Pacing the sled push and pull: a practical guide
The sled stations break more first-timers than any other. Pacing and technique are the whole game.
Ask Hyrox finishers which station nearly ended their race and most will say the sled. The sled push and the sled pull come early in the event, they are heavy, and they spike your heart rate faster than anything else on the course. Get them wrong and you spend the next several stations recovering. Get them right, with good technique and sensible pacing, and you protect the rest of your race.
Why the sled is so hard
The sled is loaded heavy, and the flooring at events can be grippy, which makes it harder to move than the sleds many people train on. Pushing or pulling a heavy sled is essentially a series of maximal leg drives, and it sends your heart rate and breathing through the roof very quickly. Because it comes early, people are still fresh and tend to attack it, then discover they have blown up with most of the race still to run.
Technique for the push
- Get low. Bend your arms or keep them straight depending on the handle height, but drop your hips and lean your whole body weight into the sled so your legs do the work, not your shoulders.
- Drive with short, powerful steps. Long lunging strides feel strong but stall the sled between steps. Quick, choppy, driving steps keep it moving continuously, which is more efficient.
- Keep your core braced and your back flat. Do not let the effort round your spine.
- Look slightly ahead, not down at your feet.
Technique for the pull
- Use a strong base. Sit your hips back, keep your back flat, and pull hand over hand, using your legs and back together rather than just your arms.
- Keep tension on the rope so the sled moves smoothly rather than in jerky stops and starts.
- Reset your feet as the sled comes toward you so you always have leverage to keep pulling.
- Save your grip where you can, because farmer's carries are still to come.
The pacing strategy
This is the part that matters most. The sled is a station where going 90 per cent as hard for the whole thing beats going 100 per cent for half of it and then standing there gasping. The aim is to keep moving steadily without stopping for long. Brief pauses to reset are fine. A long collapse with hands on knees is what costs you, because restarting a stationary heavy sled is far harder than keeping a moving one going.
Treat the sled as a controlled hard effort, not an all-out sprint. The clock you really care about is the finish, not the sled split.
Plan to keep your breathing as controlled as the effort allows, and resist the urge to empty the tank early. Remember that a one-kilometre run follows immediately, so leaving the sled completely spent means walking that run.
How to train it
Sleds are hard to simulate because event loading and flooring vary, but train the pattern whenever you can. Practise heavy pushes and pulls for distances similar to the event, focus on the short driving steps and the strong braced positions, and rehearse running immediately afterwards so your legs learn to recover on the move. If your gym has no sled, heavy carries, hill sprints and leg-drive work are reasonable substitutes for building the engine and the leg strength the sled demands. Respect the sled in training, and it will not break you on race day.