I recently purchased a TDS commercial grade power rack for the home. It has a max capacity of 1000 pnds. (My flat bench has a max capacity of 6000pnds as well).
I am looking for a rubber mat that will cover around 5x10 area. I have been looking at stall mats (the rubber things they use for farm animals) they seem to be the best quality, but the shipping prices are ridiculous?
I went to Sports Authority…they have 4x8 interlocking foam mats? Yuck. Then they have solid rubber it’s 79$ and barely covers anything. Dick’s Sporting Goods has roughly the same quality. The walmart brand is also foam…same with Play It Again Sports. Is it really this hard to find a rubber mat (preferably 1/2 inch thickness)…?
Where can I get a good quality rubber mat. This should not be this difficult. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
thats the stuff mate - its about 1m x 1m thereabouts?
Awesome stuff though - you can drop your bars down onto it without worries.
Covers stuff all - is expensive. You could try ebay or ring around for end of financial yr sell outs? Its still going to be expensive, esp compared to foam.
I’ve used the stall mats in a number of facilities I helped design. The agriculture products are almost always of high quality and at low prices as use costs of the products dictates profit(you learn these things when you grow up on a farm).
The 4 feet by 6 feet and 3/4 inch thick stall mats work well. When my alma mater high school was putting in a new weight room (40 feet by 80 feet) I put them onto using stall mats instead of the “fitness flooring” or interlocking mats. The cost of the stall mats was 1/2 price of the other flooring options. The mats have been in for 3 years and the weight room is used by all sports and the mats still look new with very little wear.
If you have an Agriculture Store near you (not a problem as I now live back in Iowa) that deals with cattle, horse, or hogs you should be able to find the mats at a good price.
Try to locate any industrial matting company that makes matting for work applications or even conveyor belt material. They should make basic “slab matting” similar to the horse mats. I get them in 4’x6’ sheets at 1/2 inch thickness.