The Benefits of Sled Training

If you are looking to add variety and intensity to your training, you should consider the gym sled. Also known by the name ‘prowler press’, the fitness sled is an excellent exercise piece for every fitness fanatic. This type of equipment will give you a full-body workout as it is specially designed to target and strengthen different areas of your body such as your quads, glutes, calves, hamstrings, core, triceps, and shoulders.

The marketplace is swamped with many different designs of gym sleds. In this article, we’ll give you an overview of some of the best and most effective weight training sleds, explain their most prominent features, and describe some of the benefits they provide for your body.

Best Gym Weight Sleds

Predator Sled

The Predator model is a powerful gym sled that provides unbelievable cardio and strength workouts for the whole body. Its most prominent feature is its incredible ability to inflict a brutal workout on its user, leaving your muscle no choice but to step up to the challenge ahead. It includes nylon strips that coat underneath for use on concrete, or you can also remove them for use on Carpet sled tracks or AstroTurf. The Predator sled has a weather-resistant coating which makes it suitable for outdoor usage as well, however, most often undercover storage is recommended to ensure its longevity.

Rogue Dog Sled

This fitness sled has all kinds of modifications and extra attachments you can add to it to do different kinds of exercises. It features the push/pull versatility function and quality steel construction that is fully equipped for intense multi-surface training. Besides it has a rope to pull the sled and a doable handle option which is a set of parallel bars set closer to the ground. 

Lastly, these sleds have a “wheelbarrow attachment” where you can put a bumper plate on the front to be the wheel, which transforms it into a wheelbarrow sled that can hold up to 226kg. The good news about this gym sled is that you can pick and choose what attachments you want and which ones you don’t, as purchasing all the elements can readily add up to its price, which for some people may be pretty costly.

Industrial Fitness Prowler

If you thought that prowler sleds were only being used by football players, we wouldn’t blame you. This type of sled looks pretty hardcore, and you can often find it in many commercial gym settings and studios, or athletic training centres where there is either grass or AstroTurf. 

Industrial fitness has created this simplistic, yet effective piece of equipment, including features such as upper and lower grip bars, customizable colours, and removable bars. This type of sled it’s made from British steel, featuring a 60mm box section with 3mm wall thickness. So, if you are looking for a weight sled that has the optimal combination of low and high grip, this is the ideal choice for you. Besides, you can perform a wide variety of exercises with this sled, including, running, pushing, and pulling, and work all your key muscle groups to exhaustion.

The Benefits of Sled Training

As we already mentioned in the beginning, there are many benefits weight sled training provides. Let’s go over some of the most important ones.

Full Body Workout

When performed correctly, the sled push targets both your upper and lower body muscles. More specifically this type of workout will engage your glutes, quads, hamstrings, quadriceps, and shoulders. This way you can get a full-body workout and lots of calories burnt.

You Can Lose Body Fat

Speaking of burning calories, weighted sled training is the ideal workout that will help you lose fat. Get ready to sweat a lot as you push hard so you can achieve your desired results. This type of exercise will help you lose weight and maintain a lean muscle physique.

Adaptability to All Fitness Levels

The sled push has the feature to adapt to all fitness levels. If you are new to this kind of exercise equipment you can start by pushing the sled and ditching all the weight. With time, as you gain more confidence and you get stronger you can start adding weight in small increments so you can adjust the sled to fit your level of fitness.

Improve Speed

Pushing a weighted sled as part of a training program may also improve speed. This fact was confirmed by the study conducted in 2019, involving 50 high school athletes, and looked at the effectiveness of unrestricted and restricted sled pushing across multiple loads for sprint training. The researchers concluded that pushing a sled with any load is superior to unrestricted sled pushes, and might produce greater gains in sprint performance over short distances.

You Can Train Indoors 

Let’s face it, there are times when you just can’t get to the gym to work out. Perhaps you have a tight schedule or you simply don’t want to deal with crowded places as gyms can be. For this reason, many people have decided to work out in the comfort of their homes. The increased popularity of sled training resulted in the introduction of many types of sleds, including those that can be pushed and pulled on a carpet and those with wheels that are perfect for indoor places. This way you can bring your gym home and start reaping the many benefits this type of workout provides for your body.