It happens to me all the time, as I’m sure it happens to every other strength coach or personal trainer. A client tells me, “I’m eating a ton and I’m not gaining any weight,” or “I’m hardly eating anything, and I’m not losing any weight.” When I ask them if they’ve been tracking their calories and possibly macros like we’ve talked about, the answer is almost always “no.”
Subjectively saying you eat a lot or very little is useless because we have no data to use to make changes to your current diet, and that makes it difficult to help you. If we know what and how much you’re eating, we can make some changes and get you on track, but you have to be willing to put the effort in to tracking your food intake.
Using Subjective Feedback for Beginners
This is obviously a situation when subjective feedback is pretty useless, and we really only want objective feedback. But, there are certainly times in a client’s training journey when subjective feedback is useful and necessary.
For example, when clients are new to weightlifting, they need to learn basic movements before we can test 1, 3, or 5 rep maxes, so working off of percentages is generally out of the question. In this case, I will give them specific numbers to use, and as we progress I will use rate of perceived exertion or RPE. RPE is a scale of 1 to 10 and rates the difficulty or effort level of what a client is doing.
When someone is new I don’t want the RPE to be much above a 7, because fatigue is the enemy of good movement, and adaptations (strength gains, better movement, etc) come relatively quickly as a novice anyway. Then as a client progresses and has grooved those movements, we can test lifts and get a 1, 3, or 5RM to work off of.
Using Subjective Feedback for Advanced Athletes
Once we have a 1, 3, or 5RM to work off, of depending on the goals of the program, the time of the offseason (or if they’re in season), and individual needs of the athlete, we choose a percentage and a volume to go along with it.
So, the weights that athlete will be working with each day are predetermined. However, there is some wiggle room here. For athletes who do not have access to a device that can track bar speed, they will have to use subjective feedback either from me, themselves, or both of us. If the weight feels particularly slow or fast on a given day, the weight may need to be adjusted up or down.
The same is true for volume. If an athlete is particularly fatigued or in some cases feeling great, the volume can be adjusted.
If you’re interested in working with me in person or remotely, contact me through this site, and we’ll get you moving toward your goals!