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Thread: Cheaper matting solutions??

  1. #1
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    Default Cheaper matting solutions??

    Hi all,

    A friend and I are taking on a small industrial unit at the start of the month and will be running a variety of classes.

    At the moment it's just a concrete floor. We'll be renting the space out to other instructors for things like pilattes and yoga etc hopefully covering our costs.

    We therefore need to a) cover the concrete b) have a matted area for ourselves.

    Now, we can go the jigsaw mat route for the base, which is fairly cheap and easily cleaned so the yoga types have something to do their thing on and then when we train we can use normal judo type matting on top of that.

    That's option 1, another thought is purely laying a carpet down to again create a comfortable base layer, covering with judo mats for martial arts sessions.

    Just wondered if anyone had any other suggestions? maybe buying the foam seperately and covering from upholseterer or something.

    The space isn't going to fit 2x1m mats in all the way round, we'd have to "adjust" them to fit so i'm not keen on the idea of paying £100 odd to then hack half of them apart and being as we'd need 26 2x1m mats, it soon becomes really expensive. We can of course by used ones but they aren't that cheap either.

    Any help would be great. I don't think 40mm jigsaw mats are going to do the job for normal training sessions. They've always felt a bit hard to be. And equally just going for judo mats might not be the best choice for yoga etc. Getting 3rd party users to remove shoes etc will become an issue so we do need essentially 2 floor systems

  2. #2
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    One of my nastiest martial arts memories was a dojo which specialised in karate. After an accident in a competition they decided to permanently mat the hall with vinyl covered judo mats. They then trained with a lot of folk, in a very sweaty atmosphere, leaving the mats down for several months. I was training in the same hall in a jujutsu club. We adjusted our ukemi to ensure that, on being taken to the ground, you did not end up with your face over an edge of the mat. It reeked!

    As you don't seem to be yet clear on who you're subletting to, and yoga, pilates or the local morris side will all have different requirements I'd suggest making it presentable: coat of paint and carpet tiles. Then let each user sort their own specialised flooring, if they need to. In my experience yoga tends to be "clean floor and bring your own mat". Do you have somewhere you can stack a pike of judo mats out of the way whilst others use the space?
    Giles Chamberlin
    http://www.jujutsu.org.uk

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hudson1984 View Post
    ...Just wondered if anyone had any other suggestions? maybe buying the foam seperately and covering from upholseterer or something.
    The school I was with 20 years ago had two dojo in neighboring cities, and both had the same flooring system: the owners went to a mattress factory and bought enough firm foam sheets to cover the floors, then put wall-to-wall carpeting over that. It wasn't perfect, but it worked for daily Aikido classes and three-times-per-week kenjutsu and jojutsu classes.
    Yours in Budo,
    ---Brian---

  4. #4
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    unfortunately we ended up not going for it. The others involved didn't fancy the cost should we not be able to rent it to others.

    I'm still thinking about it though, but probably agree with the above, get the floor presentable and leave it up to them to sort themselves out.

    have however just started a new job with a rubber and plastics company...who happen to sell 1m x 2m sheets of foam....I think I might look at the specs for the foam against the current jigsaw tiles out there and see if I can just get them done at work. Shame I can't find anywhere that re-covers old mats, be nice to just taken them the foam and get new mats made at a reduced cost hopefully.

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