How to choose a mat for home fitness, yoga and Pilates workouts? Tips from a trainer

Over the past couple of months, home workouts have become a familiar phenomenon for us. Many sports enthusiasts have embraced the home fitness format and have even decided to buy equipment and gear to make training at home more comfortable. But the first thing to think about is buying a mat for training. You should choose it based on your goals. Denis Ermolaev, a trainer of the World Class chain , tells us how to do it correctly .

Table of Contents

Why is it important to have a mat if you work out at home?

A fitness mat is necessary for home exercise for several reasons.

Noise level. Putting equipment on a mat is much quieter than on the floor.
Hygiene. A fitness mat is easy to keep clean and sanitize. It’s much nicer when it’s yours alone.
Safety. When working out on parquet or linoleum, you run the risk of slipping. This can lead to injury or damage to furniture, appliances.
Comfort. Such a thing simply softens and makes it more comfortable to perform many exercises. Among them, for example, the plank, twists or hyperextension.

Mats for fitness, yoga and Pilates: how to distinguish?

Sports mats vary in length, thickness, hardness and are suitable for different types of training. Equipment should be chosen based on personal goals and preferences.

Fitness

Fitness mats are universal, thicker and softer, which is good for lying down exercises. As a rule, such mats have the property to stretch, that is, to increase in size during the exercise – for example, planks. A thickness of 10 to 15 mm is quite optimal for fitness.

Yoga

Yoga mats should be considerably thinner so that the practitioner feels supported and have little or no stretch. Almost all yoga mats are reinforced, meaning they have a mesh frame or textile core inside. It keeps the thing from stretching and also increases strength and durability.

The thickness varies from 3 to 6 mm. The thinner, the more stable, but harder. Therefore, you should select the equipment based on your experience and the level of comfort you are used to.

Pilates

Pilates mats are thicker than those for yoga – from 15 to 19 mm. The back side of the mat should fit snugly on the floor and not be slippery. The top side, on the other hand, should allow you to slide – this is important for proper execution of the exercises.

Individual features

When choosing an individual mat, you need to take into account its size. With the thickness we have determined, and the width, as a rule, is standard. Therefore, we are interested in the length. The occupant should fit on the mat, being in a supine position. This applies to yoga equipment, since a person is on it barefoot.

Fitness mats can be shorter because we exercise in athletic shoes and putting our feet on the mat is not hygienic.

If you do different types of workouts, but there is no possibility to buy several options of equipment, I suggest taking something in between. The length should be such that you fit on the mat completely, and the thickness of 8 to 10 mm. And try to take a thing with a low degree of deformation.

The desire to save money is not always a good thing

As a rule, the cheapest in online stores are mats for tourism. But they are not suitable for active pursuits. The quality of their material is low, often the coating changes texture, as if crumbling. Badly affect them and being under the sun.

It is better to take one good mat, which will be easy to care for and which will last a very long time, than to buy every year a new mat for tourism.