We've been using striking as a fun cardiovascular workout. Here is Professional Football player A.J. Hawk of the Green Bay Packers implementing it into his workout. 

Exciting news Kaizen Fitness Fanatics! We’ve added a new training tool to our repertoire. The slide board!  We will be incorporating it into your workout out programs over the next few weeks. We wanted to give you some more information about it and its training benefits. Those of you who have already tried it out know the challenge that it presents, but for those who haven’t here’s what you have to look forward to.

The slide board is exactly what the name implies, a board that that you can slide on with either hands or feet. There are two fixed blocks on each end of a slick white board surface. Our first board is 8 feet long and 2 feet wide giving you plenty of room to work with. The slide board is utilized by hockey players, speed skaters, and figure skaters to mimic the skating stride mechanics off the ice. It develops strength, power, and stability in the hip joint. The board can be used for general fitness for those same benefits mentioned above as well as providing a great low to no impact cardiovascular workout, by combining exercises in a circuit or setting them up as intervals. 

The slide board will mainly focus on lower body exercises but with a little creativity there are some upper body and core exercises to boot. The most basic exercise on the slide board is the skaters stride. Starting in an athletic stance with one foot on either end block, the athlete will push themselves with enough force to get them to the other side of the board, essentially recreating a skating stride. When they reach the other side they repeat, pushing themselves back to the other side. Maintaining a deep knee bend with the hips back, the chest and head up, this will keep the weight over the balls off the feet helping keep balanced during the slide. Using the arms in conjunction with the legs will help generate more force as well as get the athlete in a rhythm to perform the slide repetitively. 

That’s just the beginning. We already have progressions for that exercise including sport specific training. We hope after reading this you are as excited as we are about our slide board!