Flooring for Deadlifting at Home

Bigger Stronger Leaner Powerlifting & Strength Sports
1

Hello.

I am working on a home setup in a basement with concrete flooring. I’d like to be able to deadlift heavy at home. My current best is 515 and 600+ is what I’d like to be able to lift at home without worrying about structural damage.

I haven’t made any purchases yet, so I would greatly appreciate any suggestions from the community.

Jackkrash suggested these horse stall mats.

http://www.tractorsupply.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?urlRequestType=Base&catalogId=10051&storeId=10151&productId=20762&langId=-1&errorViewName=ProductDisplayErrorView&categoryId=&parent_category_rn=&top_category=&urlLangId=&cm_vc=-10005

These seem like a good general flooring for the area, plus their equine functionality means that cleanup will be a breeze if I shit myself during a heavy squat. With that important consideration satisfied, I’d like a little more protection for the deadlift area.

So, on to my questions.

  1. Does anyone have any suggestions for an inexpensive but durable setup?

  2. How important are uniform plate dimensions? Buying a matched set may be pricy. Picking them up piecemeal off of craigslist is much, much cheaper. Would I be setting myself up for damage if all of the weight was distributed on just one or two plates per side?

Thank you for taking the time to help.

-twojarslave

2

Personally I made a small platform from plywood and stall mats.

3

I pull off of rubber patio tiles. You can get them for like $5 at a Home Depot. Get 4, put 1 under each plate and 1 under each foot and you’ll be at equal heights.

I have never had equal sized plates, and after 6-7 years of home gyming it, still no issues.

4

Thanks, T3hPwnisher. That seems like a really good option.

I also think it is hilarious that my original thread title, “Flooring suggestions for heavy deadlifting at home”, or something very close to that, was correctly edited to remove the “heavy” part. I am posting in the powerlifting forum, after all.

Thanks for setting me straight, moderators.

5

Foam interlockable gym floor tiles don’t stand up well even if the plate sizes are equal. I have some of the thicker commercial-grade ones, but even then. Doubling up protects the concrete, but not the tile; there’s some serious ruts where the bar rolls. I have a folded up felt moving blanket on each side on top of the tiles, and that’s worked, but it’s less than ideal.

I wouldn’t recommend going that route. It’s fine flooring for everything else though.

From what I’ve seen around the web, those horse stall mats on top of plywood seem to be one of the best ways to go. I just haven’t done it myself.

6

Two sheets of plywood screwed together with 1" horse mats at the ends where the plates will go and a central sheet of plywood to make up the levels should do the job.

7

Mine is three sheets thick of 3/8" plywood cross laid and screwed together topped with rubber stall mats. It may be overkill but I’d be pissed if I cracked the concrete in my basement. (Old house, shitty pour)

8

Building a Lifting Platform
By Randall J. Strossen, Ph.D.

Start with four sheets of 3/4-inch CDX plywood. Plywood is graded, following the pattern you learned in school, and CD is good enough for our purposes; X just means that it’s exterior. Put two sheets side by side on the ground; then put the other two side by side (crosswise) on top of the first layer, so that the long side runs front to back on the first layer and side to side on the second layer. Use wood glue and screws to fasten these two layers together. At this point, you have an eight foot by eight foot square, 1-1/2 inches thick. Properly assembled, it is tied together as one unit, and it forms the basic understructure of your platform. Note that there are no hollow spots in this structure: there is a famous line about how if you have a hollow spot in your platform, a barbell will automatically find it and punch a hole through it.

To absorb shock, which will extend the life of your bumper plates, and to deaden some of the noise, put rubber where the plates will hit your platform. Since you also need a level surface across your entire platform, you need to build up the middle section, to match the height of the rubber on the outside edges. Here’s the easiest way to do this.

You have an eight-foot square platform, so if you get two pieces of rubber two feet by eight feet, and glue each one, front to back, along the outside edges of your platform, that leaves you with a four foot by eight foot section in the middle?conveniently, you can drop another sheet of plywood into this valley, to make the entire platform level and free from gaps. Try to get rubber at least 1/2-inch thick, and get a piece of AB grade plywood for the center, matching its thickness to the thickness of the rubber. You splurge on the better grade of plywood for this top, middle section since you want a nice, uniform lifting surface.

Line up all the pieces, and then use wood glue, plus screws along the outside edges of the four foot side only, to fasten the center piece of plywood to the understructure, with the A side of the plywood facing up. Use high-strength contact cement to attach the two pieces of rubber to the understructure. You want this entire surface to be level and free from gaps or anything that might snag your heel (which is why you don’t use screws along the front-to-back, eight-foot edge of the center piece of plywood). Because you need good traction, it should go without saying that you don’t want to put anything slippery, like urethane, on the plywood.

This is a proven design, first explained to me by Jim Schmitz, and I can vouch for how well these platforms hold up. Expense aside, the toughest part might be finding the rubber, but look around for used conveyer belt, or something from an agricultural or ranching application, and you should be able to locate something suitable and save money at the same time.

Lift hard and heavy - with a good platform underfoot, there’s nothing to stop you.

9

Horse stall mats can be cut in half for the rubber fairly easy.

10

I think everyone in this thread has already covered it pretty well but I modeled mine loosely off of this video:

I think i spent 150 all together and ive had it about a year of frequent use and no problems.

11

I have been using horse stall mats for 10 years in my garage. They have held up well to heavy use. I was just at Tractor supply and they sold 1/2 mats also here in my town as well as full mats. You won’t regret using those in your set up.

12

Outdoor carpet and two 3/4" 4x8 sheets of plywood. Works awesome for cheap.

13

Also, MDusa sells a frame that you put your plywood or stall mats in so you can make your platform look really legit if you wanted to fork out the $200. Comes in a bunch of colors.

14

Lots of great ideas. I knew the P’ling forum at T-Nation would not disappoint.

Thanks for taking the time to share.

15

if noise is an issue, I stuck that piece together padding (walmart i think) underneath 3 pieces of plywood nailed together and it’s quiet as a mouse