The Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion is a way of

gaging physical activity intensity. Perceived exertion

is how hard you feel like your body is working. It is
based on the physical sensations a person
experiences during physical activity, including
increased heart rate, increased respiration or
breathing rate, increased sweating and muscle
fatigue. It matches how hard you feel you are
working with numbers from 6-20.
The scale starts with “no feeling of exertion” which
rates 6, and ends “very, very hard” which rates 20.
Moderate activities register 11-14 (fairly light to
somewhat hard), while vigorous activities usually
rate 15 or higher (hard to very very hard).
This is how might describe your exertion:
None: 6- reading a book/ watching television
Very, very light: 7-8-tying shoes
Very light: 9-10-chores like folding clothes that seem
to take little effort
Fairly light: 11-12- walking through the grocery store
or other activities that require some effort but not
enough to speed up your breathing
Somewhat hard: 13-14- brisk walking or other
activities that require moderate effort and speed
your heart rate and breathing but don’t make you
out of breath
Hard: 15-16- bicycling, swimming or other activities
that take vigorous effort and get the heart pounding
and make breathing very fast
Very hard: 17-18- the highest level of activity you
can sustain
Very, very hard: 19-20- a finishing kick in race or
other burst of activity that you can’t maintain for
long
It is a subjective measure, but a person’s perceived
exertion may provide a fairly good estimate of the
actual heart rate during physical activity.
Self-monitoring how hard your body is working can
help to adjust the intensity of the activity by
speeding up or slowing down your movements.
Through experience of monitoring how your body
feels, it will become easier to know when to adjust
the intensity. For example, a walker who wants to
engage in moderate intensity (12-14) activity would
aim for a borg scale level of somewhat hard. If he
describes his muscle fatigue and breathing as very
light (9) he would want to intensity. On the other
hand, if he felt his exertion was extremely hard 19,
he would need to slow down his movements to
achieve the moderate intensity range.
To estimate the heart rate during an activity, the
rate of perceived exertion is multiplied by 10. For
example, if a person’s rate of perceived exertion is
12, 12 is multiplied by 10. So the heart rate should
be approximately 120 bpm. But this can vary a bit
depending on age and physical condition.