So my friend has this home gym he’s getting together and we’re thinking of putting some money for some floor mats that could double up as a wrestling/bjj practice area.
So far I’ve found some so called “martial arts jigsaw mats” on e-bay but I’m a little skeptical on them as I’ve only trained for any extended period on an olympic wrestling mat before and these don’t look much different than the flooring my gym has in the dumbbell room.
Durable for dropping dumbbells etc but certainly I don’t imagine it being great on the joints.
Anyone had experience with similar mats? Or is anyone able to point me to a cheap, solid manufacturer or brand of some good mats?
Jigsaw mats are very thin. 2 inch judo mats are standard i think. If you have a local club or leisure centre which has old ones you could make an offer on them. Our local leisure centre was getting new mats and selling old ones - i got 12 for 60 pounds (120 dollars) - they normally retail for 80 - 100 pounds each i believe.
Zebra mats are what most BJJ school use. It should be noted however that back in the old days in Brazil most schools made their own “mats” by duck taping a run of the mill tarp over some kind of padding such as 1000’s of used bicycle inner tubes with the nozzle cut off.
Also the rubber jigsaw mats suck balls they arent very soft and they stick to you making guard work a little harder. Wrestling mats are ok but still harder than Zebras, but may be cheaper, you just can’t easily change their size or shape cause they just roll out.
I went down to my local kickboxing/judo places and neither had anything to sell but I’ll keep looking around for a good deal on the options you guys mentioned.