Session RPE is one of the simplest and best studied ways to measure internal load: how hard each session was for each player. It was described by Carl Foster's group [1] and today it is one of the most widely used methods for monitoring load, with or without GPS.
What sRPE is
RPE stands for rating of perceived exertion. After each session, the player rates how hard it was, and that rating is combined with the session's duration to give the session load.
It measures the player's response (internal load), not what they did (external load). That is why it complements GPS: two players can run the same distance and experience very different sessions.
Why it works
Perceived effort pulls together everything the body is feeling: intensity, accumulated fatigue, heat, how well the player slept. In young football players, sRPE load correlated between r = 0.50 and 0.85 with three heart-rate-based methods [2]. A later review concluded that it is a valid and practical day-to-day method, as long as it is collected under the right conditions [3].
What it lets you see
With sRPE from every session, the coaching staff can see:
- Each player's load, session by session and week by week.
- Sudden changes compared with what that player has been doing.
- Monotonous weeks, with no easy days to recover. Foster proposed monotony and strain indicators to spot them, and linked their peaks to more episodes of illness in athletes [4].
- Whether the session was what was planned: a session meant to be easy that players experience as very hard says something about the drill, the context or the state of the group.
Why it is hard to do well by hand
The idea is simple; keeping it going is not:
- You have to ask every player, privately and always at the same time, after every session, match and gym workout.
- You have to chase the players who did not answer: a week with gaps is not the real week.
- You have to work out each player's indicators and have them ready before the staff meeting, not days later.
With a spreadsheet and a WhatsApp group, this is the part that breaks down first.
sRPE with CTBrain
- Each player reports their RPE in the app after every session, privately and always on the same scale.
- The coaching staff sets a target RPE (minimum and maximum) when planning each session.
- Load, monotony, strain and ACWR are worked out automatically for every player.
- The reporting rate shows who has not answered, so the data is complete.
To see how sRPE fits with everything else, read the guide to training load monitoring.
References
- Foster C, Florhaug JA, Franklin J, et al. A new approach to monitoring exercise training. J Strength Cond Res. 2001;15(1):109–115. doi:10.1519/00124278-200102000-00019
- Impellizzeri FM, Rampinini E, Coutts AJ, Sassi A, Marcora SM. Use of RPE-based training load in soccer. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2004;36(6):1042–1047. doi:10.1249/01.MSS.0000128199.23901.2F
- Haddad M, Stylianides G, Djaoui L, Dellal A, Chamari K. Session-RPE method for training load monitoring: validity, ecological usefulness, and influencing factors. Front Neurosci. 2017;11:612. doi:10.3389/fnins.2017.00612
- Foster C. Monitoring training in athletes with reference to overtraining syndrome. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1998;30(7):1164–1168. doi:10.1097/00005768-199807000-00023