Use of Session Rating of Perceived Exertion for Monitoring Resistance Exercise in Children who are Overweight or Obese

The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of the OMNI Resistance Exercise scale (OMNI-RES) for monitoring the intensity of different modes of resistance training in children who are overweight or obese. Sixty-one children (mean age = 9.7 +/- 1.4 years) performed three resistance training sessions every week for 4 weeks. Each session consisted of three sets of 3-15 repetitions of eight different resistance exercises. OMNI-RES RPE measures (0-10) were obtained following each set and following the end of the exercise session. There was a significant difference between average RPE (1.68 +/- 0.61) and Session RPE (3.10 +/- 1.18) during the 4 weeks of training (p <.05). There was no significant change in session RPE over the 4 weeks of training. The correlation coefficient between average and session RPE values was significant (r = .88, p <.05). The findings of the current study indicate that the RPE values are higher when OMNI-RES measures are obtained following the whole training session than when obtained following every single set of exercise. This suggests that in children the session RPE provides different information to the average RPE across the entire session.