The Borg Scale can be used to gauge the intensity of your workouts. In order to ensure progress over time, intensity must be varied from workout to workout.
Recommendation Usage
The gym and exercising as a whole can be a monotonous event at times, completing the same exercises over and over again, often times acheiving the same lackluster results, is practically the definition of insanity. The Perceived Exertion Scale is a sure fire way to improve your workouts and likely reduce boredom.
The Assessment
The most effective way to use this tool is to do an assessment on yourself to identify where you fall into each verbal description on the chart. Picking any exercise modality you prefer whether it be the bike, treadmill, elliptical or even rock climbing, this chart can be applied. For example, let's say you prefer the bike and you go to the gym 3x per week to ride the bike, you may get on the bike and just pedal along for 30-40 minutes, reading the newspaper, listening to your ipod, etc, now, using the Rate of Perceived Exertion Scale you can quantify just how hard your exercising. For example, on Monday you go to the gym and you decide to do the bike for 45 minutes. Periodically, throughout your workout use your Perceived Exertion Scale and quantify where you're at, whether it be light, very light, hard, etc. Then at the end of your workout you can categorize how you would describe that particular workout. Then do this for your next few workouts and identify what your training intensity patterns are, this will give you a good sense of what intensity you're working at while doing your cardio.
The Prescription
Now, that you have a better understanding of how hard you're working, now comes the fun part. Each week you should modify your workouts to reflect a certain intensity, for example, on Day 1 you would do "light", Day 2 you would do "somewhat hard" and Day 3 you would do "hard". The one caveat to this is that time should match the intensity, so for example, if you do a light day it should be a longer workout and if you do a hard day it should be shorter. The best part about this is that it's an art and you can play with it to improve your performance and have a little bit more fun in the gym. One way you could track to see if your workouts are improving is to pick a time (say 40 minutes) an intensity (say light) and see how far you can travel on any given modality, play with your workouts for 6 weeks and then come back and do the same type of workout (40 minutes @ light) and see if you've now traveled farther. If you do, this would be a clear indication of overall improvement in your effciency and cardiac output, both VERY good things!
The Assessment
The most effective way to use this tool is to do an assessment on yourself to identify where you fall into each verbal description on the chart. Picking any exercise modality you prefer whether it be the bike, treadmill, elliptical or even rock climbing, this chart can be applied. For example, let's say you prefer the bike and you go to the gym 3x per week to ride the bike, you may get on the bike and just pedal along for 30-40 minutes, reading the newspaper, listening to your ipod, etc, now, using the Rate of Perceived Exertion Scale you can quantify just how hard your exercising. For example, on Monday you go to the gym and you decide to do the bike for 45 minutes. Periodically, throughout your workout use your Perceived Exertion Scale and quantify where you're at, whether it be light, very light, hard, etc. Then at the end of your workout you can categorize how you would describe that particular workout. Then do this for your next few workouts and identify what your training intensity patterns are, this will give you a good sense of what intensity you're working at while doing your cardio.
The Prescription
Now, that you have a better understanding of how hard you're working, now comes the fun part. Each week you should modify your workouts to reflect a certain intensity, for example, on Day 1 you would do "light", Day 2 you would do "somewhat hard" and Day 3 you would do "hard". The one caveat to this is that time should match the intensity, so for example, if you do a light day it should be a longer workout and if you do a hard day it should be shorter. The best part about this is that it's an art and you can play with it to improve your performance and have a little bit more fun in the gym. One way you could track to see if your workouts are improving is to pick a time (say 40 minutes) an intensity (say light) and see how far you can travel on any given modality, play with your workouts for 6 weeks and then come back and do the same type of workout (40 minutes @ light) and see if you've now traveled farther. If you do, this would be a clear indication of overall improvement in your effciency and cardiac output, both VERY good things!