Many times we confused to choose the best flooring option for gyms, the modern world is fast-paced and cutthroat, with little time left for anything. You can see people running around from one point to another at breakneck speed, it’s like they are in a tearing hurry to reach no-where. This hectic-paced life has resulted in a huge range of health issues from physical to mental to emotional and health workers are at a loss on how to tackle these. However, off late quite a few people have started realizing the value of staying fit and exercising. A whole new generation has taken to fitness like bees to honey.
The result of this new approach to fitness has resulted in the spawning of gyms all over the planet; you have big gyms that have the latest equipment combined with saunas and steam baths. There are smaller gyms with exercise equipment but not the fancy stuff like saunas, these gyms have great infrastructure and coaches, some of these gyms are open 24×7. Gyms are not using for exercise but also included Zumba, aerobics, dance, and even yoga rooms. These gyms cater to a wide audience and have a huge member base due to the variety of exercises they offer.
There is another gym-going crowd that is growing in numbers but it is a different kind of gym that they go to, these are known as home gyms. Homes gyms not so long ago were the stale of the rich who could afford to buy expensive equipment, soundproof their rooms, and install expensive rubber-based flooring by getting in touch with a Rubber Flooring Tiles Manufacturer. This led to rumors that only those who were affluent could afford home gyms and if you had a home gym you were affluent, and this really wasn’t far from the truth. Prices back then were so exorbitant for the earlier mentioned stuff that the common folk wouldn’t even dare dream of such amenities, buying them was a whole other proposition.
Time, however, is a great game-changer, advancements in modern technology combined with global demand and supply economics resulted in the prices of gym equipment going down. This also resulted in an increase in budgets for research on Rubber Flooring. The research led to a variety of rubber-based flooring options like tiles, mats, rolls, PVC, and much more.
This advancement in technology and lowering of prices meant that home gyms were now in the grasp of people who had moderate incomes and were till now not able to install home gyms because of economical reasons.
Commercial Gyms and Home gyms vary in their choice of flooring due to certain reasons:
- Commercial gyms have a higher footfall than home gyms: The higher footfall means commercial gyms require a more durable type of flooring as wear and tear is higher in an area that is frequented by a higher number of people. Home gyms, on the other hand, are accessed only by an individual, family member, or workout buddies or at a bare minimum by an individual and their coach.
- Commercial gyms have a higher amount of equipment and free weights: Commercial gyms have a huge range of equipment for exercise; they even have the same kind of machines in higher numbers in order to cater to a higher number of members. A commercial gym might even have more than 4 machines of leg press and bench press and the same goes for some other types of machines facilitating exercise. In addition to this commercial gyms have a huge array of free weights for e.g.: you can find about 10 sets of 5 kg dumbbells alone in a commercial gym the same goes for the number of weight plates and bars. This puts huge pressure on the flooring in a gym and the shearing and grinding effect of the equipment is bound to create friction on the floor. The axiomatic outcome is that commercial gyms purchasing Rubber Flooring Tiles with interlocking features that are of higher thickness than normally used. Home gyms, on the other hand, have limited equipment stocked according to an individual’s taste and home gyms don’t use a huge load of weights, as a result, the flooring required in home gyms is of much less thickness but is still rubber based.
- Commercial and home gyms are similar in their choice I choosing Rubber Flooring because of its shock absorption capabilities which is why rubber flooring is also called safety flooring. Both gyms can witness people and equipment falling. When people fall it can lead to injuries, sometimes serious in natures, rubber flooring helps cushion the impact of a fall thereby saving a person from serious harm, if a person were to fall while running the anti-skid nature of the flooring also helps in stooping a slide in its tracks, you might just get a few bruises but ‘no pain no gain’ right? When equipment like free weights fall in a gym there is a risk of damage to the floor, rubber flooring as stated earlier cushions the impact thereby saving the flooring from any damage, this goes for home and commercial gyms alike.
- Commercial gyms and home gyms have a common problem: noise. Both gyms produce noise from equipment and weights being used, commercial ones have a higher noise quotient. Rubber flooring has noise-absorbing and canceling abilities. This feature comes in handy when your gym is in an apartment complex or in the case of commercial gyms in a commercial complex/ building, as detailed out earlier equipment and weights cause noise, this can be a cause of nuisance for your neighbors or people in the floors below. The noise-canceling helps keep your neighbors calm and keeps your surrounding environment sound disturbance-free thereby letting others live in peace. This also saves you from complaints and run-ins with law agencies.
- Commercial and Home gyms are sometimes equipped with swimming pools too, there are rubber flooring options that are highly durable in moisture and wet surroundings. These rubber tiles do not let water pool upon their surface and absorb it downwards thus, keeping the top surface dry and letting you walk around with wet feet no matter how water-laden the surrounding environment is. You can actually walk straight from a pool shower to the swimming pool without worry due to the anti-skid features of rubber.
- Rubber-based flooring does not have any mold or fungus damage threats. Some large gym areas use rubber rolls which are installed using an adhesive, school and college gyms mostly use rolls due to a large area that has to be covered. Perhaps the best feature of rubber flooring is that it does not require expensive chemicals and cleaning tools to maintain it, all you need is a slightly moist mop and in case of interlocking tiles, a vacuum and you are good to go. The interlocking tiles can also be removed to clean the surface underneath.