HYROX sled push and sled pull: technique, weights, pacing

For the HYROX sled push, get low with your arms long, keep your hips behind the sled, and take short, fast steps so it never stops moving. For the pull, sit back in the box and pull the rope hand over hand in a steady rhythm rather than in big heaves. In 2026/27 the Men Open push is 152 kg including the sled and the pull is 103 kg, both over 4 x 12.5 m¹.

The sleds are also where a strong runner can lose the most places. In Bangkok, that was me.

The rules and weights#

All loads include the sled, and both stations are 50 m as four lengths of 12.5 m¹. The full table for every division, in pounds too, is in the divisions and weights guide.

The rules worth knowing before race day¹:

• Push: you and the sled start fully behind the white line, you stay in your assigned lane, and the whole sled has to cross the 12.5 m mark before you change direction.
• Pull: you work from the Racers Box at each end of the lane and can't step on its front or back line while holding the rope. You have to stay standing. No sitting or kneeling to pull. The rope can trail out the back of your lane but can't get in a neighbour's.
• Penalties: the first infringement is a warning, then 15 seconds each. Missing a whole lane is a disqualification.
• Chalk: event chalk is allowed at the sled pull and the farmers carry only. Anywhere else, or your own chalk, is 2 minutes.

Sled push technique#

The sled push is a slow, heavy, grinding effort, and the goal is simple: don't let it stop. Getting a dead sled moving again is harder than keeping a moving one going, so a slower continuous push usually beats fast bursts with pauses.

• Body angle. Hands on the poles, arms long, torso low and leaning in. The lower and longer you are, the more of your leg drive goes forward instead of down into the sled.
• Steps. Short and quick, driving through the balls of your feet. Long strides tend to let the sled stall between steps.
• Turns. At each end, get round to the other side fast and get the sled moving before you think about pace. Turns are dead time on the clock.
• Breathing. Breathe out on the drive and keep breathing. Don't hold it for a whole length.

None of these cues comes from a trial. They're the standard coaching cues, and they all serve the same idea: steady force, no stops.

My own log on 24 July, a sled push session at 157 kg, has one note: "calf burns a lot; slow down". That's the push in one line.

Sled pull technique#

• Set up long. Stand at the back of the box with the rope taut before you start, so the first pull moves the sled rather than taking up slack.
• Hand over hand, sitting back. Lean back with your hips low and use your legs and back as a counterweight, then let your arms do short, fast pulls. Pulling with your arms alone tires them out fast.
• Manage the rope. Pile it behind you inside your lane. Tangled rope costs time and can earn a penalty if it drifts into a neighbour's lane.
• Chalk up. It's the one station besides the farmers carry where the event chalk is allowed, so use it.
• Reset quickly. When the sled crosses the 12.5 m line, run to the other end of the lane and pull it back. The jog is part of the station time.

Why the sleds cost strength-limited athletes so much#

A 2026 review of HYROX demands names maximal strength alongside aerobic capacity, anaerobic power and local muscular endurance as determinants of performance². The results data shows where that bites. Across seven seasons of Pro and Elite results, the strength-based stations reshuffled the rankings more than the running did, and the time they cost grew larger the further down the field you went³. Among the top 100 Pro men, sled push times didn't improve at all between season 1 and season 7 (2:20 to 2:26), while the sled pull dropped from 4:25 to 3:27³.

Here's where my stations ranked in the Bangkok men's field, out of 3,254, next to my runs⁴.

Ken's field rank by segment, HYROX Bangkok 2026

	Value (rank)
Runs	127
Row	140
Burpee broad jumps	249
Sandbag lunges	335
SkiErg	705
Farmers carry	728
Sled pull	753
Wall balls	803
Sled push	966

Rank of 3,254 men, lower is better. Source: HYRESULT result page for Ken's race, screenshots of 2026-08-19.

The sled push at 3:10 was my worst-ranked segment of the whole race, 966th. The pull, at 4:31, was 753rd. HYRESULT's all-seasons comparison puts them in the best 64.5% and 51.1% respectively, against the best 10% for my running.

My plan after the race, and the arithmetic behind it#

Going into Bangkok my Hybrid Score was 77, with a Strength Index of 74 and an Engine Index of 80. The race had the same shape: my runs ranked 127th in the field, my stations 406th. My plan after the race was one line in my notes: next block, the barbell gets the hours.

The score backs that up mechanically. hybridAF fuses the two sides with a harmonic mean, which pulls toward the weaker one. At 74 and 80, one more point of strength was worth 0.54 points of score, and one more point of engine was worth 0.46. So a point of strength was worth about 17% more score than a point of engine. That's a property of the formula, not a promise about race time, and those numbers are from the scoring model in use before 8 October 2026.

What one more pillar point was worth to Ken's score

	Value (score points)
+1 strength	0.54
+1 engine	0.46

Derivative of the harmonic mean at Strength 74, Engine 80 (Ken's score before HYROX Bangkok, scoring model before 2026-10-08). Source: hybridAF pointValue() in src/lib/score-grading.ts.

To check if you're in the same spot, the hybrid athlete standards put your lifts and your engine on the same five-level ladder, and say which cut points are published and which are ours.

How long the sleds should take#

There's no official target time. The useful comparisons are your own field and a reference that's honest about what it is.

hybridAF uses its own reference times for a strong amateur in Open finishing around 1:15 to 1:25: 2:15 for the sled push and 2:40 for the sled pull. Those are our approximations, not HYROX numbers, and they're meant for comparing one station against another, not as a pass mark.

Against that reference, my push was 55 seconds behind and my pull 1:51 behind, 2:46 between the two sleds, in a race I still finished in 1:13:38. The pull was my biggest gap of any station. Wall balls came next at 1:34 behind, while my burpee broad jumps were 5 seconds ahead of their reference. If you've got a race result, the same check is the quickest way to find where your own time is going.

Split the push into lengths and it's easier to see. 3:10 over four lengths is about 47 seconds a length including turns. If a 12.5 m length takes you much longer than your others, that's the length where the sled stopped.

Pacing the sleds inside the race#

The sleds sit at stations 2 and 3, straight after runs 2 and 3, so you hit them fresh-ish and still have six runs to go¹. Two things matter more than raw pace.

First, the sled shouldn't stop. Pick an effort you can hold for all four lengths. If you're stopping mid-length on the push, you went out too hard on length one.

Second, the run after. Coming off the push, keep the first few hundred metres of run 3 controlled until your legs come back.

In my race, runs 3 and 4 (after the push and the pull) were 3:55 each, two of my fastest, so the sleds cost me time at the station but not on the runs that followed. The compromised running guide has all eight splits.

In Doubles#

Same sleds, same 50 m, and the pair can split the lengths however they like. The rulebook adds one rule for the push: the resting partner walks directly behind the one working, and wandering into a neighbouring lane counts as an infringement⁵. Splitting by length is the simple option, because each handover happens at a line where the sled has already stopped.

Training without a sled#

If your gym has no sled, or has one on a very different floor, there's some evidence that heavy basic lifting carries over. In a 7-week study of trained rugby players, a traditional lifting program improved sled push performance at least as much as a strongman program built around implements, with small to moderate advantages for the traditional group on squat, deadlift and sled push⁶. It's rugby players, not HYROX athletes, and it's seven weeks. But it means you don't need a sled to get stronger for one.

Stand-ins that load the same pattern, none of which has been compared to sled work in a study:

• Push: heavy squats or front squats for the base, plus pushing a powered-off treadmill by its handles, or heavy walking lunges, for the leg endurance.
• Pull: heavy rows and deadlifts for the base, plus hand-over-hand rope pulls against a band or a cable stack for the arm rhythm.

If you do have a sled, use it before race day at least a few times at race weight.

My log shows four sessions with a sled in the eight weeks before Bangkok, the first on 10 July: four 25 m pushes at 152 kg, each taking 78 to 86 seconds.

Sleds and floors differ between gyms and venues, so a 25 m time in your gym won't map cleanly onto race day. Train the pattern and the leg endurance, and expect the race sled to feel different.

For the full set of loads see HYROX divisions and weights, for how strong a runner needs to be in general see how strong should a runner be, and for my whole race, my first HYROX breakdown. Everything else is on the HYROX hub. hybridAF is not affiliated with HYROX.