How can I "hack" my way to some large exercise mats?

January 6, 2020 9:59 AM

I am looking for several large-ish exercise mats to do some big movement stuff on a hard floor, but it looks like anything wider than a standard yoga mat is strangely expensive. This stuff looks like it comes on giant industrial rolls and costs pennies per square foot to make. How can I get it for cheap?

You know how natural kitty litter can be bought as horse bedding for a tenth of the price?

Or how magic erasers can be purchased as melamine foam for a few cents?

That's the kind of workaround I'm looking for here.

posted by FakeFreyja to Health & Fitness (12 answers total)

Whatchu want is exercise mat tiles. They're the opposite of strangely expensive. Basically they're foam rubber mats with weird edges so they can tile together into a floor of your choosing. How does $20 for 24 square feet sound? That's a current price on Amazon.

The tiles are more firm than a yoga mat, I think (I'm not all that familiar with yoga mats) and too stiff to roll, but they'll take a beating. They're closed-cell foam, meaning they're basically waterproof and won't soak anything up. As you drop things (such as yourself) onto them, they'll eventually start to soften up in those spots as you break the cells from impact, but unless you're dropping your dumbbells on them, it'll take years. And when you do replace them, it'll probably be the future equivalent of $20 to do so.

Also, they're easy to pull apart and store, if the mat is not a semipermanent installation.
posted by Sunburnt at 10:11 AM on January 6, 2020 [6 favorites]

We bought horse stall mats at Tractor Supply for a similar purpose. They make a concrete floor hospitable to jumping on and protect a nicer floor from dropping weights. May not be squishy enough for your purposes... When I googled 'horse mats' though, I saw other options, so maybe that's a start?
posted by Tandem Affinity at 10:32 AM on January 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

Like Tandem Affinity, I have horse stall mats for when I re-get the room that my home gym will be. Horse stall mats are a much cheaper option for rubber mats marketed for home gyms, which are great for exercise room equipment. However, they're not soft for lying on/rolling around. So they're great for making a home gym and will reduce the vibration/sound from exercise equipment, and aren't supposed to compress over time. They're also fine for sweating on, but will need a weekly-ish mopping to prevent stale gym smell.

Foam tiles like Sunburnt linked are what you want for actually rolling on. I didn't look at Sunburndt's link, but if you get horse stall mats for a base, get only foam tiles (to put over the horse stall mats) for the area you'll roll/stretch, rather than combo foam/rubber tiles.
posted by nobeagle at 10:51 AM on January 6, 2020

Yeah, I've used stall mats for a gym floor (over concrete) for footing stability and protecting the concrete from dropped weights, but they're considerably less nice to lie on than carpet/actual soft thing. I also think puzzle mats are the way to go.
posted by restless_nomad at 10:53 AM on January 6, 2020

For me, a guy at my gym sells full weight-rooms kits to high schools and colleges. He makes the deadlift stations/boxes himself, etc. He had tons of scraps of stuff and gave them to me for free.
posted by k5.user at 11:15 AM on January 6, 2020

I have the colorful puzzle mats shown in Sunburnt's link for our home gym setup. They're what you want.
posted by Dashy at 12:34 PM on January 6, 2020

I bought a 6'x6' yoga mat off Amazon for less than 50 bucks about a year ago. It's amazing.
posted by Green Eyed Monster at 12:38 PM on January 6, 2020

You can get yoga matting by the roll for around .80/sq ft. Just google it, there are many suppliers.
posted by HotToddy at 1:17 PM on January 6, 2020

Out of curiosity I was poking around links from answers to this question, and I think you might find greatmats.com to be illustrative of the different kinds of bulk-priced mats out there (though of course I have no idea if their product is any good). Who knew there were so many different kinds of mats!
posted by ocherdraco at 1:26 PM on January 6, 2020

We got these interlocking mats from this particular company about five years ago and installed them in our crappy freestanding garage. They have held up extremely well (over broken concrete) to bikes and foot traffic. We have a gravel walkway so there's always gravel and dirt on them. Swept clean they would be fine for a workout. No particularly strong smells or any other issues, they come with straight "edges" to hide the puzzle parts.
posted by oneirodynia at 4:31 PM on January 6, 2020

My local discount fabric store sells yoga mat material by the yard. It comes on a big bolt, I think it's about $6 a yard. Call around to some if you live in or near a big city.
posted by ananci at 7:05 PM on January 6, 2020

Horse stall mats are what people use when they need to cover the entire floor of an Olympic weightlifting gym on the cheap.
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 9:28 PM on January 6, 2020