ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness 1998 March;38(1):35-8

Copyright © 1998 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

The use of a fixed value of RPE during a ramp protocol. Comparison with the ventilatory threshold

Feriche B. ¹, Chicharro J. L. ², Vaquero A. F. ², Pérez M. ², Lucia A. ²

¹ Departamento de Educación Física, Facultad de Ciencias de la Actividad Física y el Deporte, Universidad de Granada, Spain; ² Unidad de Investigación, Escuela de Medicina del Deporte, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain

Back­ground. The pur­pose of our inves­ti­ga­tion was to ­assess the use of a ­fixed val­ue (12-13) of the Rat­ing of Per­ceived Exer­tion (RPE) ­scale (6-20) as a val­id meth­od for the deter­mi­na­tion of the work­load cor­re­spond­ing to the ven­til­a­to­ry thresh­old (VT) dur­ing a ­ramp pro­to­col on a ­cycle ergom­e­ter.
Meth­ods. ­Eleven ­trained ­cyclists (22±3 ­years of age; V.O2max: 65.2±12.4 ml·kg-1·min-1) ­were select­ed as sub­jects.
­Design. ­Each of the sub­jects per­formed a ­ramp pro­to­col on a ­cycle ergom­e­ter (start­ing at 25 W, ­with increas­es of 25 W·min-1 ­until exhaus­tion). Gas ­exchange ­data ­were ana­lysed con­tin­u­al­ly dur­ing the ­test to ­detect the ven­til­a­to­ry thresh­old (VT) of the sub­jects. In addi­tion val­ues of RPE ­were ­obtained ­from ­each sub­ject in the ­last 15 sec of ­each 2-min­ute-inter­val dur­ing the ­tests, and imme­di­ate­ly ­after exhaus­tion. The RPE thresh­old (­RPET) was ­defined as a con­stant val­ue of 12-13. ­Mean val­ues of VT and ­RPET ­were ­expressed as V.O2 (ml·kg-1·min-1), %V.O2max, ­heart ­rate (bpm) and pow­er out­put (W), and ­were com­pared ­using a ­paired “t”-­test.
­Results. No sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence (p<0.05) was ­found ­between ­mean val­ues of VT and ­RPET, ­when ­both param­e­ters ­where ­expressed ­either as V.O2, %V.O2max, ­heart ­rate, or pow­er out­put.
Con­clu­sions. In con­clu­sion, a ­fixed val­ue (12-13) of the RPE ­scale ­might be ­used to ­detect the exer­cise inten­sity cor­re­spond­ing to VT. ­Such param­e­ter may there­fore be ­used for exer­cise pre­scrip­tion in sub­sti­tu­tion to ­more sophis­ti­cat­ed meth­o­dol­o­gies.