Mats For Olympic Training

The Tokyo Olympics are pretty much done and dusted. The games have been played and medals have been handed out. After weeks of competition we now know who all the champions are and can look forward to the next Olympics in Paris in 2024. The torch has literally already been passed on. Now as we dissect who got what and how we come to the nitty gritty. Training and coaches aside we want to know about what are the most popular mats for Olympic training. After all we all want to be champs at some point.

The Most Popular Mats

Being in the gym mats game we get a unique view as to what is most popular out there. When you cut through all the marketing jingo it is the actual consumer that decides what they want and it is usually though experience. There might be different reasons for people buying different mat but ultimately we all want the same thing. We want to excel in the activities that we pursue which means we need the best equipment to get there. A huge component of any training regime is the gym mats that we use. They are what makes sure that we can training harder for longer. 

Different Mats For Different Olympic Activities

Not all sport are in the Olympics so it would not be fair to just focus on them here. People participate in a number of different sports as is their right. No matter what their favourite past time one thing is for certain. They want to succeed. They also want to stay safe whilst doing it. To that end they buy training mats and some mats are more popular than others. Here we take a look at the most popular mats for Olympic training. They are:

• Crash Mats
• Rubber Mats
• Tatami Mats
• Jigsaw Puzzle Mats
• Foam Mats
• Puzzle Mats

Yes there are other types of mats but when it comes to serious training for the kinds of sports you find in the Olympics this is what you are looking at.

Crash Mats and Landing Mats

One of the focal sports in the Olympics is track and field. Prominent in the is the high jump. Some of those athletes jump over two meters high. So it is only natural that they would want a good mat to land on during both training and competition. To that end they need good crash mats. Crash mats, or landing mats as they are also known, are essential for high impact sports. You can only imagine the strain that falling from such heights would put on the body. These athlete training long hours doing repetitive moves so you can bet your bottom dollar that they would want good mats. That is why some crash mats come up to 60cm thick. 

Crash mats are not just the domain of high jumpers. Think sports such as judo. They too do repetitive throws which can take a toll on the body. They might not require crash mats which are 60cm thick but they would want at least something 15cm thick. sometimes they also use spring loaded floors to mitigate the impact.

Rubber Mats For The Heavy Lifters

There is no way that the weight lifting competitions could be missed by anyone. Those guys are huge and very strong. Some of them cam lift in excess of 500 pounds so you can bet that they would need some serious mats. This is where the rubber mats come in. Without them you could not have a weight lifting gym. Again a lot of these guys and certainly the competitions require spring loaded floors but rubber mats are a must. Not only do they reduce damage to the floors but they act as an ant-fatigue mat for the athletes. Rubber mats are a mainstay of any weight lifting organisation. Without them you simply could not training.

Any sport that requires strength training involving heavy weight would need to have rubber mats. The same is true for those that train at home. The vast majority of customers that buy our rubber floor tiles are buying them for their homes. Sometimes they only buy a couple on which they place their weights. Sometimes they buy enough to deck out an entire training area. I guess the more serious the activity is for them the more they invest. There would also be the cost and space factors involved in their decisions.

Tatami Mats For Traditional Martial Arts

Whilst most of the competitions that took place on mats were on EVA mats that doesn’t mean that’s what they train on. Take judo for example. Most judo practitioners train on tatami mats. Indeed tatami mats are the mats of choice for most Japanese martial arts. Some of them even train on the traditional tatami mats which are made from straw. The vast majority train on the vinyl kind which has a compressed foam inner and the tatami pattern on top. This is a great example of the divergence between what you train on and what you compete on. Even karate practitioners sometime go with the tatami variety in their school. Although it is usually the arts they use a lot of throws and grappling in their system as it requires them to have a decent surface to land on.

Foam Mats The Most Common Training Mats

Which leads us the most popular mats which are jigsaw puzzle mats. Jigsaw puzzle mats, or just puzzle mats, are the most common gym mats around. You would have seen them used during the Tokyo Olympics for numerous sports. They were definitely used in the karate and tae kwon do competitions and for good reason. If you are running a competition you need to be able to setup your area as quickly and efficiently as possible. Only jigsaw puzzle mats let you do they. The best thing about them is that they are interlocking so it is a safe surface to compete on. The last thing you want is for an athlete to injury themselves because they get a toe stuck between the mats. It would be a tragedy and would not go down too well with the viewing public.

They are also the mats of choice for people who train at home. We have sold countless amounts of jigsaw puzzle mats during the pandemic. All people need to do is measure up the area where they want to train and then simple mathematics will tell them how many mats they need. It is as simple as that.

So if you wanted to know what are the most popular mats for Olympic training I am sure you now know. So get some and get ready for Paris. It is just three years away.