These reasonably priced, grippy yoga mats are available quite a lot of thicknesses.
I nonetheless bear in mind the primary time I attempted yoga. A couple of cute women in my sophomore highschool class had began a “yoga membership” after college, and a buddy and I believed that becoming a member of up can be a surefire strategy to get into their good graces.
An hour of sweat, gritted tooth, sore muscular tissues later, I threw within the towel. Yoga was arduous, I realized. It additionally was considerably painful, as a result of whereas all the women had yoga mats, my buddy and I have been doing “yoga” (or our greatest imitation of it) on the arduous tile ground of the college hallway.
Quick-forward fifteen years.
I am on the cusp of thirty, and yoga has turn into a key a part of my morning routine. The distinction between a day once I’ve carried out 10 to twenty minutes of sunshine stretching within the morning and a day once I have not is fairly important. I’ve additionally realized that yoga’s much more enjoyable when you might have a little bit of cushion between you and the ground. Enter the standard yoga mat.
Yoga mats aren’t simply good for yoga, both. My mats are a number of the most versatile and helpful items of “gear” in my closet. They’re good for just about any ground train, from push-ups to sit-ups, planks, mountain climbers, burpees, bicycle kicks… the checklist goes on. They’re additionally useful for savasana (mendacity down) meditation, and a thick(ish) yoga mat may even function a fairly first rate mattress for tenting. I usually use yoga mats to arrange climbing gear earlier than a visit, and greater than as soon as have slept at the back of my Subaru with a thicker yoga mat as a sleeping pad.
Yoga mats, after all, are available quite a lot of thicknesses and supplies. Thinner mats supply extra stability and a extra “grounded” really feel that’s typically most popular by severe practitioners (they usually’re additionally simpler to hold round city), whereas thicker mats supply extra cushion and alleviate strain on the joints, preferrred for newbies, aged practitioners, the arthritic, and so forth.
The mat I obtained to check on this assessment was the retrospec Solana, their thickest (1-inch) mat. Priced at a really cheap $39.99, this mat is accessible in a dozen completely different colours, and is constituted of soft NBR foam. However retrospec’s lineup of yoga mats is a flexible, reasonably priced unfold. In addition they have a thinner Solana (0.5″), constituted of the identical NBR foam, a 6mm mat, the Pismo, and a 5mm mat, the Laguna, which mixes a polyurethane higher layer with a rubber backside for grip.
This sun-dappled, lithe and limber mannequin is most actually not the creator….
Yoga mats are a reasonably easy piece of substances. By that I imply that except the producer does one thing severely heinous—like infuse their yoga mats with poison ivy or asbestos–what you see is what you get.
A yoga mat would not have to reinvent the wheel, it simply must be steady, grippy, sturdy, and (relying in your desire) supply some degree of portability and luxury.
With that in thoughts, I am very pleased with my Solana. It ticks all of the containers. These yoga mats supply stable no-slip help, are straightforward to wipe clear on the finish of a session, include a carry strap to retailer and transport, and better of all, are very reasonably priced. The Pismo and the half-inch Solana are simply $25, and all retrospec’s yoga mats are below $50.
That is the kicker right here, for me. That value level is corresponding to what you’d pay for a knock-off yoga mat at Walmart or Goal, however the high quality here’s a noticeable step up. I have never seen any of the scuffing and ripping on my retrospec mat that I sometimes see on $20-$30 yoga mats. It is held up very nicely even after a number of months of standard use.
