Borg RPE Scale Explained: Ratings, Chart, and Training

Understanding how hard you're working during exercise is fundamental to training smarter and reaching your goals. The Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) Scale provides a scientifically validated way to quantify effort based on how your body feels. Below we'll detail exactly what the Borg RPE Scale is, how it works, and how it can be used as a valuable training tool.

What is the Borg rating of perceived exertion scale?

How do you know if you're working out too hard, or not pushing yourself hard enough? A metric commonly used by coaches, athletes and trainers to measure the intensity of exercise is the Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) Scale, or Borg Scale for short.

Swedish professor Gunnar Borg first introduced the concept of perceived exertion in the 1960s. Perceived exertion is simply how hard you believe your body is working at any given time. Borg continued to study it through the 1970s, and in 1982 he published a paper containing his RPE scale.

Here is the original RPE chart that appeared in that paper:

How the Borg scale works

The Borg Scale asks you to rate your level of perceived exertion during any activity from 6-20, with 6 being no effort at all and 20 being your all-out max. Your RPE is defined by several things you experience while exercising, including increased heart rate, a higher respiratory rate, sweating and overall fatigue. Focus on the combination of everything and disregard any one specific factor, like pain in a joint or muscle.

Why is it 6-20? Borg developed his RPE scale to represent an estimate of what your heart rate is when you multiply the number by 10. For example, if you go for a light jog and rate your exertion a 13, your heart rate is likely in the neighborhood of 130.

The original vs. the modified RPE scale

While the original 6-20 scale is designed to correlate with heart rate, you may also see a modified 0-10 RPE scale. This simpler version, sometimes called the Borg CR10 scale, rates effort from 0 (no exertion) to 10 (maximal exertion).

The 0-10 scale is often used in clinical settings or for strength training, where the direct link to heart rate is less critical than gauging overall muscular effort and fatigue. It provides a more intuitive way to communicate how an activity feels, without needing to estimate heart rate.

How to use the Borg scale for training

Borg's RPE scale was not intended simply for athletics. It can be useful in occupational health and safety for workers performing physical labor. However, it has become most popular in the fields of sports science and sports medicine, where it's used to help put together training regimens.

Here's an example of how an athlete might plan a week's worth of exertion while training for a big event. In this case, Monday and Thursday are the rest days, with Friday being the day to really push it:

What makes the Borg Scale particularly effective for monitoring exercise intensity is that it's a relative scale applied specifically to you. To measure your training progress, use the Borg Scale to gauge how much effort it takes to perform a certain workout or activity. As your fitness improves, your RPE for that activity will decrease, a sign you can make your workout more challenging.

From perceived exertion to quantified Strain

The Borg scale is a foundational tool for learning to listen to your body. It builds the valuable skill of self-awareness in training. WHOOP builds on this same principle, using a proprietary algorithm to translate objective physiological data from your heart into a precise Strain score.

While RPE is your subjective feeling of effort, WHOOP provides an objective measure of your body's cardiovascular load. Every morning, Recovery tells you how prepared your body is to take on Strain so you can avoid overtraining. With the Strain Target feature, you'll get updates every 10 minutes as you're working out to know whether to push harder, if you've reached your Strain goal, or when you're overdoing it.

To translate your effort into actionable insights every day, Join WHOOP.

Frequently asked questions about the Borg scale

Why does the Borg scale go from 6 to 20?

The scale was designed so that multiplying your rating by 10 gives a rough estimate of your heart rate during the activity. For example, a rating of 12 suggests a heart rate around 120 beats per minute, while a 15 suggests a heart rate of 150.

What is a moderate intensity on the Borg scale?

A rating between 12 and 14, which corresponds to descriptions like "Somewhat hard," is generally considered moderate intensity. At this level, your breathing and heart rate are noticeably elevated, but you can still hold a conversation.

Is the Borg scale the same as RPE?

They are closely related but not exactly the same. RPE, or Rating of Perceived Exertion, is the concept of how hard you feel your body is working. The Borg scale is the most common scientific tool used to measure RPE.