Autoregulation: The Forgotten Training Tool

If you are going to achieve a goal, a plan is a must. Fitness goals are no different. You need a roadmap to get you to where you want to go. Exercises, sets, reps, and intensities are all cornerstones of a solid fitness plan. Without them, you are just aimlessly working out, not training. 
But once you start on the plan, you need to be able to gauge how the plan is going. The numbers on the page are simply based on theories and goals. But it is hard to tell if they are truly helping your progress. Are you really in step with what the plan is trying to achieve or are you too far ahead or behind?
To make things harder, there are days that aren’t supposed to be taken to the limit. Training isn’t high octane all the time. Sometimes you need to bring it down. Sometimes, workouts fall somewhere in the “moderate” intensity. So, what is moderate? How do you determine if you are in the training sweet spot for those days?
Luckily, there is a tool you can use to help gauge how you are doing: Autoregulation. 
Autoregulation is a concept that takes into account how you are “feeling” about the training session as a whole or the individual exercises. Originally, this concept was developed to look at endurance training and running. The “Broge'' scale was developed as a way for runners to gauge how they were performing during their workouts. This scale is sometimes referred to as “Rate of Perceived Exertion” or “RPE”.
It is a scale between six and 20. Interestingly, these numbers correlate closely with heart rate. Resting, or extremely low intensity, heart rate sits pretty close to 60 and caps out about 200 (for the average person). 
The scale has since been adapted for lifters on a scale of one to ten, Despite this adaptation, it still carries the same name: “RPE”.  One, obviously being the easiest of easy and 10 being the absolute limit. As you work harder and harder, whether in intensity or in repetitions, the number climbs up the scale. 
This scale has evolved one more time to a slightly different concept, “Repetitions in Reserve” or “RIR”. This scale gauges your effort differently than the others. While many of them focus on how hard you think you are working at the current moment, this one looks at how many more repetitions you think you can do. Similar measurement, different angle. 
As you would expect, there is a relationship between the two lifting scales. As you move up the scale of RPE you should move down the scale of RIR. 
As a quick reference, if you are working at about an 8 for RPE you should be at about a two on the RIR scale. Nine is a one. Ten is a zero. 
There is a caveat, though. You have to be 100% honest with yourself. Do not write down an RIR of 2 if you struggled to get your last rep. It will come back to haunt you when you (or your coach) go back to your logbook to progress your workouts.
Using RPE and RIR in Your Workout Plan
With a grasp of what these tools are, they can now be used to help assess and progress your training. 
First and foremost, you can track if you are adapting with the program. If you are following a standard program, you are going to notice that workload is gradually increasing. If your adaptations are on pace, you should feel about the same RIR and RPE week after week (at least in the beginning) for the same rep and set scheme. As you start to notice your rating changing and clustering at a new set of numbers (increases in RPE and decreases in RIR), it could indicate you are starting to lose step with the program and might be time to change things up a bit.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in a world of restless sleep, fluctuating fueling opportunities, and a myriad of other stresses that directly affect our training. When those days are really hitting you, your RPE and RIR are going to fluctuate down a little.
On the reverse, there are going to be days that feel extra easy. For whatever reason, the stars align, the iron gods smile down on you and you crush your workout. You gain an extra rep or two in your RIR and your RPE rating drops significantly. 
In either of these cases, you now have a measure of how the workout plan is going. Once you collect a couple weeks of notes, you can truly see how your adaptation is lining up with the program. If you are consistently marking your RIR as one to zero reps and your RPE as nine and ten, you are probably not adapting in pace with your program. 
On the other hand, if you are consistently rating your training on the lower ends (RIR three to five and RPE five to seven) you are either not getting the intensity that you need to adapt or you are adapting to the program faster than intended (a luxury most noobies enjoy and veterans dream of).
With this information, you can increase the intensity or decrease it as necessary. This will help prevent injury and continue to move you in the direction of your goals more efficiently. 
Autoregulation can also help you gauge your workouts during individual sessions. When you get about halfway into your sets, take a minute to see how you are feeling. If you are crushing your day, and you know that you are supposed to be working at about an eight but feel that you are closer to a seven, add about 2.5% to 5% to your next set. If you feel like you are getting buried and are working at about a nine or a ten, take it off. Just make notes of any adjustments to the plan. 
Wrap Up
When it comes to training and achieving a goal, the more tools you have at your disposal the better. Reps, sets, and intensities are always going to be the foundation of good training. But nuances like autoregulation are going to be the small details that help guide the plan to realization more efficiently. Add this one small data point, and watch the trajectory of your plan align fully centered on your fitness goals.