Client Effort is a simple 1-5 rating your clients log at the end of every workout. It tells you how hard the session actually felt to them. Training Load combines that rating with the session duration to produce a single number that tracks stress across days, weeks, and months.

Together, they answer two questions you could never quite answer before:

Everything in this article covers what the feature does, how to turn it on, where coaches and clients see it, and the math behind the numbers.

Coaching decisions are only as good as the data behind them. Effort and Load fill a gap that reps, sets, weights, and time cap never could: the subjective experience of the session.

Neither number replaces coach judgment. Both give you context you would otherwise have to chase down in comments or DMs.

Clients rate every completed session on a simple 1-5 scale.

Every logged session produces a single Load number using this formula:

Load = (Effort × 2 − 0.5) × Duration (in minutes)

The (Effort × 2 − 0.5) piece maps the 1-5 client scale onto an RPE-equivalent multiplier that sits inside the classic 1-10 sRPE range. Multiplying by duration gives you arbitrary load units that behave the same way sRPE-based training load units behave in the literature: comparable within a client, trackable over time, responsive to both intensity and volume.

Worked out across the scale:

A few implications worth knowing:

When a client finishes a workout in the app, they see a short post-session flow before the session closes out.

Then they rate their effort, enter the training duration, and can comment on the session for a richer feedback loop.

Clients see their Training Load on the Trends tab in the mobile app. Same colored bar chart a coach sees, just for their own data.

Every bar is colored by the effort rating that produced it (green through red), and the height of the bar is the Load for that session. Tapping a bar brings up the effort, duration, and load for that workout.

Open any completed workout on a client's calendar and you will now see three fields at the top:

This is the fastest way to spot a mismatch. If a client's "easy" session came in at Effort 5, something changed. Sleep, stress, life, a nagging injury, a program that needs a tweak. Effort tells you to look. Duration and Load tell you how hard to look.

The Trends screen is where Load earns its keep. Coaches get three rolling windows:

Two insights are surfaced alongside the chart:

Bars are colored by the Effort that produced them (green to yellow to orange to red as intensity climbs), so a coach can see the mix of session intensities and the total stress in the same glance.

All of the color coding in the app (on both client and coach trend charts) reflects the effort rating, not the load value. That keeps the color scale fixed and interpretable across every client and every phase.

A wall of red means the program is grinding the client down. A wall of green means the stimulus may be too low. A varied mix is usually what you want.

Effort ratings are a setting, not a default for every existing account. This is deliberate. If a coach turned it on for every client tomorrow without warning, clients would be confused, and some coaches would not want this extra step.

Clients do not see a toggle. Once the coach turns it on (globally or individually), the rating screen appears at the end of the next workout and is required to complete the session. Once the coach turns it off, the screen disappears.

When you turn Effort and Duration on for a client, the rating screen suddenly appears at the end of their next workout. Without context, you'll get inconsistent ratings that pollute the trend. A short, proactive message before the first rating sets clients up to use the feature well from day one.

Save this image and attach it to your broadcast so clients have a clean visual reference inline with the message.

Send this in CoachRx as a broadcast to all clients you have enabled the feature for. Attach the graphic above so clients see the visual reference inline.

A few ways coaches are already using the data:

Does the client have to enter Effort and Duration for every workout?

Yes, when the feature is enabled for that client. The rating screen is part of finishing the session and cannot be skipped. If the feature is turned off for that client, the screen does not appear at all.

Can a client edit a rating after submitting?

Yes. Clients can open any past session in the app and update the Effort or Duration. Useful when a client wants to refine a quick first answer.

Can a coach enter effort on a client's behalf?

Yes. When a coach is walking a client through a session in person, the same completion flow appears on the coach's side. The coach can submit the effort and duration from there. This is how in-person coaches capture load data for their floor clients.

Why does my Trend chart look empty?

Either the feature is not enabled for the client, or the client has not completed a session since it was enabled. Check the setting first, then their most recent sessions.

Does this replace RPE in the program itself?

No. Coaches can still prescribe RPE targets inside individual exercises. Effort rating is the session-level summary the client gives you at the end, not the set-by-set target you assigned.

How is this different from the OPEX Wellness / Vitals check-ins?

Check-ins are subjective daily readiness (sleep, stress, energy). Effort is the subjective output of a single session. Both are useful. They answer different questions.

Where does the math come from?

The formula is an adaptation of the session-RPE (sRPE) method from Foster et al., which multiplies an RPE rating by session duration to produce arbitrary training-load units. CoachRx uses a 5-point client-facing scale and maps it internally onto the RPE range so the resulting Load values behave the same way sRPE-based load does in the research literature.

Still stuck? Email coachrxsupport@opexfit.com.