How can one well-placed athletic mat save you thousands of dollars?
The pursuit of physical health is a noble endeavor. With ever growing chaos of our world, people seem to have less and less free time for exercise. Often, we dedicate a huge amount of our time exclusively to work, and much less to our physical and mental wellbeing. Many of today’s work environments will have us hunched over desks, hardly moving much more than our eyes while we nosily hack away at our keyboards sending off the one-hundredth-and-one e-mail of the day. However, the human body is not meant for such bleak degrees of stagnancy. But you know that! That’s probably why you’ve invested a good amount of money on your own luxury deluxe home gym (or maybe just a couple of hundred bucks for a treadmill that was on sale). Regardless of how much you spend that’s money that you worked hard to make, so why not protect your investment with a high quality athletic mat? A poorly made and cheap gym mat can be a costly mistake not only for your equipment but also for your home. The average treadmill weighs somewhere in the family of 200-300lbs (often times more than that), so you definitely want to make sure you’re also protecting your floors with high quality sport mats! With a number of easy to install products, such as rubber gym tiles and mats, there’s absolutely no reason why your noble quest for physical health should turn into an expensive nightmare. Here are 5 important reasons why you should protect the surface of your workout area.
- Special flooring is recommended for this sort of equipment.
According to LIVESTRONG.com it is highly recommended that your exercise equipment, such as a treadmill or weight station, be supported by high quality and high endurance special flooring. Top of the line sport mats are a must in any home or commercial facility that has heavy fitness equipment.
- This equipment is expensive!
According to the Sears website prices for brand new treadmills can range from $249.00 to $6559.49. For Elliptical machines the prices aren’t very different, going from the $119.99 to $2599.00. And if biking is more your thing, a stationary cycling machine can have a price range from $179.00 to $2662.50. Now this is just a small sample based on a quick overview of what a store like Sears has to offer in the fitness department. Without a doubt there are a number of different products, from different distributors, with varying prices. But the point remains the same—these are not cheap machines. Athletic mat and flooring products come in a variety of materials and thicknesses, all of which are durable and easy to install. These mats can withstand high-impact fitness routines and heavy exercise equipment. The natural shock absorbing nature of rubber will create a buffer that protects your equipment from bouncing, vibrating, and any movement it may encounter against your floors.
3. Protect your floors.
Imagine yourself rounding the last lap of your morning run. The rhythmic and heavy pounding of your feet on the track are coming down against your floor with not just your weight but the added 200 or 300 pounds of your treadmill. Not only is this straining the material of your exercise machine, but all that weight is coming down directly upon your floor and if there’s nothing to serve as a barrier you can be certain you’ll eventually find cracked-tile, scratched hardwood, and splintered plastic from your machine. An athletic mat
strategically placed under any piece of exercise equipment will protect your gym’s surfaces. We’re all familiar with the dreaded “walking” treadmill—your machine will bounce along with your movements and you’ll eventually find it inches from where you originally placed it. Covering the surface of your workout space with high traction rubber matting will prevent your treadmill from taking you on a real walk!
4. Hygiene
A clean workout space is a healthy workout space. As stated previously, this won’t only protect the longevity of your equipment and your floors, but can also help in the maintenance of your exercise gear. Rubber does not harbor the growth of mold or mildew so it’s perfectly suited for a place with heavy moisture and humidity. This is why it is the preferred material used in sport mats! Therefore, you won’t have to worry about any funky smells after you’re done getting your sweat on! Rubber gym tiles, or any other kind of rubber gym flooring is easy to clean, requiring little else but a quick brush with the broom and a sweep with the mop. Your equipment and your health will thank you in the long run.
5. DIY!
You’ve probably already spent enough money on your gym, why not save a few bucks (or maybe a few hundred, or even thousands) on installing your own specialized workout floors? With a number of rubber products that are easy to install—sometimes as easy as spreading out a roll and watching it settle under its own weight, there’s no excuse to spend more than you have to. Also with the convenience of rubber gym tiles, such as interlocking puzzle-piece type tiles, installation (and un-installation) is so easy that a person of nearly any age can do it! Rubber flooring can be custom cut to your specifications, while interlocking tiles can be fitted together to cover any specific shape, size, or area.
With personal fitness being such an expensive but important endeavor it really is a wise idea to invest in a quality athletic mat for whatever exercise equipment you decide to employ. But a great gym mat doesn’t necessarily have to translate into a ridiculously expensive one. Rubber flooring is often made from recycled material, making it far more affordable than one might expect. And what we might consider a good but cheap gym mat can really make the difference between a wonderful exercise experience and a costly one. We don’t want the added stress of having to repair our home surfaces or deal with damage to our exercise equipment. An exercise mat or a set of rubber gym tiles can really make all the difference in how you view your fitness goals.