When you post an exercise update you are asked for an overall difficulty. That is a rating of perceived exertion, or RPE. It is how your coach knows whether the weight on the page was the right weight.
The six levels
- Very light effort (RPE 1–2): easy and effortless, fully at ease.
- Light effort (RPE 3–4): light and energising, with steady breathing.
- Moderately challenging (RPE 5–6): manageable, but it takes focus and effort.
- Challenging (RPE 7–8): tough and demanding, close to what you can do.
- Very demanding (RPE 9): intense effort, near your maximum.
- Maximum effort (RPE 10): all-out effort, with nothing left.
A useful way to pick
Ask how many more reps you could have done. Roughly two or three left in the tank is challenging; one left is very demanding; nothing left at all is maximum. If you finished the set thinking you could have done five more, you were somewhere in the middle regardless of how heavy the weight sounded.
Why honesty beats bravado
There is a strong pull towards rating everything as hard, because hard feels like it means you worked. It does not help you. A coach reading RPE 9 on a weight that was actually comfortable will keep the load where it is, and you will spend a month lifting something too light.
The reverse costs more. Under-reporting a genuinely hard session gets you a heavier one next week, and that is how people get hurt. The rating is not a score, and nobody is marking it.
The same weight is not the same effort
RPE moves with sleep, food, stress and how the rest of the session went. The same 80 kg can be a 6 on Monday and a 9 on Friday, and that is information rather than inconsistency. Rate the set you just did, not the set you did last week.
If it was unusually hard for a reason (a bad night, a long day, coming back from illness), put that in the notes. A high rating with an explanation tells your coach something completely different from a high rating on its own.