Gym Challenge – October

Heavy sled push

Test your power – see how much you can push!

This is simply (!) pushing the sled/prowler the length of the ropes in the gym with as much added weight as you can move. Your power comes from your legs and hips (not arms) and the idea is to move the weight slowly and maintain good form rather than to go as fast as you can. Hold the sled on the lower handles and keep your abs braced and back straight – no rounding out.

Each go is a set of three pushes and the sled itself weighs 20kg

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• For the first push load up the 5kg plates and push from A to B to warm up
• For the second push add on the two 10kg plates
• For the third push load up to your body weight (scales are outside the changing room) and see how far you can get

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The leader board will be up in the gym.

Strength coaches use weighted sled workouts to condition elite athletes because they’re so effective. They are becoming more common in certain types of gym – we’ve got one of these strange looking contraptions – and they can be used in a variety of ways including sled push, reverse sled drag, sled chest press, sled row, wood chop and pull-throughs.

According to Christopher Smith, CSCS on bodybuilding.com:

One of the most important distinctions between sled exercises and most other types of resistance work is that with sled work there is no eccentric, or negative, part of the movement. For example, when you lower the bar to your chest on the bench press you perform an eccentric action. The concentric half of the motion is when you press it back to lockout.

The eccentric portion of the lift is where most of the muscle damage occurs, which is one reason that bodybuilders tend to (or are supposed to tend to) favor slowly lowering the weight. For building muscle, this is usually a good thing, but when you need to train often or speed up recovery, it isn’t ideal.