RPE AND RIR: THE GAA PLAYER'S GUIDE TO TRAINING AT THE RIGHT INTENSITY

Stop going too hard in season. Stop going too easy in the off-season. Here is how to actually get this right.

What is the crack everyone. Right, this is a topic I end up talking about a lot with lads I coach and honestly it is one of the most straightforward tools you can add to your training, but hardly anyone at club level is using it properly.

RPE and RIR. Two acronyms that sound complicated but once you get your head around them, they will completely change how you approach your gym sessions, whether you are deep in the off-season chasing size and strength or trying to stay fresh through a championship run.

So let me break it down as simply as I can. No fluff, just what you need to know and how to apply it for GAA.

What Is RPE?

RPE stands for Rate of Perceived Exertion. It is a scale from 1 to 10 that describes how hard you are working on any given set or session.

An RPE of 10 means you have given absolutely everything. You cannot do another rep. That is your one rep max territory. An RPE of 5 means you have a load of reps left in the tank, you are barely breaking a sweat.

Originally this scale was developed for aerobic training back in the 1960s, but over time it has been adapted for strength training and it is now one of the most practical ways to prescribe and manage intensity in the gym.

What Is RIR?

RIR stands for Reps In Reserve. It is basically the other side of the same coin.

Where RPE tells you how hard a set felt out of 10, RIR tells you how many reps you had left before you would have hit failure.

So an RIR of 3 means you stopped with 3 reps left in the tank. An RIR of 0 means you went to complete failure, nothing left.

The Full RPE / RIR Scale

The sweet spot for most of your training, most of the time, is that RPE 6 to 8 range. That is where you are doing quality work, building size and strength, without absolutely battering yourself before the next session.

Why Does This Actually Matter For GAA?

Here is the problem I see with a lot of club players. In the off-season they are floating around at RPE 5 or 6 wondering why they are not making progress. In season they are hammering themselves at RPE 9 and 10 every gym session and showing up to training absolutely wrecked.

Neither of those is right.

GAA is a long year. You are looking at league from February, through to club championship that might run into October or November. You cannot go flat out from January and expect to still be flying come the business end of the season. I have made that mistake myself. Thought doing four gym sessions a week in season was going to make me stronger. What it actually did was make me more fatigued by June.

The body needs different things at different times of the year. RPE and RIR give you a simple, practical way to manage that.

Off-Season: This Is When You Push

The off-season is your window. No games to worry about, no need to be fresh for training. This is when you should be chasing real progress in the gym.

In the off-season you can afford to push closer to failure. We are talking RPE 8 to 9, sometimes even 10 on certain sets and exercises. That is where the real gains come from. If you have been following a gym plan for months and you are still lifting the same weight as when you started, I would nearly guarantee you are not going hard enough.

If you are in a hypertrophy block, you want to be hitting your rep range and leaving maybe 1 to 2 reps in reserve by the end of your working sets. If you are hitting 12 reps easily and could have done 16, you are not getting the stimulus you need to grow. Drop the ego, increase the weight, and get within that 1 to 3 RIR window.

The key thing with off-season training is that your recovery is not competing with match day or intense training sessions. So you can afford to push, to get sore, to take an extra day to recover. Use that.

Off-Season Practical Guide

• Compound lifts (squat, deadlift, bench, hip hinge): RPE 8-9, or RIR 1-2

• Accessory work (curls, lateral raises, etc.): RPE 9-10, you can push closer to failure here as the fatigue is lower

• If you finish a set and feel like you could have easily done 5 more, the weight is too light

• Progress over weeks by either adding reps or adding weight, while keeping the same RPE target

• Deload weeks are important, bring it back to RPE 6-7 every 4 to 6 weeks to let the body recover

In-Season: Protect Your Performance

When the season kicks in, everything flips. The pitch becomes the priority. Your gym sessions now exist to maintain what you built in the off-season, not to push new personal bests.

This is where lads go wrong. They try to keep training at off-season intensity when they are also playing games and going to two or three collective team trainings a week. Something has to give. And if you are battering yourself in the gym, what gives is your performance on the pitch.

In season, the sweet spot I have found from my own experience and from working with players through online coaching is RPE 7 on your main lifts. Three reps left in the tank. You are working hard, you are maintaining your strength, but you are not creating so much fatigue that it spills over into your training sessions or your games.

Two full body sessions per week is plenty in season. Keep them similar across the week, hit your push movement, your pull movement, a hip hinge, a squat variation, and maybe some isolation work at the end if you have time and energy. Nothing fancy. Consistency is the goal.

The isolation stuff at the end, bicep curls, tricep extensions, that kind of thing, you can push a bit closer to failure on those. The fatigue from single joint exercises is much lower. Save the discipline for the big compound movements.

In-Season Practical Guide

• Compound lifts: RPE 7, or RIR 3. Three reps left in the tank

• Isolation work at the end: RPE 8-9 is fine, the fatigue cost is lower

• Two full body sessions per week is the target

• Championship intensity is a notch up from league. Your body can handle slightly heavier gym work earlier in the year before the intensity on the pitch peaks

• Coming back from injury: drop back to RPE 6-7 and build up over a few sessions before returning to your usual intensity

• If you are 6 days out from a big game you can afford to go slightly heavier. But the day before or two days before, keep it dialled back

What About Your Club Trainings and Games?

Here is the other side of it that people do not always think about. RPE does not only apply to the gym.

Your club collective trainings and your games should be at RPE 8, 9, and 10. That is where the real GAA-specific fitness comes from. Not from doing an extra running session on Sunday morning. Your game day should be a 10 out of 10 effort every time. Leave absolutely nothing out there.

Where I see players going wrong is holding back a bit in training because they have an extra session planned the next day. If you are in a practice match or an intense session and you are sitting at a 6 out of 10, you are not getting the adaptation you need. You are also not helping your case for a starting jersey.

If you put that extra effort into your collective training and you are too tired to do your planned extra session the next morning, that is not a problem. That means you trained well. The extra running was never going to replace the quality of a full collective session anyway.

A Word On Accuracy

Here is something worth knowing, especially if you are new to using RPE or RIR. It takes time to get accurate at this.

When you are starting out you might think you have 3 reps left and actually you have 6. Or you might think you are at RPE 7 and you are really at 9. That is completely normal. The research actually backs this up, experienced lifters are more accurate at gauging their RPE than beginners.

The best way to get better at it is to test yourself. Do a set, call out your RIR, then go again and see if you were right. Over time you will get a much better feel for it. Video yourself if you need to, watching bar speed slow down is one of the best indicators that you are approaching your limit.

It is also worth remembering that your RPE on the same exercise at the same weight will vary day to day. Your sleep, nutrition, stress levels, travel, and recovery all affect it. That is actually one of the big advantages of using RPE over just following a fixed percentage of your one rep max. It automatically adjusts for how you are feeling on a given day.

Quick Reference: RPE By Season

The Bottom Line

RPE and RIR are not complicated. They are just a way of putting a number on something you are already doing, which is deciding how hard to push on any given set.

The difference between lads who make progress year on year and lads who are always stuck in the same place is usually not their program. It is the intensity they are actually bringing to it. Too easy in the off-season and you do not make the gains. Too hard in season and you drain the tank before the games that matter.

Get the intensity right for the time of year you are in. Use RPE and RIR to keep yourself honest. That is it.

If you want a gym plan that already has RPE built into every session, the Complete In-Season Gym Plan and off-season plans at gazgaelicguide.com have all of that structured out for you. No guesswork.

Gary O'Daly | Gaz Gaelic Guide

Personal Trainer | Certified Nutritionist | Biomedical Scientist | GAA Player