Setting up or upgrading a gym or PT training space is exciting. Nailing down that kit list with all the gear you need so you can offer the best training sessions possible just feels like a world of potential. You’re ready to get moving.
Then comes the often very much NOT exciting realisation that you need to sort some gym flooring. You can do it on the cheap, surely? After all, it’s just for dropping things on, catching sweat, and for people to stand on?
Well, we’re here to tell you why proper gym flooring is so important and should be looked at as being at least AS IMPORTANT as the rest of your kit list, if not even more so. Below, we’ve set out the key reasons as to why proper shock absorbent gym flooring might be the most important addition to your training space, and arguably the best investment all round too.
Please see our gym flooring page for more information on what we offer to new gyms or facilities looking for a refurbishment.
Benefits Of Shock Absorbent Flooring
Having the correct flooring in your gym facility brings about a lot of benefits for your customers, equipment and facility as a whole. Whether you are considering flooring for a home gym or looking into flooring for a commercial facility, here are the benefits:
- Saves you money long term.
- Ensures warranty claims you make on equipment may be valid.
- It protects your sub-floor and building structure.
- Your equipment will last longer.
- Great absorber of sound.
- Much safer for gym goers.
- Looks the part.
Proper Gym Flooring Saves you Money Long-term
That’s the bottom line. It’s the headline act as to why you should invest in proper, high-quality, and shock-absorbent gym flooring. We could honestly end the article here, because that’s all you really need to know.
But you’re probably here because you need a bit more persuading than that. The quote you get back to cover all the space in your gym with rubber flooring might seem eye-watering at first, but we promise that in the long run it’s almost guaranteed to save you money.
We see lots of gyms using glorified foam playroom mats for their gyms - happy to splash out £1000s on expensive gym equipment, but then opting for a cheap option on something that should be considered just as important as all those weights, racks, and other fitness tools.
The sheer number of potentially costly issues you can head off at the source by having proper shock-absorbent gym flooring means it more than pays for itself over a number of years. And we can only assume you have every intention of your training space being around for the foreseeable future, so why not make the right first moves by thinking long term?
But you don’t just have to take our general suggestion that it will save you money. We’re going to tell you exactly how, with a few bonus benefits thrown in too.
It Ensures Warranty Claims you make on Equipment may be Valid
All good suppliers of commercial gym equipment will have warranties on their products. This is to protect you from gear that won’t stand up to the reasonable demands of your training methods. However, all reputable suppliers will have terms and conditions in place to protect themselves from paying out on warranty claims they shouldn’t have to.
It can make your eyes roll because it sounds like a way for manufacturers to slip out of their warranty obligations. But reasonable use policies are there to protect everyone. As a result, nearly all trustworthy manufacturers will stipulate in the terms of their warranties that their equipment can’t be misused and that it needs to be used on appropriate gym flooring.
Having improper flooring is seen in the same way as equipment misuse, and will usually void a warranty. This is because not using proper gym flooring is a near-guaranteed way to shorten the lifespan of your equipment regardless of how well it has been manufactured.
This is how the use of proper gym flooring being part of the warranty terms protects both you and the manufacturer: you will both know if the problem is due to a genuine fault rather than misuse, and therefore your warranty claim is more likely to be accepted. To put it another way, if you’ve followed all the manufacturer's warranty rules, there’s no good reason they won’t replace or refund you for faulty equipment.
How does this save you money? Faults can and do happen. It’s as simple as that. Especially if you have a lot of equipment, this multiplies the chances of there being a fault somewhere. If it becomes clear there’s a fault, you’re within your warranty period, and you have used the equipment on proper flooring for its intended use, you’ll have your claim accepted.
Be warned: if you’re making a claim, a manufacturer is likely to want to see evidence of the flooring you’ve used, and their technical teams are going to know their equipment like the backs of their hands. They’ll be able to spot the difference between issues caused by a fault and issues caused by equipment misuse, so be honest with yourself and the manufacturer if you don’t have a genuine claim.
It Protects your Sub-floor and Building Structure
Weights are heavy. Gym equipment is hard. Therefore, dropping it onto regular flooring will damage the floor (and probably your gym equipment too). It’s simple, but it’s worth repeating. Proper shock-absorbent gym flooring will protect the sub-floor from the effects of dropped equipment, which is guaranteed to cause cosmetic damage in the best-case scenario, but will likely cause more significant and serious damage.
Anything from gouges that need to be repaired urgently since they pose a trip hazard, all the way up to causing outright structural damage to your premises, which is especially common in gyms where the training space isn’t on the ground floor. Proper gym flooring will save you from the nasty surprise of a large bill for structural repairs.
Your Equipment will Last Longer
Again, we’re assuming you want to be in business for some time, right? If you’re dropping weights onto gym flooring that isn’t up to standard, you are going to drastically reduce the amount of time that equipment lasts. And we mean drastically.
Think about your everyday life. Most of us have had that moment where we’ve dropped our phones from a height onto a hard surface, and you hold your breath as you pick it up after an alarming clatter against the ground, praying you’ve been lucky, and it’s caused no lasting damage. You may have got away with just a scratch or dent but often the damage is much worse. Compare that to any time you’ve dropped it on carpet and it's come out pretty much unscathed; it’s the same principle.
While we’re not talking smartphones and carpets, the physics is still the same: you want the surface you’re dropping onto to cushion and absorb that impact. Yes, most gym equipment is designed to be dropped, but with the shock being absorbed by the floor, those bars and plates are going to remain in top condition much, much longer.
We obviously can never commit to saying exactly how long a piece of equipment will last, but we have worked with gyms who bought kit in the late 00s who still have bars, plates, dumbbells and more still going strong, and this will in large part be due to having proper flooring. The savings compared to having to repurchase the same equipment multiple times over that period will have more than offset the outlay on proper shock absorbent gym flooring in the first place.
Cleaning and Maintenance are Easy
Rubber gym flooring is great for high-traffic areas because it’s resistant to scuffs and blemishes, and practically immune to significant damage. You’ll have to really go out of your way to drop something onto rubber gym flooring that will actually damage it, so maintenance is practically zero. But accidents do happen, and the beauty of our gym flooring tiles is that they are usually laid directly onto the surface below with no adhesive.
They won’t move underfoot, but if you do damage a tile, you can pry up an individual gym mat and replace it without having to go through a more costly process or having to replace a large area.
They can also be cleaned very easily. Simply wiping or mopping down your gym flooring should do the trick, not to mention that dirt, colour, odour, and grime isn’t readily absorbed into the tile. All this saves you both time and money. Now we’re done talking money it’s time to run you through some extra benefits that shouldn’t be overlooked.
It's a Great Absorber of Sound
Its shock absorbent properties also mean rubber gym flooring is a great insulator of sound. This is especially beneficial in facilities not on the ground floor. Regardless of what floor you’re on, you’ll also feel the benefits when your neighbours aren’t constantly complaining about the noise and you’re not struggling to be heard over the rattling of barbells and plates against a hard surface when you’re trying to run a class!
It’s Much Safer for your Gym Goers
The big one here is that most shock-absorbent gym flooring is made from rubber. Amongst its many qualities that make it perfect for gym flooring, an often overlooked one is its non-slip properties. This is crucial in a busy gym setting where there’s naturally moisture in the air, in addition to slip hazards from spilled liquids. Besides, being able to get maximum grip on the flooring also helps with safe weightlifting and a variety of other training movements.
Even more overlooked is that rubber gym flooring provides a level of shock absorption that is crucial to injury prevention for athletes. Especially in high-intensity workouts, shock absorbent rubber gym flooring’s anti-fatigue properties lessen the strain being placed on the body from impacts. This offers a much higher level of protection from repetitive strain injuries (shin splints are a great example), joint injuries, and ligament damage, to list just a few.
Finally: It Looks the Part
What looks better than a sleek, all-black, clean-looking, and uniform gym floor? Most suppliers will have a range of colour or pattern options too if you have a slightly different look in mind, but whatever you go for, it always looks right at home.
Conclusion
Proper shock absorbent gym flooring can be expensive, especially when covering a large area. But it’s almost guaranteed to save you money in the long run. A purchase you should only need to make once, it will protect your investments in all the fun stuff – the weights, the bars, the kettlebells, you name it – for many years to come.
Convinced? Let’s talk next steps. You can:
- Check out our rubber gym flooring guide for a more in-depth breakdown of the quality gym flooring we offer at Again Faster.
- Get straight to making a purchase of our rubber gym flooring, available in 20mm, 30mm and 40mm thickness depending on your needs (check out that guide above to get an idea of what would be best for you.)
- Speak to us at Again Faster for advice from experts by emailing [email protected]. You can also request a quote for kitting out your facility, flooring included, by going to our quote page!
- Find out more about our gym and facility design service, where we’ll take you every step of the way to getting a training space off the ground.