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Exercise sliders are fantastic fitness accessories to keep in your home gym. They take up so little storage space, yet you can use these wonder disks during various workouts.
Similar to gymnastics rings, exercise sliders are good for strength training, calisthenics core workouts, and flexibility. All you need to get your heart rate up is your body weight and a small open space to get moving.
Before buying a pair of these home gym sliders, we will need to understand a bit more about this piece of workout equipment. This guide will explain what exercise sliders are, what they’re useful for, and how to use them.
We’ll also delve into the top seven sliders we’ve tested and compared which might best suit you, depending on your fitness level and goals.
How Does an Exercise Slider Work?
An exercise slider is a small disk used during a workout to increase intensity. While they’re mainly used on the floor, they can be used against a wall too.
Depending on the exercise, the user either places their hands or feet on the disks and slides them across a surface to target specific muscle groups.
If you dread doing planks, these disks might not be for you as they challenge your stability and often your core and shoulder strength too. However, if you’re looking to increase the intensity of your workouts, then these are a great addition to your gym accessories.
To use these disks, you need to add pressure to them to keep them in place and to make them move. This means you only need these and your body weight for a workout, whether you’re doing lunges, calisthenics moves like mountain climbers, or arm circles.
Fitness slides are also a great way to help you pick up the pace of calisthenics or cardio workouts because of the smooth sliding capabilities they provide.
While these exercises may be high-intensity, they are low-impact. This means that these exercises can benefit anyone who cannot do a high-impact exercise with equipment like a power tower.
In fact, this study proves the benefits it has on the physical and cognitive health of elderly adults over the age of 65.
Best Workout Sliders Buying Guide
Now that you know what an exercise slider is and how to use it, it’s time to look at what you need to consider when buying your fitness slider. Not all of these small disks are the same, so here are a few things to look out for.
Surface
Not all exercise sliders perform the same. You’ll need different disks depending on your space and which surface you’ll be using them on.
For example, if you exercise from home and don’t have a dedicated home gym, you might benefit from exercise sliders for carpet use instead. These would have a smooth plastic or iron surface.
If you’re using them outside or indoors on a hardwood floor, a slider with a smooth, hard surface might damage the wood or tiles. A foam cover would be best suited for this environment as it reduces the possibility of scuff marks or scrapes.
Shape
Most workout slide pads come in the shape of a circle, but disk shapes can be varied. Some disks may be in the form of a hexagon or even an oval.
What shape you prefer depends on what you’ll use the disks for. If you plan to use them for your feet, for example, you might need a bigger surface level. Therefore, an oblong shape is better suited.
It is also essential to keep the size of your hands and feet in mind. If you’re using them for your hands and are petite, a circle shape might be adequate for your feet. However, if you’re tall, chances are that your hands and feet are sizably big. So, a more oversized slider is best for your hands too.
Material
While it is essential to know which surface you’ll be using your sliders for exercise on, the material they’re made from is also important. Of course, we have already mentioned that a hard sliding surface is ideal for carpets and that a soft foam slider is suitable for hard floors. There is more to it than that.
Exercise sliders work by sliding, but it is important to make sure that at least one side is anti-slip. Many sliders have two sides, where one side is soft and the other has a high-quality cover. This enables it to be slippery on multiple surfaces.
Unless you’re absolutely sure which surface you’ll be training on every time, it’s best to get an excellent quality slider with two material options.
7 Best Exercise Sliders
These are some of the best gliding discs for exercise on the market. You can use them whether you’re doing upper or lower body strength workouts as a beginner or experienced trainer.
- Material: Felt
- Price: $$
- Shape: Circle
- Dimensions: 7.2 x 1.3 x 7.2 inches
We found Synergee’s core sliders to be one of the best workout sliders available at an affordable price. They are slim, double-textured, and come in a variety of colors. While they are advertised as core sliders and come with a handy exercise manual, they are great for full-body workouts as well.
The color side is hard plastic and glides nicely on soft surfaces. The thin padded side is better suited for hard surfaces. We liked that the edges of the disks are curved inward to avoid any hard edges, which can cause injury to your hands and fingers.
While it is double-sided, we found it tricky to use the smooth side on textured surfaces. Unless your foot placement is closer to the middle of the disk, they can catch the carpet and disrupt a smooth workout. While we could fix this, it could be a problem for someone with slightly larger feet.
After a few uses, we noticed the padding slightly lifting. Luckily, their customer service has a ‘no-sweat’ guarantee and sent us a replacement completely free of charge.
- Material: Foam
- Price: $$
- Shape: Hexagon
- Dimensions: 9 x 8 inches
The SKLZ Slidez is a lightweight exercise slider that takes user experience into account. These disks are suitable for both beginners and veteran gym-goers as the versatile pair can be used as two individual disks or clipped together to form one disk.
We liked that the slider is hexagon-shaped with a tread pattern on the soft foam. Compared to other round core sliders, the hexagon shape proved to be a much more comfortable formation for our hands. These are also quite big at 1.73 x 12.2 inches, which meant we could spread out our fingers comfortably and could put all of our focus on our body form instead.
It is double-sided with foam and hard plastic but also has two buying options available (if you buy these on Amazon). Your choice will depend on the surface you will be using them on.
The Court slides are best for rough and outdoor surfaces like carpets, pavement, and turf. The Standard slides work best for smooth indoor surfaces like hardwood floors, tiles, and linoleum.
Hardwood flooring and tiles don’t work as well because if there are any rough surfaces like grit or sand on the floor, it could either damage your slides or the wood. However, we found that they glide better on carpeted floors than hardwood floors upon use.
You can also find check the price of the standard slides on Rogue below.
- Material: Foam and Plastic
- Price: $
- Shape: Circle
- Dimensions: 7 x 7 x 0.25 inches
The CELEBRITA Core Sliders are lightweight circular sliders that bring a pop of color to any fitness center. We like that the disks were seven inches big and wide as this fits our foot sizes quite well. However, we can foresee that some people with slightly bigger shoe sizes could find this a bit small.
The foam and plastic sides are of decent quality and worked well when we tested them on carpeted and wooden floors. The disk’s smooth round edges make it comfortable to use and help to offer a smooth gliding motion without any snags on the carpet.
We found that the thick padding assisted the non-slip design quite well. It kept our sneakers on board and saved our feet from sliding off them. However, the non-slip design may have worked a little too well. Upon use, we noticed that they didn’t work on rubber floors like advertised and hardly moved on this surface.
While it is fairly easy to use otherwise, we missed that these gliders didn’t come with instructions like some other core sliders on the market. However, for the price, this was not a big letdown as the affordable price made up for it — that and the fact that there are many free instructional videos available online already.
- Material: Foam & hard plastic
- Price: $
- Shape: Circle
- Dimensions: 7.09 x 7.09 x 0.91 inches
The Elite Sportz Core Sliders are a favorite among slider enthusiasts because of their versatility and affordable price. These disks are very lightweight and thin, which means they take up little-to-no storage space in your gym bag or home gym.
We liked that the disks were double-sided, so we could use the foam side to protect our hard floors and use the hard plastic side on the carpet. While they work on most surfaces, they don’t work on all. When we tried using them on the rubber floors in the gym and also any type of pile carpets, they had trouble gliding across smoothly.
The soft foam helps your hands grip and cushion when using it for core or upper body exercises. Both foam and hard plastic covers work well with exercise shoes for lower body workouts, but only if you apply enough pressure. If not, you might find that the disks don’t glide as well or that they slip out from under your hands or feet.
After a few uses, we noticed that the soft covering lifted slightly. This might be because of friction caused due to using it on textured carpets. However, the hard plastic covering remained intact and gave no problems.
- Material: Plastic
- Price: $
- Shape: Circle
- Dimensions: 7.2 x 7.2 x 0.75 inches
The A AZURELIFE slider is targeted at users who want to do core strength training. With your purchase, you’ll receive a fully illustrated workout guide to help you during your at-home workouts. These exercises help keep your core engaged while improving your stability and flexibility.
We like the dual side material but found that these can slip quite easily without the proper foot placement and pressure. It also proved challenging to use on a soft surface as the shape of the disk is straight with no curves. As soon as you step on it, it creates an indent that will sometimes catch on the carpet.
Although there was a slight learning curve, we found it worked well after finding the correct footing and surface area. After a while, the foam side started to not glide as smoothly on carpeted areas. We found that cleaning it once in a while with a lint roller or some tape on the foam helped it glide better.
Overall, we liked that at 0.5 lbs the sliders were so lightweight and convenient to use. We could easily carry them around in our training bag without it weighing it down. It is also compact and made for easy storage in a bag, office, or home gym.
- Material: Plastic and rubber
- Price: $$
- Shape: Oblong
- Dimensions: 10.1 x 5 x 2.2 inches
The Valslide Discs are a product from celebrity trainer Valerie Waters. This pair of disks have a plastic cover on one side and rubber on the other.
These are lightweight and oval-shaped instead of round. This gives it a great surface area to increase the versatility of your workouts, so you can use them to train everything from your legs to your arms.
We like that you also get a mesh travel bag and an exercise book. This makes it easy to carry them along on the go. The sliders are also relatively light, weighing only 0.6 pounds.
While the free items are nice to have, we felt that the booties, which cost an additional $8, would have been a better choice to include.
Compared to other foam sliders, the Valslide Discs’ are slightly thicker. The rubber padding is about four inches thick, which is excellent for comfort. This also helps you train balance as it is slightly more elevated from the ground than flat slides.
- Material: Foam, Plastic and Iron
- Price: $$
- Shape: Circle
- Dimensions: 6.9 x 6.9 x 0.7 inches
The Iron Core Fitness Slider is one of the few iron exercise foot sliders on the market. While they are slightly heavier than foam sliders, they are still quite lightweight at 0.31 pounds. This is because the back has either an iron or plastic cover, while the front has foam padding to make it easy to use on most surfaces.
After we tried them on carpets, we found that they don’t work well on low-pile carpets or gym mats. However, they worked quite well on tiles and hardwood flooring as long as there were no particles under it that could cause scratches.
We like that the purchase included a workout chart, an e-book, and a few instructional videos. This could be very helpful for beginners starting their pilates or core strength journeys.
The lightweight design and durability are a result of the iron or plastic backing, which also makes it easy to take these with you to the gym if you’re working out with a trainer.
While these fitness sliders are heavy-duty, we did notice a few scratches forming on them after a few uses. Luckily, this didn’t affect the usage of the sliders and they held up quite well over multiple uses.
Benefits of Exercise Sliders
While exercise sliders are often advertised for core workouts, they don’t have to be. You can utilize them for upper and lower-body workouts as well.
These exercises use your body weight for a low-impact strength exercise that doesn’t put pressure on your joints. Fitness disks target a few things and benefits during your workout. These things are:
Endurance
Similar to a plank, slide exercises tense your muscles up to keep them flexed. This makes these great calisthenics strength exercises because it challenges your muscle endurance while you make sweeping motions across a whole range of movement.
These resilience challenges aren’t limited to core exercises either. If you’re doing standing exercises to strengthen your lower body, you’ll often need to keep your legs and glutes engaged while you move around.
Stability
When using a slider, you have to put equal pressure on the disks to keep them moving and balance yourself so you don’t fall. These are especially important if you’re on a smooth, hard floor. These isometric exercises help greatly with strength training and pain relief.
Flexibility
The sweeping maneuver allows lateral movement and a whole range of motions. This means that while you’re building strength, you can also stretch your muscles fully. Flexibility workout practices like yoga and pilates often use these disks for this reason.
Best Core Sliders and Full-Body Exercise Options
These slider exercises target your core, lower and upper body for a full-body workout. By adding the gliding disks to your training, you’re already upping the intensity. But, you can also increase the speed at which you are moving for a more extreme workout. Try these workouts with your exercise sliders.
- Body Saw
- Slider Mountain Climbers
- Windshield Wiper Push Ups
- Slider Plank Jack
- Slider Pike
- Lunges
- Sliding Burpees
- Army Circles
- Curtsy Squat
- Double Knee Tucks
Best Exercise Sliders Summary
You can intensify your low-impact sessions by using these gliding disks for specific exercises. The slide movements force your body to have a more intense workout as your muscles compress to stay on balance.
Besides working on your stability, while you perform moves and slowly return to the start, it keeps your legs, arms, and core engaged, which builds muscle. While many people use paper plates as a cheap alternative, it is well worth the money to upgrade to exercise sliders.
They are affordable and reusable. Furthermore, sliders are so lightweight and slim that they often take up little space in your home gym or your bag.
Picking the right fitness slider depends on your fitness level and exercise needs. While each slider has slight variations, they all do the same basic task. This means you don’t have to break the bank to start working on your low-impact, high-intensity fitness routine.
Nadia is a USA-HomeGym.com Senior Editor with 15 years+ experience in the health, supplement and nutrition niches. Nadia became a health & fitness evangelist after rebuilding her gut health in 2008 using the Weston A. Price method. She developed a Facebook group that grew to more than 15,000 members sharing information on diet for allergy reduction, eczema & psoriasis cessation. Since 2011, Nadia has been an avid stair climber, achieving race times in the top 5% of her age group and maintaining average times of 3’40 – 3’55 minutes per 12 floors.