The flooring is one of the most important part of your home gym but it’s quite often the last thing we install. There’s a lot of choice out there for your home gym floor and this can be very confusing with prices ranging from CHF 30 to 100 per square meter. Here’s what I did for my home gym.

Which floor?

Usually gym floors are made of recycled rubber. You can find hundreds of different sorts: thick or thin, light or heavy, small or big, squares or rolls, square or puzzle… The question you must first answer is WHY do I need it, HOW am I going to use and and then this will tell you WHAT you need.

WHY ?

  • protect the floor?
  • look nice?
  • for comfort?
  • To protect from sweat and clean easily?

HOW ?

  • I will use heavy weights and throw them on the floor “CrossFit style”
  • I will use it mainly for bodyweight exercices
  • I will use my cardio equipment on top
  • I will use it for pilates or yoga at home

As you can see there are many questions to ask yourself and the more detailed you can list your needs and usage requirements this will point you in what type of floor you need.

For light weights, pilates or yoga

I would recommend something light and odourless – as you will do many exercices lying on the floor comfort will be important

For heavy weights

I recommend something quite heavy and a bit thick (10-15mm) and also invest into some drop mats where you can drop your barbells or hex bars on the floor easily

For cross fitters

Definitely go for very thick (20-40mm) as you will drop those weights constantly but be careful as you might have a lot of bounce from some of the tiles.

Puzzle or not?

This depends how much cutting you want to do! Unless you can buy the ends to attach to the puzzles you will have to cut all the outsides yourself so that it fits your room. I prefer to use heavy squares so that they just stick together nicely.

Installation : 4 basic steps

  1. Measure your area carefully (be careful as not all the rooms are perfectly square sometimes!)
  2. Clean the surface (some tiles require glue if they are too light)
  3. Start from one corner and make your way to the hardest part (if you have places to cut or go around)
  4.  Cut the tiles to fit

1/ Measurements : this is obviously important so that you order the necessary quantity. I would advise to order a few tiles more in case one cut goes wrong…

2/ Clean : once the tiles are on you won’t get them off… so make sure the surface is nicely cleaned and hoovered

3/ Start with the easy sections so you can lay down as many tiles as possible until you must start any cutting.

4/ Cutting : Use a protection like a towel or wood to protect your floor. Cut with a sharp blade cutter, and use a metal ruler to make sure your angles are straight. Draw where you want to cut with a pencil. Don’t force the knife into the tile, but make many gently long cuts following your penciled line. This is much easier than you think!

Where did I buy my floor?

I bought them from a company called Cross Equip in Zurich – specialised in providing equipment for CrossFit boxes all over Switzerland. I asked them many questions and the replied very quickly with good advice – I was very happy with the service.

Delivery and installation

I ordered 20 tiles to fit my 18 square meter room – a whooping 400kg or recycled rubber arrived by truck only 2 days after my order was placed. 2 hours later my room was installed – and that included the time moving out and moving back in all the material. It was very easy and it now looks great.

I was a little nervous about the cutting but honestly it was very easy – I didn’t even need a very big blade to cut my 15mm tiles. I was lucky to have the width of my room 5m so that at least 15 tiles were placed without any effort and only had to cut 5 tiles.

Cost

  • 20 tiles = CHF 880 (CHF 44 per tile)
  • Delivery = CHF 215.40 (400 kg!)
  • Total = CHF 1095.40