A New Way to Gauge How Hard You’re Working Out

As part of the trend toward making fitness simpler, experts now say most people need not take their pulses during workouts. Traditionally, exercisers have been encouraged to calculate their target heart rates and check their pulses periodically to make sure they’re working at the recommended intensity.

But many people find this a pain in the neck. That’s why another, simpler method of determining exercise intensity is gaining acceptance. Called “rate of perceived exertion,” RPE is also known as the Borg scale, after its Swedish creator.

Once used primarily in scientific laboratories, the scale runs from 6 to 20, with 6 equaling “rest” and 20 “extreme effort.” When you’re walking, biking, jogging or doing any aerobic activity, you rate how hard you perceive that you’re working on the 6-to-20 scale. For most people, an intensity level between 12 and 16 is probably in the right range.

While even mild activity can confer some health benefits, a 9 or 10 may be too light to get the maximum cardiovascular benefit, while 18 to 20 is too hard for most people and increases the likelihood of cardiac or orthopedic problems.

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Another way to judge how hard you’re working is to tune in to your body’s signals. You’re in the moderate range when:

* Your breathing rate is up, but you can still carry on a conversation.

* Your heart rate is elevated, but your heart isn’t racing.

* You are working but not straining.

* You can recover within 10 minutes of exercise. If you do not feel normal again within 10 minutes of stopping exercise, you’re pushing yourself too much.

While rating exercise intensity by RPE is generally fine for healthy adults, it may be inadvisable for people with medical conditions, such as heart disease, where a more precise knowledge of heart rate is important for safety.

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If you have a chronic medical condition, discuss your exercise intensity with your physician. Also, be sure to check with a physician before starting a program of vigorous activity if you are a male older than 40 or a female older than 50 who has been sedentary, or if you have two or more risk factors for heart disease (smoking, family history, diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension).

It’s a good idea for all exercisers to know the target heart rate zone, especially when trying a new form of exercise. (Subtract your age from 220 to get your maximum heart rate. Your target heart rate zone will be 55% to 90% of your maximum heart rate.)

Once you know how it feels to be in your target range, you can use RPE to re-create that feeling.

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Carol Krucoff writes a column on health and fitness issues for the Washington Post.