Session RPE vs. set RPE
There are two versions of this number in resistance training. One is asked during the workout, set by set, based on how many reps the person thinks they still had in reserve before failing — the version used to adjust load on the spot, set after set. The other is asked once, about the whole session, minutes after it ends. PulsoGym uses the second: one question, a number from 1 to 10, at the end of the entire workout, before the person leaves the screen.
A number that sounds subjective, but tracks something real
RPE sounds like pure opinion — how heavy a session felt depends on sleep, mood, the day someone had. But studies comparing this number with physiological markers show something else. Martorelli and colleagues (2020), in the European Journal of Sport Science, tested 12 men already trained in resistance exercise across three different training protocols in the same session — power, hypertrophy and strength — measuring session RPE alongside cortisol, salivary immunoglobulin A, lactate and creatine kinase in the blood. The hypertrophy session, the one with the highest volume, had the highest values across every internal marker measured, and RPE tracked that hierarchy; the strength session had higher RPE than the power session even though it moved less total load. The number the person gave off the top of their head matched what the blood markers showed.
Why ask about the whole session, and not each set
The question that matters for the app's design is a different one: can this number be asked once, at the end, without losing what would be lost by asking after every set? Ferreira and colleagues (2014), in the Journal of Aging Research, tested exactly that: 14 women with no prior resistance-training experience, across concentric, eccentric and dynamic exercise sessions, comparing RPE asked right after each set with session RPE, asked 30 minutes after the whole workout. They found no significant difference between the two ways of asking. It is a single, small study, in a specific population — older, untrained women — and it does not prove the result holds for every kind of training or person. But it is the right question, tested by people who bothered to measure it.
Vieira and colleagues (2014), in Clinical Physiology and Functional Imaging, also used session RPE, collected 30 minutes after the workout, in 13 young men already trained in resistance exercise: when one group did less total work (with blood-flow restriction) but reported higher effort than the other, session RPE alone already showed the difference that looking only at the load lifted would not have shown.
The "objective" alternative also gets it wrong
There is a temptation to think that measuring effort "for real" means swapping the subjective question for a sensor — for example, estimating how many reps are left before failure from the drop in bar speed, without asking anyone anything. Mansfield and colleagues (2023), also in the European Journal of Sport Science, tested exactly that in 20 recreationally active men: they measured bar velocity set by set in the bench press and the bent-over row, trying to predict reps in reserve from the drop in speed. In the bench press the relationship was weak and inconsistent across sets (average agreement of 0.40, on a scale of 0 to 1); in the row it was stronger (0.80), but still varied unpredictably from one set to the next. Trying to predict, from the first set, how many reps were left in the sets that followed, the model was right about 31% of the time — wrong nearly 7 times out of 10.
Where this shows up in the app
PulsoGym does not ask for RPE set by set — it asks once, from 1 to 10, when the session ends, and stores the answer alongside everything prescribed and performed that day. It is that number, looked at over weeks in the history, that shows whether the same load has been feeling lighter — a sign that fitness is changing — or heavier even with no change to the prescription — a sign of accumulated fatigue that the weight alone, on the screen, would not flag.