The Best Lower Body Workout For Size and Power
What's one of the BEST ways to gain mass and power in the lower body? Well, if you said squats, dead lifts, or lunges you're definitely on the money, but if you're looking to truly SKY ROCKET your lower body gains and work capacity, SLED DRAGGING is the answer.
No doubt about it, heavy sled dragging will torch your legs, lungs and everything in between. For inexperienced or young athletes, they are an awesome tool because of the lack of learning curve needed. There is zero stress on the spine, and a kid can throw a bunch of weight on and get to draggin' right off the bat. For advanced trainees, they serve as a great accessory movement for squatting and dead lifting and also as a great conditioning tool for fat loss. If you need to jack up your volume of leg work, sled dragging is the way to go because there is no eccentric to the movements which eliminates soreness and CNS fatigue.
Just like with anything else, there are various ways to drag your sled, but I personally prefer to stick with just a few basic options.
Forward Dragging: holding the straps behind you as you march forward, take big steps and push through the ground hard. Great for the entire lower body, but especially the glutes and hams.
Backward Dragging: Maybe my favorite variation, backward sled dragging will thrash your quads. Just hold the straps in front of you and start walking backwards.
Step Over Dragging: These are great for lateral movement and keeping your knees healthy for the long haul.
Pull Throughs: just like you were forming a cable pull through, use your glutes and hams to pull the sled straps through your legs.
These movements can be done as part of a lower body training session, as a finisher to a workout, or done lighter on off days as active recovery. As far as sets and reps are concerned here are some of my favorite ways to organize a sled dragging session:
1) Have a set time and just try to cover as much distance as possible while rotating between at least two of the variations given. This is more for conditioning purposes, but still great for strength endurance.
2) Have a set distance of 100-200 total yards, depending on how heavy you want to go and rotate between all 4 variations to meet the required distance.
Example:
forward sled dragging x ~ 30 yards
backward sled dragging x ~ 30 yards
step over sled dragging x ~ 30 yards
sled pull throughs x ~ 10 yards
- repeat if necessary.
3) Typical set up; something like 4x30 yards of backward or foreword dragging. Sometimes I might superset these with kettlebell swings or snatches.
