Ratings of Perceived Exertion

Getting a proper cardiovascular workout can be difficult when you don’t know how hard to push yourself. There are many schools of thought on what kind of cardio workout is best. Some say that interval training consisting of sprints followed by rest periods is the best, while others stick to the old way of running for a long time at a moderate pace. And there are many different kinds of interval training. Some with shorter sprints and longer rest periods, and some with longer sprints and shorter rest periods. You can also work up to a sprint by increasing the speed gradually and then dropping it down to rest before starting the process all over again.

All of that is easy to monitor if you have a treadmill or similar machine, but what if you don’t? The general consensus for an effective cardio workout is that a person should be working at about 50 - 70% of their heart rate max for at least 20 minutes. Going below that would result in burned calories but not do much if anything for improving the strength of the cardiorespiratory muscles. Going above that is not recommended for beginners, and some believe that it is not best for overall cardiorespiratory fitness.

I think otherwise. Once you establish a good base of conditioning, it is very helpful to engage in intervals that push your heart and lungs harder and harder. It’s also important to make sure that adequate rest is provided as well. I talk more on different kinds of cardio in other articles, so for now, I’ll concentrate on using the Borg Scale for ratings of perceived exertion.

Ratings of perceived exertion is a way to monitor the effort that we are putting forth in any given cardiovascular exercise. It is a very simple tool, and has been found to be very effective for improving cardiovascular fitness. Basically, we judge our own exertion while working out. In many of my workouts, I use the Borg Scale for ratings of perceived exertion. There are a few others, but this one works just as well as any. The Borg Scale starts at a 6 and goes up to 20. It looks like this:

6 - No exertion at all

7 - Extremely light

8

9 - Very light

10

11 - Light

12

13 - Somewhat hard

14

15 - Hard (heavy)

16

17 - Very hard

18

19 - Extremely hard

20 - Maximal exertion

A basic cardio workout based on the percentages from above would probably fall somewhere between 13 and 17. For a beginner, I wouldn’t recommend going above that until a good level of conditioning has been built. And as I mentioned before, the common consensus also mentions maintaining this pace for at least 20 minutes. Most beginners can handle a 13 or 14 for 20 minutes, but some may not be able to. So does that mean there is no hope for them and they shouldn’t work out? To me, it’s just plain stupid to say that working below that threshold won’t yield enough results to do anything. Some exercise is better than no exercise.

A typical interval workout might be one minute at 13 followed by one minute at 17 repeated for a total of twenty minutes. A beginner who can’t handle 13 for twenty minutes could try something like a 9 for two minutes followed by a 15 for one minute. Another option is that they could do an 11 for twenty minutes, or even another is that they could do a 14 for ten minutes. Each way will yield results, if the person sticks with it, and does it on a frequent basis.