Comment “TRAINING” to find out more about how I program based on RPE vs HR! 👇🏽 When I’m programming for athletes I’ll often use both heart rate and RPE, but my bigger goal is helping the athlete understand their own effort scale. If the session says easy run, I want it to actually feel easy. That means sometimes ignoring the watch and running by feel. Comfortable breathing, relaxed stride, controlled effort. Heart rate is a useful tool, but it’s important to remember that HR can fluctuate day to day depending on sleep, stress, hydration, fatigue, and even temperature. The same effort might produce a different heart rate on different days. That’s where RPE (rate of perceived exertion) becomes really valuable. RPE correlates strongly with physiological markers like heart rate and oxygen uptake, which makes it a reliable way to regulate training intensity. That said, heart rate still matters for certain sessions. For example, during threshold work it’s important the athlete is sitt...