A person's self-rated sense of how hard they are working during exercise.
RPE is a subjective scale (commonly Borg's 6–20 or the 0–10 CR10 scale) used to quantify exercise intensity from the exerciser's own perception of effort, integrating cues like breathlessness, muscular fatigue, and heart rate. It correlates reasonably well with objective markers such as heart rate and blood lactate, but agreement varies by population, training status, and exercise mode, so it should be treated as a useful adjunct rather than a precise physiological measure.
This guide was auto-drafted and is pending editorial review.