rep more once you’ve reached the desired number of reps, that switch flips and says, “I definitely need to go down on weight for these”. There are always exceptions, as most of you know, it depends on is a pretty common answer to most questions and problems, this is no different. Thank you very much for stopping by and giving your time today, please feel free to reach out with questions or comments, have a great rest of your week.