Every product is carefully selected by our editors. If you buy from a link, we may earn a commission.

Elevate Your Training with the Best Slant Boards

Take your workouts and injury prevention up a degree with these angled fitness accessories.

best slant boards
Pvolve, Amazon, Freak Athlete Essentials

If you’ve ever been on the wrong end of a knee injury, you know how debilitating it can be to your training progress and everyday life. As such, it’s vital to keep this key joint protected during workouts, and the easiest way to help prevent injury is by strengthening the musculature around the area.

Strengthening your knees and other lower-body joints doesn’t need to be a complicated endeavor, though. Tools like slant boards can be simple and effective in stretching and stressing these areas safely, allowing you to reach a new range of motion without complicated movements or heavy equipment.

Slant Boards, Explained

Slant boards, as the name suggests, are angled platforms that place you in an inclined or declined position depending on your orientation. This exaggerated pitch allows the knees, calves and other key muscle groups to stretch more efficiently, creating a more natural flexion and stress that helps strengthen the areas over time.

The angled experience can also create a more natural squatting motion that allows the knees to travel over your toes. This is similar to what you’d see when performing a back squat in a worthwhile pair of weightlifting shoes.

Other Benefits of Slant Boards

Outside of training your knees, slant boards can be utilized to help strengthen your calves and other lower body areas like the Achilles tendon. Using a slant board regularly can help keep these muscles and tendons stretched for maximum performance and injury prevention. After all, we experience injuries when a load is placed on a weak portion of our kinetic chain. Keeping your lower body used to these stretches and angles can create a stronger base, allowing for increased output when you do decide to go all-in for a sprint, lift or jump.

Another great benefit to using a slant board is that the stretches available can be a great way to target your vastus medialis oblique, or VMO. This muscle is important in keeping your kneecap tracking but can be difficult to activate in other exercises. Training with a slant board can help improve the VMO's stabilizing abilities, keeping your knees functioning properly and pain-free.

Additionally, slant board exercises don’t require a dedicated trip to the gym. Your bodyweight can be more than enough resistance to create a proper stretch across the targeted areas, and you can even get a session in while performing other tasks. Standing at the sink doing dishes? Sitting at your desk answering emails? Riding as a co-pilot on a long weekend drive? All potential instances where slant boards can be employed.

How We Tested

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
best slant boards how we tested hwt collage
Ben Emminger

I’ve been employing slant boards in my training for a while now, and have gotten hands-on (feet-on?) with a number of the picks in this guide. I often examine a slant board’s effectiveness by its angle and build quality, as there’s no sense in training with a device that provides little change to your prone stance, or choosing a silhouette that won’t support your bodyweight. Additionally, I look at whether the profiles feature a textured surface or tacky grip tape for better traction, as this can allow you to perform various movements without sliding down the board itself.

Think you’re ready to bulletproof your knees and other lower-body joints? Let’s go deep into the best slant boards on the market today.

BEST OVERALL SLANT BOARD
Freak Athlete Essentials Slant Board Pro
Freak Athlete Essentials
BEST UPGRADE SLANT BOARD
Slant Board Guy Slant Board
Courtesy
BEST BUDGET SLANT BOARD
StrongTek Portable Slant Board
Courtesy
Now 29% off
BEST SLANT BOARD FOR BEGINNERS
Pvolve Slant Board
Pvolve
BEST SLANT BOARD FOR SQUATS
Wolf Wedge Squat Wedge
Amazon
Now 23% off
BEST ADJUSTABLE SLANT BOARD
The Tib Bar Guy Slant Stack
Courtesy
BEST SPLIT SLANT BOARDS
Lumia Wellness 12-inch Foam Incline Slant Boards
Courtesy
Now 25% off
BEST METAL SLANT BOARD
Shogun Sports Mr1nf1n1ty x Shogun VMO Board Pro
Amazon
BEST FOAM SLANT BOARD
OPTP Pro-Slant
Amazon
BEST WOODEN SLANT BOARD
StrongTek Professional Wooden Slant Board
Amazon
More Fitness Gear
empty gym
HirurgGetty Images

Explore the following guides to find more of our top workout gear recommendations.

    Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
    More From Top Stories