A favorite among athletes, the equipment can be used for building strength and power in your upper and lower body.
Do More With is a series highlighting equipment around the Club that can help you reach your fitness goals. In this installment, we highlight the power sled, available on the Club floor.
Watch a member push a power sled across the Club floor, and you might think the piece of equipment is reserved solely for serious athletes. That perspective makes sense: It’s big and bulky and resembles the equipment you often see football players ramming across the field during practice.
But don’t let its appearance intimidate you, especially if you’re just dipping your toes into resistance training. The power sled is a valuable tool for strength and power development, no matter where you are in your fitness journey.
In case you’re unfamiliar, a power sled is essentially a piece of equipment that is pushed or dragged on the ground in any direction. Some are on skis, others are on wheels, and generally, you can move it forward, backward, or laterally, allowing you to train in all planes of motion. On its own, the power sled can weigh 30 to 100 pounds (depending on the brand), and the resistance you’re fighting stems from the friction between the sled and the ground.
Still, it has such a low barrier of entry; you can use it at any experience level, and that’s what makes it such a personal piece of equipment. You create how difficult your training is going to be based on how many weight plates you add for load — if any at all.
If you need further convincing, here’s what you can expect to gain by using the power sled in your next workout.
Why Train with the Power Sled
The power sled is a super versatile piece of equipment. Traditionally, the sled is used for heavy pushes, which can build strength and complement your typical lower-body exercises. After a round of squats, for example, you might push the sled 10 to 20 yards to further challenge your quads, glutes, and hamstrings. It’s also common to drag the sled by attaching TRX straps to the equipment. In that case, you might go light on the weights to train your speed and power. Since you’ll run or walk while pushing or pulling the sled, it’s also training your lower body unilaterally, or one side at a time.
No matter how you’re using the sled, you’ll be able to test your muscles in all planes of motion.
Many people train themselves primarily in the sagittal plane, moving forward and backward (think: running, stair climbing, squatting, deadlifting). The frontal plane (involving side-to-side movements) and transverse plane (involving rotational movements) are often overlooked. In doing so, they’re leaving a lot of strength and stability on the table. Training in all planes of motion is going to make sure that your strength is balanced throughout your whole body. Runners, in particular, may find themselves with improved knee stability — and less pain — by training with a power sled in that frontal plane, as it helps offset any weakness in the hip abductors.
Importantly, the power sled can make your training more enjoyable. Just like a split squat or any other stationary single-leg exercise, it gives you a chance to build unilateral strength in a much more entertaining way. It’s kind of like running a few miles outside versus indoors on the treadmill; you can either travel and feel like you’re actually covering ground, or you can do it in a single place and feel like time is dragging on.
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How to Use the Power Sled
In general, you’ll want to load the power sled lightly and move quickly to train your power and load it heavy to train your strength. But one of my favorite ways to incorporate the power sled into a workout is with contrast work. You can do a loaded sled sprint or a heavy lower-body movement, then immediately go into a basic sprint without any equipment. This pairing is based on the concept of post-activation potentiation, or using heavy resistance exercises before a biomechanically similar ballistic movement to, in the short term, improve power output and muscle function.
You can also use the sled for conditioning work via EMOM workouts. At the start of each minute, you’d push or drag the sled a particular distance, rest for whatever time’s left in that minute, then push it back to the start and repeat. To challenge your body in multiple planes of motion at once, swap your standard push or pull method with a lateral sled drag, using carioca footwork. Pulling the sled to the side will work your muscles in the frontal plane, while the carioca drill adds an element of transverse plane training.
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While the power sled is primarily used for lower-body training, you can definitely get a total-body workout with it. For upper-body work, sit up on your knees and push the sled as far as possible. Without the lower-body muscles fully activating for assistance, the exercise is essentially an explosive chest press. You can also sit on a chair and, using TRX straps, pull the sled up to you, like a continuous row exercise.
Honestly, the most difficult aspect of using a power sled when you’re a beginner is loading and unloading the weight plates. There are so many different programming options and unique exercises to try, it’s hard to use the equipment incorrectly. So don’t be afraid to give it a try — your workout is sure to be less of a bore.
Brendan McGuigan is a Tier 3 Coach at Equinox Austin and a certified strength and conditioning specialist. Brendan has an extensive athletic background, having played baseball in college and professionally. His training philosophy has been shaped by his athletic career, driving him to pursue a more holistic approach to training. Brendan is passionate about building well-rounded, strong, and resilient movers.