Why sled work should be incorporated in every athletes program?

The Rack Front doors

1. Cost Effective

  • Many athletes, especially the younger ones will not have the money or access to facilities that have a ton of equipment. Many are confused on how their conditioning should look. The sled can be used on many different surfaces such as the road, a field, or indoor turf and can be as cheap as 30$. You can buy 30lb bags of sand or ankle weights if you can’t get actual weight plates to stack on top.

2. Reduces The Risk of Injury

  • Many popular forms of cardiovascular training are much too intense on the body however unlike regular running the sled serves as a low impact device with high reward.

3. Can Be Used For SPP

Even though the sled is often used for GPP, you can also mimic movements from any sport.
Some ideas are listed below:

  1. Walking or jogging sideways in defense.
  2. Walking or jogging backwards with hands up in defense or down.
  3. Sprinting back walking forward with hands in straps overhead or sideways like in defense walking with a med ball at waist,chest or above head.

4. Strengthen Muscles While Also Raising Anaerobic And Aerobic Capacity

  • Unlike while running the sled will strengthen muscles as well as raise your Aerobic/Anaerobic Capacity.
  • Walking forwards-strengthens hamstrings,glutes,low back
  • Walking backwards quads,hips,upper back.
  • Walking sideways- glutes,adductors,abductors.

5. Helps An Athlete Practice Acceleration Not Deceleration

  • When doing sled power walking properly every step should be like the first step coming off the
    blocks in a track meet.
  • When doing multiple trips for a normal running workout an athlete starts to learn to pace themselves as a result the athlete will be practicing deceleration. This will cause an athlete to hit the speed barrier and inturn not only not run any faster but get slower.
  • We only want to train acceleration for sports and in turn we will actually start to inevitably run faster.


Kalil Sherrod

-Westside Barbell Personal Training and Athletic Coaching Certified
-Byrd Sports Performance Certified Coach

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