Why the same sled moves differently
The rulebook fixes the total, sled included, and it is the same at every race. What it cannot fix is friction. Most of the force you push or pull against is the drag between the sled's runners and the floor, and that depends on the floor and the runners as much as on the plates.
Researchers at Brunel University towed the same weighted sled across four sports surfaces and measured friction coefficients from 0.21 on an artificial hockey pitch to 0.58 on an athletics track. Same sled, same plates, close to three times the force to keep it sliding.
Race data and equipment news point the same way on HYROX carpet, and every item here is dated:
- 2021/22 season. Rox Lyfe compared the top ten Pro sled push times across races. At London on 30 April 2022 the men's median was 59 seconds slower than at Manchester, and the first three European races of the season were about 90 seconds faster than the last three, which the author suggested could be wear on the sleds or the carpet.
- 2022/23 season. Its follow-up, updated in August 2023, used Men Open medians. Where the author assumed the equipment was being used for the first time that season, the median push was 2:38, against 3:05 on equipment already used. Leaving out first use, the fastest push median among European venues outside Spain was 2:33 in Leipzig and the slowest 3:19 in London. On the pull, first use made no visible difference (5:01 against 4:50), yet venues still ranged from 4:13 in Essen to 5:09 in Hamburg.
- September 2026. HYROX introduced a modified sled whose runners can be replaced without taking it apart. The weights did not change, and the carpet still varies, so two identical sleds can still feel different in neighbouring lanes.
Three things follow. Never compare a sled split across venues. Never judge your fitness from one gym sled, because the gym floor is another surface. And train the skill of moving a sled that feels heavier than you hoped, because one day it will.
Sled push technique for any floor
A good push sends force forward into the sled, not down into the floor. Body angle does most of that work, and it costs nothing in fitness to fix.
- Set your hands on the poles: high with straight arms, or low with bent arms and your shoulders close to your hands.
- Walk your feet back until you make one long line from your back heel through your hip to your shoulder, with your hips below your shoulders and your chest low.
- Break the sled free with two or three short, hard steps. This is the most expensive moment of every length.
- Once it moves, keep the steps short and quick, push the floor back behind you through the ball of your foot, and keep your eyes on the floor a stride ahead.
- Drive until the whole sled is past the line, then walk round it, set your hands and feet, and go again.
Slow down, but do not stop
Static friction is higher than sliding friction. In a test that pulled a weighted sled with a winch, the force to start it moving was about 30% higher than the force to keep it moving (friction coefficients of 0.43 and 0.33). Every stop in the middle of a length means paying that start-up cost again, plus the effort of getting the mass moving.
So when your legs burn, shorten the step and keep the sled creeping. If you must rest, take it at the end of a length, where the sled has to stop anyway.
Sled pull technique that spares your grip
The pull is hard on your grip, and your grip still has the row and the 200 m farmers carry to come. So the job is to move the sled with your hips and legs and let your hands do as little as possible.
- Stand near the front of the box, feet about shoulder width, hips back as if sitting into a chair, chest up and arms long. You must stay on your feet throughout.
- Reach long, grip, and drive your hips back and lean away as that hand travels to your hip. The legs start the pull; the arm finishes it.
- Your other hand is already reaching forward as the first one finishes, so the rope never stops moving. Hand over hand, in a steady rhythm.
- Use the depth of the box. Step back as you pull, then walk forward again, without stepping on the front or back line while you hold the rope.
- Let the rope pile up behind you or to one side, inside your lane. It may run out of the back of the lane, not into your neighbour's.
- When the whole sled is over the line, run to the other end of your lane, pick up the rope and pull it back.
Hold the rope only as hard as you need to. Squeezing it white-knuckled for 50 m spends the forearms you need on the carry. Event chalk is provided at the pull and your own chalk is not allowed. Gloves are, if they stay with you, worn or carried, from start to finish.
Training the sleds, with and without one
With a sled, three kinds of session cover it. Keep the technique work fresh and the race work tired.
- Technique at race weight. Eight lengths of 12.5 m on each sled, walking back between them, early in a session. Film one length from the side and check the body line.
- In race order. Run 1 km, push 50 m, run 1 km, pull 50 m, run 1 km. Two or three rounds once that feels controlled. In the race the push comes after about 2 km of running and the SkiErg, so this is closer to the real thing than any fresh set.
- The strength behind it. Squats, split squats and lunges for the push; hinges, rows and carries for the pull. The strength guide matches lifts to stations.
In our judgement, set the load by how the sled moves, not by the number on the plates: a load you can keep moving at a steady walk or faster for 12.5 m without stopping is race-like on your floor. Racing Pro means heavier sleds on both stations, covered in Open or Pro.
No sled at your gym? Substitutes, chosen for what each station taxes, are in training at home.
With Pro or during your trial, if your gym has no sled for a session, open workout mode, tap the dumbbell symbol and choose Equipment missing. Your coach offers up to three replacements that train the same thing, each with its own illustration and target.
The swap is for that session only: the workout stored in your plan is not rewritten, and next time the session comes round it is the original again. More in Swap an exercise mid-session.
Pacing the sleds inside the race
The sleds come second and third, with run 3 between them. They are short: in a lab study of a simulated race, 11 recreational athletes took a median 128 seconds on the push and 155 on the pull, the fastest stations of the day. They are also where a race can come apart.
Across seven seasons of Pro and Elite results, running made up about half of race time, but the sled push and sled pull were among the stations where racers' ranks differed most from their finishing places, and time lost on the strength-based stations, the sled pull among them, weighed most on slower racers' totals. A 2026 preprint, not yet peer reviewed, of 13,618 results found the run after the sled push a median 14 seconds slower than the run before it, the second-largest change after the lunges. Blow up on the push and you pay on run 3 and the pull.
- Read the sled on the first length. Push it at an effort you could hold for all four lengths, then adjust. A heavy sled is a slow split, not a bad race.
- No stops in the middle of a length. Shorten the step instead, and take any breath you need at the turn.
- Settle into run 3. Run the first few hundred metres a little easy while your legs come back, then find your pace before the pull.
- On the pull, rhythm beats force. Long, steady hand-over-hand pulls driven by the hips, so your grip arrives at the row and the carry still working.
- Count your lengths. Four on each sled, and a missed lane is an Incomplete Station. Every penalty is on the rules page.
For where the sleds sit among all eight stations, and how to train the run before each one, start with the stations guide.