Slide Board — Lateral Stride
The Elite Hockey Drills app builds drills like this into your personalized off-ice program, week by week. Your first week is free.
How to Do It
Place slide board on flat surface. Wear booties or smooth socks. Stand at one end in a hockey stance — knees bent, hips loaded. Push off the outside edge of one foot, extending the hip and knee fully. Glide to the other end. Absorb with the landing leg. Push off again immediately — continuous rhythmic strides. Stay low throughout — stand up and you lose the skating-specific benefit.
Why It Works
The slide board stride simulates the lateral push mechanics of skating more closely than any other off-ice exercise — the glide, push, and weight transfer are nearly identical to skating with edges. It trains the hip abductors and adductors under skating-specific loading while keeping the movement pattern neurally familiar. NHL teams use slide boards daily in-season to maintain skating-specific neuromuscular patterns between games.
Hockey Transfer
The closest off-ice skating simulation — trains exact stride mechanics. Goalies double the dose. Slide board is your lateral push-off drill. Direct transfer.
Coaching Cues
- "Push hard off bumper"
- "Reach full extension"
- "Glide"
- "Recover"
- "Push again"
Common Mistakes
Standing tall — you must stay in the hockey crouch the entire time. Short pushes — full hip and knee extension on every stride. Looking down — eyes forward, same as on the ice. Going too fast for form — controlled mechanics beat sloppy speed.
Progression / Regression
Add a resistance band at the hips for external loading against the stride.
Mini-band lateral walk — same muscles, stationary, lower demand entry point.
Primary Muscles
Energy System
Strength/neural
Put it to work
on the ice.
The Elite Hockey Drills app builds exercises like this into a personalized off-ice program — created by a sport scientist and former national-team coach. Your first week is free.
← Back to Exercise Library