I once heard a buddy describe yoga in a way that made me giggle. “It’s strenuous, but made irritating,” she observed. For the record, she was referring to the fact that many yoga stretches mimic traditional stretches, except that they frequently include an element that makes them harder by working so many extra muscle groups.

(For example, in Triangle Posture, you complete what looks to be a standard lower-body hamstring stretch, but the pose also demands you to extend an arm into the sky, which adds difficulty.)

Though my friend was only having fun, she unintentionally introduced one of the more effective ways for training and elevating any workout move: by making stability more difficult, she engaged many muscle groups simultaneously.

And one of the finest exercises for accomplishing this is to employ a piece of equipment you may have noticed laying around your gym but have never used: exercise sliders, those small discs you place beneath your hands or feet while exercising to add a new level of stability to your exercise.

To be honest, using sliders is infuriating, as they are difficult to operate and are particularly excellent at targeting your core.

Sliders minimize friction between your body and the ground. Reduced friction results in instability, which requires your core and stabilizing muscles to work even harder to maintain control of you and the sliders. When you execute dynamic slider movements, you’re putting your muscles under tension and extending the connective tissue that surrounds them. Using sliders will assist you in engaging muscles you were unaware you have.

Consider performing a burpee. Consider performing a burpee with two plastic discs beneath your feet, and when you drop into pushup position, you must actually move your feet back while maintaining core engagement. That is the effect sliders may have on a workout.

How to Get Started with Sliders

They can be used to provide support during core exercises such as planks. If you want strong muscles surrounding your spine and pelvis, your shoulders and hips should generally move in opposite directions.

In other words, by placing a slider beneath your hand or foot throughout the move, you can slide over that section while still holding the plank and attempting to maintain the stability of the rest of the motion. Finally, this improves the exercise in a variety of ways. This maintains strain on the muscle while also stretching the connective tissue surrounding it, which is one of the reasons you shake so much.