About Our Practice Floor

When I began considering opening a Kuk Sool Won school, one thing I thought about carefully was the practice floor.  Throwing and falling are important parts of Kuk Sool, and I wanted a quality floor that provided a high level of protection for my students and myself.  (As an instructor, I get thrown around often as I help students learn how to better execute their throws.)

Over the years I have experienced a variety of different floors, and one that stood out in memory was at a gymnastics facility.  This floor had an elastic quality that allowed it to absorb a great deal of impact.  When falling on it a large portion of the floor flexed, dissipating the majority of the force.  This made the experience of even high falling techniques quite comfortable.  I kept this in mind while investigating alternatives.

Research into how different floors are constructed and what other martial artists have chosen led me to the foam spring floor design.  There are a number of articles that describe the benefit of this kind of floor for martial arts training, but my favorite is “The Quest for the Perfect Judo Floor” by Paul Nogaki.  It turns out that this type of floor is common in gymnastics, and is probably very similar to the floor I recall experiencing years ago.  (Some floor designs use metal springs instead of or in addition to foam blocks. Metal springs provide more push-back, which is useful in gymnastics.)

Rather than building such a floor from scratch as Mr. Nogaki describes, I ordered a kit from Tiffin Athletic Mats.  They provided detailed instructions, the templates necessary for positioning the foam blocks beneath the wood panels and many boxes filled with foam cubes:

One of many boxes of foam cubes that came with the Tiffin kit

Here are some pictures of the floor as assembly is nearly completed showing the wood panels supported by the foam cubes:

A few pictures taken during construction

On top of the wood panels, I chose some fairly thick foam rubber mats for one half of the floor:

These mats are a little over 1.5 inches thick

I covered the other half of the floor with carpet-bonded foam, which is about the same thickness but provides a different texture. I felt that some variety in the surface properties would be useful for martial arts practice.

Once the floor was mostly assembled, I tested it with a high front flip into a back fall:

Quality assurance is necessary… but it can also be fun!

The floor has been assembled for over a month now, and I’ve had many chances to test it out since that picture was taken.  It provides an exceptional level of protection to anyone being thrown or practicing falling or acrobatic techniques.  I didn’t have to put in such an advanced floor, but I feel it was a worthwhile investment.  Come visit our school and give it a try for yourself!