Perceived Exertion Scales Attest to Both Intensity and Exercise Duration

Abstract

The present purpose was to study the relationships between perceived exertion (RPE, ETL) and exercise duration for all-out runs eliciting vVO2 max. 12 endurance-trained men performed three exhausting exercises on an indoor track. The first test was an incremental exercise to measure their maximal oxygen uptake (VO2 max), the velocity associated with VO2 max (vVO2 max), the velocity of the lacate concentration threshold (vLT) and the velocity delta 50 (vdelta50: the velocity halfway between vVO2 max and vLT). The second and third tests were a constant load all-out run at vVO2 max and vdelta50 to measure the time to exhaustion at these intensities (tlim vVO2 max and tlim vdelta50, respectively). vdelta50 corresponded to 90.1 +/- 2.5% vVO2 max; tlim vVO2 max and tlim vdelta50 were equal to 286 +/- 71 sec. and 547+/- 157 sec., respectively. For a same given relative time (%tlim), athletes perceived exercise as harder and felt that they could endure less for vVO2 max than vdelta50. When subjects began to perceive exercise as "hard" (RPE = 15), they had run for only 36.4 +/- 26.8%tlim at vVO2 max, whereas they had run for 46.1 +/- 15.7 %tlim at vdelta50. These results indicate that RPE and ETL scales were a combined subjective estimation of both intensity and exercise duration for all-out runs at 90 and 100% vVO2 max. Therefore, this scale could be used to assess duration as well as intensity of exercise for the practical application in sport. Moreover, it could be suggested that exercise duration can be prescribed as a function of perceived exertion for healthy normal people. Consequently, perceived exertion could be an important tool to individualize the prescription of a training program.

The rate of increase in rating of perceived exertion predicts the duration of exercise to fatigue at a fixed power output in different environmental conditions

“…This Values are means ± SD for seven subjects. *Significantly different from H65, P \ 0.05 has previously been shown during cycling exercise (Garcin et al 1998;Garcin and Billat 2001;Nethery 2002) including time trials of maximum effort (Joseph et al 2008), during walking and running exercise (Horstman et al 1979), during exercise in the heat (Nybo and Nielsen 2001a) and during exercise with altered muscle glycogen concentrations (Baldwin et al 2003;Noakes 2004). According to the original concept of Borg (1982), this linear increase in RPE would indicate that the brain perceives that the exercise is becoming progressively more demanding, even though the work rate remains constant.…”

“…In this case, the RPE will rise linearly (Nethery 2002) to reach maximum levels at exercise completion, whether at volitional fatigue (Eston et al 2005(Eston et al , 2006(Eston et al , 2007(Eston et al , 2008Garcin et al 1998Garcin et al , 1999Garcin and Billat 2001;Garcin et al 2003;Horstman et al 1979;Morgan and Borg 1976;Noakes 2004), or at the finish of self-paced time-trial performances (Albertus et al 2005;Garcin et al 2003;Joseph et al 2008;Tucker et al 2004). As a result changes in perception of exertion measured early during exercise may be a sensitive predictor of exhaustion time (Eston et al 2005(Eston et al , 2006(Eston et al , 2007(Eston et al , 2008Garcin and Billat 2001;Horstman et al 1979;Morgan and Borg 1976).…”

RPE-lactate dissociation during extended cycling

“…While not fully understood, it is reasonable to assume that ''RPE drift'' results due to a coupling of time-dependent physiological changes (potentially associated with cardiovascular drift) and exertional symptoms detected through sensory pathways and reflected with considerable precision in subjective estimations. Recently Garcin and Billat (2001) showed that RPE responses attest to intensity as well as duration of exercise. Their design utilized high relative (to VO 2 max) running velocities resulting in extremely brief ($5-9 min) bouts.…”

“…Because previous research designs have principally examined shorter duration steady workload bouts, this study investigated the correspondence of perceptual estimations of exertion with blood lactate and HR during 60-min cycling sessions. Considering lactate kinetics (Stallknecht et al 1998) and RPE responses (Garcin and Billat 2001), it was hypothesized that a dissociation between perceptual measures and blood lactate would occur.…”

Self-regulation of exercise intensity by estimated time limit scale

“…These scales are complementary tools because the RPE scale is concerned with the current status of the subject (how hard he/she feels the exercise currently is) whereas the ETL scale deals with a subjective prediction of how long the current exercise intensity can be maintained. The concurrent validity of the ETL scale has been studied through the HR (Garcin et al 1999) and exercise relative intensity in various populations (Garcin et al 1999(Garcin et al , 2003(Garcin et al , 2004Garcin and Billat 2001). Moreover, the reliability of the ETL scale has been established during incremental and constant velocity runs in physical education students (Garcin et al 2003) and during field tests in trained male runners (Coquart and Garcin 2007).…”