The G1 Extreme Slide Board is a slideboard that can be used by hockey players, skaters and goalies to improve their skating, stick handling, passing and shooting technique. The slideboard is very smooth and great for stickhandling a puck on. You can also slide back and forth, or from disc to disc to improve your skating technique.
Buy your own G1 Extreme Slideboard
What You Get With the G1 Extreme Slideboard
With my G1 slideboard I got the 5 x 8 slideboard, 6 square discs, 2 rectangle stoppers, and 3 sets of booties.
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One 5? x 8? board.
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Six square rotating disc
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Two slide board end ramps
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x3 pair of booties
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Training video – Used by some of the leaders in hockey development today including Scott Livingston of the Montreal Canadiens, Peter Freisen of the Carolina Hurricanes, NHL goalie Jocylyn Thibault and others.
G1 Extreme Slideboard Overview
Whats the point? – The slideboard is designed to help develop and improve lateral movement, agility, balance, stamina and coordination. The Slideboard does this by simulating the movement that hockey players experience on the ice. In order to properly use the slideboard with the rotating discs, a hockey player must perform an simulate the stride action used for skating on the ice. Performing this action off the ice will help players build the necessary muscle memory needed to effectively improve their overall performance on the ice.
What Can the G1 Extreme Slideboard be used for?
There are a number of applications for the slideboard, some of which include:
- Stickhandling and puck control (while sliding, or while standing off of the board)
- Shooting (while sliding to practice weight transfer)
- Skating stride (sliding side to side, or forwards and backwards)
- Passing
- Face-offs
- Deke’ing
- Goalie training
- Strengthening and conditioning muscles
Price – The G1 Extreme Slideboard sells for around £379
Assembly – There is not much assembly required for the G1 Extreme Slideboard. Lay the slideboard down on a flat hard surface, the best material is the rubber mats that they use at the gym, but the slideboard can also be used on short cut carpet. Once the slideboard is down, you can insert the stoppers. There are round discs and rectangle stoppers. The discs are used if you want to practice your forward and backwards stride and the rectangle stoppers are used to practice lateral movement.
To put the stoppers in place, all you need to do is align the white part on the bottom of the stopper with the appropriate hole in the slideboard. Once the white part is in the hole you just nudge it into the groove and this will lock the stopper into place.
Testing the G1 Extreme
I set the G1 Extreme up in my living room (make sure you have enough space for it). The slideboard is 5 feet wide by 8 feet long so you need a good amount of space to use it. The first thing I wanted to test is how well a puck slide on the board. I gently slid a puck across the slideboard and it slid right off the other side; I was pretty impressed.
Using the Square Rotating Discs
The next thing I did was put in the 6 rotating discs. This was easy to do and I was sliding from disc to disc in no time. The feeling of sliding is pretty cool, but I do not really see a real benefit for me in doing it. I tried going forwards and backwards and the discs work well. I would recommend using the booties to slide on the board with shoes or trainers on. The discs are a made of hard plastic and after pushing off of the discs repeatedly it doesn’t feel great.
Sliding Laterally
You get two rectangle shaped stoppers that can be inserted into the board. I placed one in each corner to give me roughly 8 feet of space to slide. I was able to slide back and forth, it takes a little practice to get use to the sliding motion while maintaining a good knee bend to simulate the stride action on the ice. Using the slide board on carpet isn’t great but it works, it seems to move a bit with each slide (using it on a hard surface like kitchen tiles will reduce this issue). You may have noticed in my video that I added a few blocks to stop the board from moving too much.
Stickhandling
Stickhandling is great! not only is it good for practice but its fun!. There are a few options if you want to practice your stickhandling. You can just run around the board and practice some moves while you are moving. You can use the rectangle stoppers and slide laterally while stickhandling. Or you can put on the booties and just move your feet around on the board while moving the puck.
I like to run around the board to practice stops and starts and quick movements. The lateral sliding is good for toe drags and using the booties is a good way to practice moves that involve using your feet. Overall I think a hockey player could learn and practice a lot of moves, especially if they have a good imagination!
Overall Thoughts
Overall I love the slideboard. I think any hockey players can get a lot of use out of it, it would help them develop a lot of fundamental skills. A player with a big imagination could think of a lot of uses for the slideboard.
Things I didn’t like
The slideboard is a great training tool, but I have to mention a few issues. The first one would be the price. £379 isn’t cheap. There are more affordable slideboards on the market, but none of them offer the size of the G1 Extreme or serve multiple purposes like stick handling or standing on the slide board while practicing.
The next regards ergonomics. The stoppers used on the slideboard are made of hard plastic, they aren’t designed to stop feet comfortably. I would have liked to see stoppers that are more comfortable. All in all the positives out weigh the negatives as making this training device a great multiple purpose training tool to develop multiple areas of your game and skating all from home.
Buy your own G1 Extreme Slideboard
