Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described for beamformed communications. In some aspects, when using beamformed communications, a first communications node and a second communications node may establish a beam pair link using a first beam. The first communications node may use a first set of beamforming weights at each antenna element of a set of antenna elements for transmissions of the first beam. After the beam pair is established, the first communications node may transmit multiple sounding signals using different subsets of the first set of antenna elements. A second communications node may measure the multiple sounding signals and use the measurements in scheduling one or more transmissions at the first communications node (e.g., to determine a modulation and coding scheme or coding rate), using one or more of the subsets of antenna elements.