What is a Weight Sled?

Weight sleds are heavy duty steel sleds that are often seen on a track in the gym. They can be pushed, pulled and dragged to suit the demand of your training and can be loaded with Olympic plates to increase the weight.

Sleds are a popular piece of strength training equipment for sports such as rugby because they imitate movements that happen during match play. This doesn’t mean that only sportspeople should be using them. A weight sled is ideal for any form of strength and conditioning or explosive training.

One of the primary benefits of a weight sled is that although it’s mainly used for lower body exercises, it is a full body movement and therefore requires full body strength. There are various movements you can do with a weight sled, including:

• Sled push
• Sled pull
• Acceleration drags

Because there are a wide variety of movements that you can execute, it hits different muscle groups more prominently during different exercises. If you want to improve your conditioning then you can add them to a circuit or to tire your muscles out, add them to the end of a leg workout as a finisher.

Different Handles and Attachments

A standard weight sled comes with long pole handles that can be used for a high or low sled push or pull. This movement will primarily target the lower body muscles such as the quadriceps, hamstrings and gluteus maximus.

If you want to increase the intensity of the workload on the quadriceps, you can use a low bar to perform a sled push. This handle is popular with rugby training as it mimics the low position you need to get into when performing a tackle.

For athletes looking to improve their acceleration and sprint performance, you can use a shoulder harness with connective straps. With the harness attached to you, you can practise your sprint start with additional weight. This additional load increases the demand placed against the body and will force you to work harder when accelerating.

What’s the Difference Between a Weight Sled and a Drag sled?

A weight sled can be used for a variety of movements, whereas a drag sled has been designed primarily to be used with a shoulder harness for acceleration drag exercises. The drag sled is a compact piece of kit that can be folded and taken to gyms, parks and running tracks to add resistance to your training session. Although it’s smaller than a weight sled, it can still be loaded with Olympic bumper plates so you can add load to increase training intensity.