More Thoughts on Sled Work

I've written quite a bit about sleds. In fact, I wrote this How to Use the Sled to Drastically Improve Speed and Acceleration( yes, that's a Ryan Lee headline) about 10 years ago. I've advocated for heavy sled pushes ( we like to use the term marches) and championed the idea that the old 10% rule was foolish.

My friend Cam Josse turned me onto French coach JB Morin's work and our sled training has further evolved this summer.

I love how stuff mixes together. Tony Holler's work inspired us to do more timed 10's and Flying 10's. Switching from running sprints to timing sprints has been a game changer for us. 

Timed sled sprints will be the next game changer. Cam determined (through Morin's work) that the proper load for sprints was a load that basically yielded a time that was 150% of your best sprint.

I know that sounds complicated but, it's not.

If you run a 1.5 sec timed ten yard dash than an appropriate sled load will put you at about 2.25 seconds. Last week we started sled sprints with approximately 20% of bodyweight. Times were a bit fast ( more like 1.8-1.9) with 25-35 lbs so, this week we went up by 10 lbs. This still wasn't enough so I think next week will be 20 more lbs, putting us in the 55- 65 lb category. This will be 30-35% of bodyweight category.

Here's a quick clip of one run in slow motion.