7 Effective Slideboard Exercises for Athletic Performance and Lateral Movement

If you plan on incorporating slideboard exercises into your workout routine, you need to know what type of exercises will improve your athletic performance. However, before we dive into the exercises, here’s a brief about a slideboard.

It’s a device or board used by athletes and fitness enthusiasts to focus on agility, mobility and core-stabilising exercises.

Effective slideboard exercises

When you think of slideboard exercises, you should understand that it’s primarily to improve your athletic performance and not muscle mass. Therefore, your muscle endurance may improve, but your size may not.

1) Side to side slide

In this exercise, stand on the slideboard,and begin with your right side. Move towards the right with your right leg while your left foot slides towards the right. Your right foot should be pressed against the right bumper.

Repeat the movement on the left by pressing your left foot against the left bumper and shifting your body towards that side.

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2) Hamstring curls

Lie down on the slideboard, and extend your legs forward. Put your heels on the board, and pull them closer to you till your quads are perpendicular to your torso.

Push out the heels, and extend your legs forward till your body forms a straight line. Ensure that you have your hips off the slideboard for the entire time.

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3) Alternate sliding push-up

This is one of the slideboard exercises that focuses heavily on the upper body. Go down in a push-up position; tighten your core muscles, and form a straight line with your body.

Move the palms apart on the slideboard as you go down with your chest, and slide them back to the centre as you move back up. Push-up slideboard exercises can be done on the knees as well.

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4) Pike push-up

Another exercise that focuses on the upper body is the pike push-up. However, this puts immense pressure on your shoulders as well.

Put your feet on the slideboard and your hands outside, and move to a push-up position. Next, slide your legs towards the bumper, and push your posterior upwards. The end position will be an inverted-V. Once you’ve reached this position, slide back to the neutral one.

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5) Slideboard skaters

This is an interesting exercise that focuses on your upper and lower body.

Essentially, for this movement, you combine the side-to-side slide with an additional motion, where you go bend downwards, and touch the slideboard with the opposite hand.

Ideally, this exercise will help anyone who is into skiing, as it truly strengthens the quads and calves.

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6) Lunges

Another slideboard exercise that focuses on the legs are lunges. You place one foot on the slideboard and the other outside. Place both hands on the hips, and push the foot on the slideboard backwards.

As the foot moves backwards, you go down in a lunge position. Once you’ve reached a point where you feel the stretch, slide the foot back to the neutral position.

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7) Planks

This slideboard exercise focuses primarily on the core muscles. Even though every exercise you do require you to engage your core muscles, this one particularly works on the abdominal muscles.

Place both hands on the slideboard and your feet outside the board. Go down in a shoulder plank position, and start pushing your palms forward. Keep going till the point where your core muscles remain engaged, and slide back using the core muscles.

You’ll know you’ve moved past the required point when you pull back with your legs or hands.

Always keep in mind that it’s quite easy for the core muscles to disengage themselves and the other bigger muscles to take over. To avoid that, maintain a strong muscle-mind connection.