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RPE

6/3/2025

 
Podcast Version
(With NotebookLM AI)

Feel It to Win It: Why RPE is Your Most Underrated Performance Tool

You've got the tech: power meters, GPS watches, heart rate straps — maybe even a ring that tells you how you slept. But let’s have a real moment: if you can't feel your effort, all that data is just noise.

We’re living in a golden age of metrics — but we're also dangerously close to losing the most powerful tool we’ve got: the ability to listen to our own body. Rate of Perceived Effort (RPE) is the most honest and underused performance skill in your arsenal.
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Why does it Matter?

In endurance sport and in life, we’re drowning in data but starving for instinct.
Executives and athletes alike are tracking everything, sleep cycles, recovery scores, training loads, stress levels. And yet, the most adaptable performers? They can call their effort by feel. No screens. No graphs. Just raw, built-in wisdom.

RPE is your internal compass. It cuts through the clutter, forces you to pay attention, and gives you the ability to make smart decisions under pressure, whether that’s in a race or a business deal that’s going sideways.

What Is RPE?

Rate of Perceived Effort is how hard something feels. That’s it. But don’t let the simplicity fool you. It’s deadly accurate when you train it.

Elite athletes use RPE as a reality check:
  • When heart rate lags behind pace in hot conditions
  • When power drops but you feel good
  • When numbers don’t match how your gut feeling is trying to tell you.

It’s how champions avoid overreaching, adjust mid-race, and stay in the flow state.

How can you build your RPE Muscle?

You don’t need to throw away your tech, but you do need to stop being a slave to it. Start simple. Layer it in. Feel the difference.

Try this:
  • Blind intervals: Train without watching the numbers, a “naked run”, then check how close you were afterwards. It builds awareness and control and improves your gut feeling and its reliability.
  • Post-session reflection: Journal how the session felt, not just what the data said.
  • Use language: Give your effort a number (1–10), then describe it. Build your emotional and physical vocabulary.

What else is it helpful for?

Here’s the kicker: this goes way beyond sport.
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Learning to tune into your effort teaches emotional regulation. It prevents burnout. It lets you spot fatigue before it becomes a problem, whether you're training for Kona or leading a high-stakes project under pressure.

Think of RPE like executive intuition. The best leaders aren’t led by spreadsheets alone, they know when to push, when to pivot, and when to pull back. Same rules apply in sport.

Conclusion?

Stop outsourcing your awareness. Start trusting your body again. Data is helpful, but it’s not the truth. You are! Learn to trust yourself by training your feeling based on data, so that you are not depending on it anymore.

Don’t forget. It is the small daily steps that turn into positive habits, patterns, and beliefs ingrained in body and mind. Enjoy the journey!

BONUS TIPS COACH GLENN:

People that regularly read my blogs know I love Locomotor Respiratory Coupling (LRC) Training. A great way to train your RPE feeling is using your breathing cycles to focus on how your Perceived Effort of Breathing. If for instance you are trying to run in zone 2, you should easily be able to breathe 4 steps in and 3 steps out, if you can’t keep this rhythm because it feels to much effort, you are probably running to fast for zone 2. It is a bit more accurate than just perception.

Sometimes your brain limits your understanding of what you are capable off. For instance the barrier of the 5min/km. Sometimes your mind is blocking your body. Last year, because of a faulty watch. Coach Glenn ran only on LRC 3/2 feeling and broke this mental barrier, because his watch was not there to remind him. Resulting in his fastest half marathon in a 70.3 Ironman.

Share this blog/newsletter with your friends, family, and colleagues who are also pursuing a sportier and healthier lifestyle!
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    Coach Glenn

    * Founder and Head Coach GR&AT Endurance Training * Ironman Certified Coach
    * TriDot Coach

    * Ironman Kona Finisher 2022
    * Ironman AWA GOLD 2022
    * Winner 50+ age group
    ​XC Challenge Copenhagen

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