Most parents, participants and facility owners and operators name participant safety as their number one goal when purchasing gym matting for their facility, no matter what the end use of the padding will be.
There are two main factors to consider when evaluating your next purchase of gym mats for use for gymnastics, whether recreationally in a school setting, or in an advanced gymnastics facility.
Thickness
Touted by most to be the most important safety factor of any gym mat or padding, thickness of the mats can greatly reduce the risk of injury by reducing the impact and stress produced by some gymnastics activities. Gym matting can come in a number of different sizes when pertaining to thickness, but we carry a thinner 1.25” thickness and a 2” thickness across all of our mats that we manufacture.
Obviously, thickness goes hand in hand with the type of activity to be performed on them, and how often they are to be used. Our 1.25” variety of gymnastics mat is typically reserved for simple exercises like stretching and very general exercises. This thickness also is used for other applications other than gymnastics, like low impact aerobic exercises and other light play areas.
Our 2” thickness is the heavier duty choice, offering the most protection for more focus gymnastics activities like tumbling and other higher intensity exercises and activities.
Material
Firstly, you will want to make sure that the outside of your mats are made up of a heavy-duty vinyl material. This serves as a great material to ensure the utmost durability and longevity of your gym mats. Secondly, you will want to know what is inside of your gymnastics mats and pads. Other manufacturers do and have used rubber to construct their mats, but testing has found that to be a less favorable and safe option for most athletic facilities. You will want to make sure foam is used when manufacturing the matting, and we recommend and manufacture pads and mats with polyethylene foam. This has become the international standard for gymnastics, and has proven to provide the user with great rebound capabilities, is lightweight and can hold up for many years under a lot of use.