Session load estimated by multiplying perceived effort by duration.
Session RPE (sRPE) is a measure of internal training load calculated by multiplying a session's overall Rating of Perceived Exertion (typically on a 0-10 or 6-20 scale) by the session's duration in minutes. The result is expressed in arbitrary units (AU) and gives a single number representing how demanding a session was for that individual.
It gives clinicians and coaches a fast, athlete-specific way to track how training or rehab load is trending week to week, which underpins decisions about when to progress, hold, or deload a programme. Because it captures the athlete's own perceived strain rather than just prescribed volume, it can flag when someone is working harder than intended relative to the plan, prompting a conversation before overload becomes injury risk.
Roughly 20-30 minutes after a session ends, the athlete rates perceived exertion for the session as a whole, and this is multiplied by total session duration in minutes to produce the sRPE score. Scores are logged over time and often aggregated into weekly loads, which can feed into ratios such as the acute:chronic workload ratio to monitor spikes or trends.
sRPE is subjective and can be influenced by mood, sleep, motivation, and how well the athlete understands the rating scale, so consistency of coaching and timing of collection matters. It also collapses a whole session into one number, so it cannot distinguish load type (e.g. sprinting versus low-intensity technical work) or identify which specific component drove the strain, and derived metrics like the acute:chronic workload ratio carry their own well-documented statistical limitations that should be considered before acting on them.