Hyrox sled pull: weight, rules and how to pull it faster
Station 3. You've run 3km, pushed a 152kg sled through 50m, and now you're stood in a marked box with 103kg on the other end of a rope.
Plenty of athletes train the sled push. Far fewer train the pull. That gap shows up on race day, because the pull carries eight rulebook standards to the push's five, and the penalties stack at 15 seconds a time.
Here's the weight, the rules, and how to train for it.
What the Hyrox sled pull actually is
The sled pull is 50m, broken into 4 lengths of 12.5m. You stand in a marked area at one end of the lane, pull the sled to you hand over hand, then run to the other end and pull it back.
Weights are all-in, sled included:
- Women Open: 78kg
- Men Open and Women Pro: 103kg
- Men Pro: 153kg
Those are the official numbers from the HYROX Singles Rulebook for the 26/27 season. Worth checking them yourself before every season, since they do change.
The station sits third, after the sled push and before the burpee broad jumps. By the time you reach it you've covered 3km of running and one of the two heaviest stations in the race.
The 8 rules, and the 3 that catch people out
The rulebook lists eight standards for the pull. Most are obvious. Three aren't.
- You use the sled lane you're assigned. No choosing.
- Both you and the sled start completely inside your Racers Box.
- You stay inside the Racers Box at all times. You can't step on the solid line at the front or back of the box while you're holding the rope.
- The sled has to pass the 12.5m mark completely before you change direction.
- Once the sled is past the mark, you run to the other end and pull it back.
- You stay standing. Pulling from a seated or kneeling position isn't permitted.
- Your rope stays in your lane. It can run out the back of the lane, but it can't impede the lane next to you.
- Four lengths of 12.5m, entire sled past the line, station done.
Rules 3, 6 and 7 are the ones that get called. First infringement is a formal warning. Second costs 15 seconds. Every one after that costs another 15, with no more warnings.
Miss a sled lane entirely and you're disqualified. No time penalty applies.
One small thing in your favour: chalk is permitted at the sled pull and the farmers carry, and nowhere else. Use the chalk the event provides. Bringing your own, or carrying event chalk away from the station, costs 2 minutes.
Why the pull punishes grip more than the push
The push loads your legs. The pull loads your hands.
You're holding a rope under tension for 50m of sled travel, four times, with almost no release between reps. That's sustained isometric work from the forearm flexors, and it's the same demand that shows up 3 stations later on the farmers carry. Research on two-handed carrying tasks found isometric arm strength predicts how long people can hold a load before upper-limb fatigue forces them to stop (Chang et al., Int J Environ Res Public Health).
Which means the pull and the carry share a limiter. Train one and you're training the other.
The second cost is positional. Staying inside a box while generating horizontal force against 103kg puts you in a braced, slightly-behind-vertical position that most gym training never asks for. Your posterior chain does the work. Your grip decides how long you get to keep doing it.
How to train the sled pull
Three things matter here, in this order.
Rope work under fatigue. Set up a rope and sled, or a rope and a weighted prowler, and pull after a hard run. Pulling fresh teaches you nothing useful about station 3. Aim for 4 x 12.5m pulls after a 1km run at race pace, twice a week in the 6 weeks before a race.
Grip endurance. Dead hangs and heavy holds for time beat max-effort crushing work here, because the station asks you to hold on for 50m rather than squeeze hard once. 4 sets of 45 to 60 seconds, 2 or 3 times a week. Farmers carries do double duty.
Horizontal pulling volume. Seated rows, ring rows, single-arm cable rows. The pull is a rowing pattern under load with your feet planted, so build the pattern.
If you don't have a sled, a rope wrapped around a loaded barbell or a heavy sandbag on a gym mat gets you most of the way. The friction won't match, but the position and the grip demand will.
The pull in your race plan
Two practical calls to make before you get there.
Set your grip budget early. If your forearms are already cooked at station 3, the farmers carry at station 6 is going to be ugly, and so are the wall balls at the end. Pulling slightly slower with a cleaner hand-over-hand rhythm usually costs less overall than emptying your grip to save 15 seconds here.
Know your transition. The pull ends in the Roxzone and the clock keeps running. Most athletes lose more time walking out of the sled area than they ever lose on the sled itself, which is worth a look at your Roxzone strategy.
The burn you feel in the back half of a race is a real limiter, and it's the one thing you can influence outside of training. Beta-alanine has decent evidence behind it for efforts in the 1 to 4 minute range, which is where most sled work lives. Our Beta Alanine is 3g a scoop, 100 servings, and nothing else in the tub. It takes about 4 weeks of daily use before it does anything, so it belongs in a training block. The dose and timing are covered here.
Train the pull. It's 50m that most of your competition is ignoring.