The sled pull is an excellent way to improve your posterior chain’s strength, power, and conditioning.
Including the sled pull in your training repertoire is an excellent choice for a total body workout. Not only does it torch calories and enhance strength, but it also promotes muscle development and optimizes training efficiency. Furthermore, full body workouts improve coordination, an essential aspect of executing resistance exercises with impeccable form. In this exercise guide, we look at sled pulls and how to do them correctly, the benefits of this exercise (especially for your posterior chain), and other good pulling workout alternatives.
The sled pull is a functional exercise that trains and strengthens your muscles for daily activities. As a result, it becomes easier and safer for you to do your everyday tasks.
Before including it in your routine, there are many essential details about the sled pull. For example, it’s very different from the sled drag, a similar movement that works on similar muscles.
Technique and Muscles Worked
As a total body workout, the sled pull targets the muscles in your legs, back, shoulders, core, and arms. Specifically, this exercise works on your quads, biceps, hamstrings, calves, glutes, abs, obliques, delts, traps, lats, rhomboids, forearms, and erector spinae. However, you should note that this exercise emphasizes and works more on the posterior chain and lower body muscles.
You need a strap with a handle attachment to do the sled pull that works on all the muscles above. Next, load the sled or rig up a rope or chain to weight plates or a heavy object to make one. Then, follow the steps in the step-by-step guide below.
- Put the weight plates on the sled and ensure you have enough room to drag it for an appropriate distance.
- Attach the strap, rope, or chain to the sled.
- Facing the sled, grab the attachment handles and walk backward until it is taut.
- Assume a stance with your knees slightly bent and your back straight while tightening your core.
- Pull the sled and walk backward with your arms extended.
Benefits
The sled pull is less enjoyable than dashing through the snow in one. However, this exercise offers many benefits for all fitness levels that make including them in your routine worth it. Below are some of these benefits that stand out.
Total Body Conditioning
The sled pull is a cross between strength training and cardio. It also targets muscles in your upper body, lower body, and core. As a result, you get total body conditioning and increased strength when you do this exercise.
Improve Grip Strength
Whether using a handle, rope, or chain, the sled pull requires gripping and pulling a heavy sled for a distance. This leads to an increase in your grip strength over time. Improving your grip is vital for maintaining your form for many other exercises.
Low Risk
The sled pull is a simple exercise without too many complications. Athletes of all levels can do this exercise; you only need to be able to walk or crawl. As a result, sled pulls have a low-risk factor when considering injuries.
Induces Muscle Growth
With sled pulls, you can put your muscles under concentric contractions for up to 60 seconds or more. Research shows that as a bodybuilder, combining concentric contractions with protein supplementation improves your muscular endurance and induces muscle hypertrophy (1). You can also quickly progress with this exercise by increasing the load.
Joint Friendly
When training, eccentric muscle contractions are when injuries to your joints tend to happen the most. The sled pull is a mostly concentric contraction that takes the stress off your knee joints. It also helps to make your knees stronger.
Reduces Your Risk of Cardiovascular Diseases
The sled pull is a form of cardio that helps to improve your strength and works on your endurance. It’s also great for your heart as this exercise will have your heart pumping faster in no time. Research shows that routines that do this reduce your risk of cardiovascular diseases (2).
Improve Performance
Working with sleds is a great way to improve your speed, endurance, and power. These are important performance metrics. You’ll also discover that the longer you do sled pulls, the harder it’ll be for you to burn out quickly.
Burns Calories
Sled pulls are a great way to burn calories and maintain your weight. You can also increase your load and duration for this exercise to lose weight. Sled pulls improve your anaerobic and aerobic conditioning and are demanding activity that helps you burn calories.
Unilateral Training
They work your legs and hips independently. This form of unilateral training is highly beneficial and can help to correct muscle imbalances. Muscle imbalances can lead to injuries if your dominant side is always taking over.
Sled Pull Alternatives
The sled pull is a great pull exercise that targets your total body for an effective workout. Below are some sled pull alternative exercises to try to build your muscles.
Deadlifts
Deadlifts are considered the king of all exercises by many. You can use them to build your upper body, lower body, and core muscles, making it a great sled pull alternative. This exercise increases your muscular power and mass while boosting your heart rate.
Weighted Pullups
Weighted pull-ups increase the muscle mass in your upper body. You can use dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, or a barbell.
Bent-over Rows
Bent-over rows are effective for training your upper body muscles. However, muscles in your core and posterior chain also stabilize during this routine. You can do bent-over rows with a barbell, dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, or gym machines like the cable machine.
FAQs
What muscles does sled pull work?
They work on your shoulder, arms, core, legs, and back muscles. It’s an effective total body workout. For a more precise breakdown, please check the exercise guide above.
What are the benefits of sled drag exercise?
The sled drag, just like the sled pull, is excellent for your cardiovascular health, conditioning, and muscle growth. This exercise also boosts your athletic performance, which has carryover to other exercise routines and sports.
Does pulling a sled build muscle?
Pulling a sled can help you build muscle under a concentric contraction for 30 seconds or more. Concentric contractions are effective for building muscle.
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References
- Farup, J., Rahbek, S. K., Riis, S., Vendelbo, M. H., Paoli, F.d, & Vissing, K. (2014). Influence of exercise contraction mode and protein supplementation on human skeletal muscle satellite cell content and muscle fiber growth. Journal of applied physiology (Bethesda, Md. : 1985), 117(8), 898–909. https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.00261.2014
- Nystoriak, M. A., & Bhatnagar, A. (2018). Cardiovascular Effects and Benefits of Exercise. Frontiers in cardiovascular medicine, 5, 135. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcvm.2018.00135
