SLEDTRUTH
Friction Tool Nº 001
Sled Push

HYROX · Gym-to-race load converter

Your gym sled is lying to you.

HYROX is raced on high-pile event carpet — one of the grabbiest surfaces a sled ever meets. A 152 kg sled on rubber gym flooring pushes like roughly 103 kg on race carpet. The Sled Truth Calculator converts your training load into race-day drag, then prescribes the exact plates that make your gym sled tell the truth.

μ event carpet 0.62 μ rubber floor 0.42 typical drag deficit −32%
Input · your setupall masses in kg
Race

Official HYROX totals, sled included.

Gym

Rogue Dog Sled ≈ 34 kg, Echo ≈ 27 kg.

Sled + plates, as you push it today.

Athlete

Sports science, shown working

How this works — the friction math

A sled moving at steady speed resists you with kinetic friction: the drag force equals the friction coefficient of the sled-surface pairing times the total loaded mass times gravity. Because drag scales linearly with both μ and mass, two setups feel identical when their μ × mass products match. That gives an exact conversion:

drag ≈ μ × mass × g   →   gym target = race mass × (μrace ÷ μgym)

Surface coefficients (steel-skid baseline)
Surfaceμ kinetic
HYROX-style event carpet (high pile) — race baseline0.62
Thin commercial carpet0.50
Rubber gym flooring0.42
Concrete or asphalt0.38
Artificial turf / sled track0.32
Hardwood / court0.30
Sled base modifiers
BaseModifier
Bare steel skids× 1.00
Powder-coated / painted steel× 0.95
Plastic (HDPE/UHMW) skids× 0.85
HYROX sled push standards (total incl. sled)
DivisionTotal
Women Open / Women Doubles102 kg
Men Open / Men Doubles / Mixed Doubles152 kg
Women Pro152 kg
Men Pro202 kg

Honest limits: coefficients are representative mid-range values drawn from published sled and material friction estimates — your exact floor varies with pile height, wear, dust, humidity, skid finish, and push speed. Breakaway (static) friction runs higher than the moving values used here, and wheeled resistance sleds (Tank-style) are not friction-dominant, so this tool does not model them. Treat the output as a calibrated starting point, then confirm by feel and split times.