A greater emphasis has been placed on home exercise and physical fitness than ever before, with gyms doing big business across America. But plenty of people steer clear of the gym for various reasons. Maybe they don’t like the judgment of muscle-bound regulars, want to avoid the monthly fees or just don’t have the time to go out to a public gym. A natural alternative for many people is to create their own home gym, either in a basement or spare bedroom using rubber flooring tiles or rolls.

Rubber flooring can provide the perfect underfloor surface for a home gym, due to its traction, durability and shock absorption qualities; however, each will have different advantages. Rubber tiles are often easier to install, because they are smaller, more manageable and do not always require adhesive. One of the key advantages of rubber tiles is that individual tiles are easier and cheaper to replace when they are damaged. Rubber tiles come in a large variety of thicknesses to provide the grip and padding you need for your workout. On the other hand, rubber tiles are the most customizable flooring option due to their interlocking mechanism. This offers a mobile floor and allows you to keep adding tiles until your have reached your desired size.

When you utilize a roll of rubber flooring in your home gym, it has one key advantage over tiles – the roll will cover a large surface with fewer seams. For one thing, this reduces trip hazards on your gym floor. But more importantly, there are no seams for liquids to permeate through. In a gym setting you may be sweating profusely, or spill a drink, but that won’t matter with the solid surface area of a rubber roll. Additionally, rubber flooring rolls are usually meant for covering wall-to-wall spaces and are able to do so through its customizable length. We custom cut most of our rubber flooring rolls down to the half foot increment. This means you can order rolls that are custom-sized for your spaces. This reduces installation time and costs, and you buy what you need and not the length that is available for sale.

Like all synthetic rubbers, neoprene is a man-made elastomer produced through polymerization, or the linking together of single molecules to form a compound. Neoprene, which is also often called polychloroprene or chloroprene rubber, actually refers to a family of elastomers that are produced from the polymerization of chloroprene. However, unlike most elastomers, the compound that makes up neoprene can be found in a few different forms: fabric wetsuit neoprene, cellular foam rubber, and solid sheet rubber. In all its forms, neoprene elastomers offer good chemical stability, high flexibility, and a wide working temperature range. Despite this common ground, it is important to understand the differences between wetsuit neoprene vs rubber, as making the wrong choice can prove catastrophic to your project.

While wetsuit neoprene is a highly compressible, fabric-like material, rubber neoprene is instead a durable and resilient general-purpose sealing and gasketing rubber. Solid neoprene is dense and features a non-permeable surface that keeps liquids out. The rubber material is available in a range of durometer (hardness) ratings, all of which demonstrate a much better resistance to abrasions than the compound’s softer form. Neoprene sheeting also has great tensile strength by comparison, allowing the dense rubber to stretch much further than its counterpart would allow. Though it cannot be used to make wetsuits or mousepads like its fabric counterpart, neoprene rubber is incredibly durable and performs well in a wide range of physically demanding applications, such as seals, gaskets, industrial machine parts.

All forms of neoprene offer resistances to oils, greases, and temperatures, but rubber neoprene is undoubtedly the more durable and versatile choice. If ever confused between fabric neoprene vs rubber, remember only the solid elastomer can be used as an alternative to natural rubber. Fabric neoprene is favored for applications such as wetsuits, laptop covers, and mouse pads, but when it comes to more demanding applications, you can never go wrong with neoprene sheet rubber.