The Right Training Surface
DuraTRAIN 32mm Impact Flooring managing the noise and vibrations in this professional environment.
Ensuring you have the right training surface is crucial in ensuring your facility is fit for purpose. We have seen all too many times the flooring is an after thought and as a result a simple covering is all that is provided. What this approach does is cause future problems and limit what you can change at your facility.
If you intend to have a large free-weight area or offer Olympic lifting, your flooring choice has got to be the correct one. Sure a platform will allow the lifts to be performed, but that also creates a potential trip hazard, it is also a large outlay for a single user to train upon. We typically create an infinite training area, where the training surface is 30-40mm in thickness, with an integrated platform centre, this designates the lifting area and reduces any potential trips when moving around the gym and often with weight in hand. If you wish to expand on this, you can create zones with different colour flooring, this can be as simple as the dumbbell zone, Olympic lifting and such, the visual impact of this makes the gym look in order and navigation is much simpler. If you wish to blend stations machines with free-weight stations such as power racks, we can blend surfaces to suit and maintain a single level training surface, by building up the under floor.
If the space you are looking to revamp is for kettlebells and circuit based training, a 15-25mm material should suffice as the weight being dropped is less, however the equipment such as kettlebells are harder than bumper plates and may cause other damage. Where possible air on the side of caution and match the training surface to the sub-floor construction and to the intended activity. If these areas are for dynamic movements, that require changes of directions, we would always opt for a flooring solution that has minimal radius on the corners (if a tiled material) and where possible bond the material to the sub-floor if rolled. Certain high end interlocking rubber flooring is excellent and does not need bonding down do to its weight per tile and the fact its interlocked.
Noise and vibration much also be considered when mapping out your gyms, in particular where you have a 24-hour licence or residential near by. A slamming ball or constant dropping of a loaded barbell, will give you headache and the local authorities will get involved.
We have many ways of improving the structure properties of certain areas, from creating a raised steel floor, to simply multi layers of plywood. Its about understanding what your end goal is, what the training that is going to happen in the said area and finally looking at all possibilities within your facility.
Understanding your exact needs, helps us help solve your problems.
If you wish to discuss your projects, please email us