Hello,

I've been following this interesting discussion from the background for
the last couple of days. However, since Stephen nicely mentioned some
of my work with Session RPE, and since I didn't see Coggan's
presentation at ACSM (too busy running around with administrative
stuff), I thought I would add my $0.02.

Some of our work with session RPE was indeed 'arbitrary', in that the 30
minute time period after the training session is about the time it takes
to have a shower and get back to where we can ask the subject how it
(the workout) felt. As an aside, I wonder how many other things we do
have a similar, practical logistics, basis. A student named Favil Singh
(one of Mike McGuigan's students in Australia) has actually looked at
the change in the session RPE in a serial way following a resistance
training bout. It changes quite noticeably during the first 20 minutes,
but seems stable after that. We're at the point of sending in a revised
manuscript with this data, so hopefully it will be published before too
much longer.

I am presenting data at the AACVPR (cardiac rehab) meeting in Sept,
where we compare the HR zone method with the session RPE. We have data
on 20 subjects, each providing 30-40 training sessions with ventilatory
and respiratory compensation threshold established HR zones (as
suggested by Lucia) as well as session RPE. The workouts were
spontaneous training, ranging from 20 minute 'fitness bouts' for 5 hour
rides in serious cyclists. As you know, TRIMP scores from such data are
well correlated, but are numerically different because there are only 3
HR zones, but 10 RPE based zones. Anyway, using the session RPE derived
TRIMP score as the criterion score, we used a simple multiple regression
to try to establish weighting exponents for time in HR zones that would
yield comparable TRIMP scores. The final equation was:
TRIMPS from sRPE=4.16*zone 1 minutes + 8.29*zone 2 minutes + 15.99*zone
3 minutes -97.3
The R2 was 0.908 with a SEE of 171.
It's not a perfect fit, the SEE is larger than I would prefer, but to
Stephen's point about weighting exponents it suggests that if a minute
in Zone 1 is worth 1 point, then a minute in zone 2 is worth 1.99
points, and a minute in zone 3 is worth 3.89 points. This is exactly
the kind of 'progression' of exponent that Stephen has talked about
before.

I will also recognize at the outset that using sRPE as the criterion
score has it's own problems, but lacking a better criterion it's what we
choose.

Lastly, I did not see Coggan's presentation. A method of anchoring
based only on maximal power output is a lot simpler than having to do
gas exchange tests. In that regard, Stephen and I are on exactly the
same page....if multiple methods work, simple is better (I think that's
Occam's hairbrush, rather than his razor). Is Coggan's method published
somewhere? If so, I missed it and would be glad to see it laid out in
more detail. Anyone have a reference, or better yet a pdf?

Carl Foster, Ph.D., FACSM
Professor of Exercise and Sport Science
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse