Home Gym Mats
by Karen
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If you enjoy any kind of aerobic or condition based exercise at home, you really should consider installing some home gym mats. In particular, if you have kids entering the age when they love to start tumbling about, formally or not, then you really should help secure their safety with appropriate exercise mats.
While gym mats are a common and fun equipment around schools and professional gyms, you really should install home gym mats if you or your children are in anyway active. In fact, most gymnastics related injuries occur not at school or in the local gymnasium, but at home. For some reason, people equate gym mats to something for use in schools for physical education, recess or for formal gymnasiums like gymnastic or cheerleading mats.
Types of Home Gym Mats
There are a few common styles of home gym mats to consider, folding, roll up and interlocking. Folding exercise mats generally come as dual or tri-fold mats. Because they can fold to a compact size they are easy to move or even to take to an exercise class. For a portable mat they provide a good level of support and cushion.
Roll up exercise mats are also portable. They roll up to an even smaller size than folding mats, but they don’t provide quite as much cushion as a folding mat. They are commonly used for stretching exercises like yoga.
Home Gym Mats
Interlocking mats can be fit to size. You can lock mats together to create a large, stable floor mat, or you can use a single one for a smaller space. These mats aren’t really portable; they are meant to stay in place either under exercise equipment, as a workout mat or a playroom mat.
Most workout mats made for home gyms are filled with closed-cell foam of polyurethane or polyethylene. More options are becoming available as our culture moves to more organic and natural substances.
With children, in particular, you want exercise mats with more shock absorption and less rebound. This means the mat will be less springy and more protective.
You want the outer fabric to be tough and capable of withstanding all manner of impact and stretching. A quality home gym mat should last you years if not decades. You also want a material that won’t be too slick. Sweat can make those tumbling mats slippery, thus increasing the risk of slipping and injuring oneself.
Gym Mats Aren’t Just for the Gym
But where do you spend most of your time? And don’t most injuries occur when you least expect them? Your home features all manner of obstacles not found in schools or gyms, including sharp table corners and hard floors, as well as other seemingly innocent but potentially dangerous furnishings and appliances. So I suggest you increase your ability to workout whenever you want and decrease the likelihood of incurring injuries to yourself or your children by installing proper home gym mats.
It is respectable to want to increase flexibility and athleticism. But exercising without an appropriate home gym mat can lead to injuries for a number of reasons. Setting a gym mat in your home creates a clearly defined space for these workouts. Without one, you and your childrens’ activities can bleed into areas ill-prepared for a rigorous workout.
If you have children, begin with a softer mat, one with about a 2 inch thickness; interlocking mats are a often a good choice. Softer home gym mats provide a degree of security not afforded by tougher, firmer mats. These softer mats also slow activities down a little, helping your child tumble about at a pace they can handle. Once your child gains some skill and confidence, you can move to a slightly firmer gymnastics mat. They’re not any less safe, they just provide a little less of luxurious touch and a little more springiness. These more advanced gym mats feature greater density.
Colorful Home Gym Mats
Before you start imagining dull gray or blue home gym mats, you should know that there is an entire industry of competing manufacturers in this field, and most of them now offer all sorts of colors and visual styles. So you should find one that fits into your home without ruining the decor.
While the focus of this article has been on gymnastics-style home gym mats, don’t forget about exercise equipment mats. You should protect both your home and your new exercise equipment with appropriate exercise mats. For more about that, however, read my article on the topic: exercise equipment mats.
I hope this enlightens you on the variables you need to consider when selecting home gym mats. They can be colorful and fun and provide a great means of improving both your health and your safety at home.
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