How To Buy A Yoga Mat Guide
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How To Buy A Yoga Mat Guide
Beyond a color and pattern that suits your style, your yoga mat needs to keep you stable in your poses; it needs to be storable and portable, yet comfy and cushy. You may also want your mat to be environmentally friendly. These aspects of your mat's personality are all affected by how the mat is made: how thick it is, what it's made of, and its surface texture.
Basic buying guide: Consider how much room you have to stow your yoga mat, how important portability is, and where your sweet spot is on comfort versus being able to feel a direct connection to the floor. If you're short on storage space, have a long schlep to the studio, and like the feel of just a little padding, opt for a standard-depth mat, in the 1/8 inch range.
Options: Most standard yoga mats are made of PVC, otherwise known as vinyl. Newer, more earth-friendly options include natural and recycled rubber, jute, and organic cotton or natural cotton (which means the fabric is not treated with synthetic finishes during manufacturing).
Basic buying guidelines: If you're allergic to latex, avoid yoga mats made of natural rubber. If you want to stick with the tried and true sticky mat, choose a yoga mat made out of PVC, which can endure your use and abuse for more than a decade. Sponginess can vary widely with different blends of materials, but in general, PVC has the most "give" of any yoga mat material; jute and cotton have the least.
Basic buying guide: If you need help staying put in your poses but you bristle at the thought of practicing on a yoga mat with a raised texture, a PVC yoga mat is probably your best bet. Just remember that these yoga mats are only sticky when they are clean, so make sure you care for your yoga mat properly. If you buy a PVC yoga mat, wash it before you use it and use a handy yoga wash cleaner whenever you notice your hands sliding forward in downward dog.
Basic buying guide: If eco-friendliness is important to you, avoid yoga mats made of PVC (the traditional sticky mat), which does not break down in landfills and is difficult and costly to recycle. Rubber, jute and, cotton yoga mats, while available in a range of thicknesses, tend to be thicker and slicker than PVC mats. You can get a yoga mat that's eco-friendly, has a thickness that meets your needs for comfort and portability, and has a texture (such as a raised geometric pattern) that prevents slippage.
Typically, a basic 1/8 inch thick, plain solid-color PVC sticky yoga mat will be toward the low end of the price range. From there you may pay more for patterns, designs or logos; premium thickness; antimicrobial treatments; and cool textures, especially raised tactile patterns. Eco-friendly yoga mats tend to be toward the high end of the price range.
Compared to other fitness activities, yoga requires minimal gear to get started. While most studios provide everything a beginner needs, investing in your own personal mat, yoga-specific clothes and a few other items can make your experience with yoga even more enjoyable.
Wherever you practice, a proper yoga mat is essential. Working on a rug, slippery towel or overly-soft gym cushion can lead to injury and frustration. Most studios and gyms offer mats for public use, but owning your own can be a more hygienic alternative.
While there are many options available, the vast majority of yoga mats work perfectly well for any style of yoga. Often, your choice will come down to personal preference. That said, understanding the differences will help you select a mat that fits your personal needs.
Thinner mats can help increase stability for styles of yoga with more active poses or balanced, focused poses. Look for mats with textured surfaces to maintain better grip when the poses get more strenuous.
Thicker mats provide extra cushioning and are best for more therapeutic practices. If you enjoy restorative yoga, a style with fewer poses that you hold longer, for example, you may prefer a softer, more cushioned mat. Thicker mats are also more comfortable for forearm and kneeling poses and for yogis with tender knees or achy joints. But they can be more difficult to balance on during standing poses.
Coverage: While most comfortable fitness clothing will suffice for yoga, keep in mind that you may be upside down or wide-legged during poses. Form-fitting yoga pants and tops keep you from exposing more of yourself than you expect. They also allow greater ease of movement and prevent sleeves or pant legs from getting caught in twists or underfoot. Read more on How to choose Yoga Clothes.
How they work: Most mat towels feature grippy nubs on the underside to keep the towel in place on your mat. Unlike a typical cotton bath towel, yoga towels are quick-drying and built to absorb moisture without sacrificing grip and stability during practice.
Establishing proper alignment early is critical to getting the most out of your yoga practice. Straps and blocks help newcomers who have limited flexibility achieve better alignment. Most studios have them on hand, and testing them with the guidance of a knowledgeable instructor will help you assess what works best for your needs.
While certainly not required, a yoga bag or simple lightweight sling keeps your mat from unrolling at inopportune times and lets you keep your hands free on the way to class (so you can ride your bike, carry your latte, etc.). A yoga bag can also protect your mat from rain, snow and dirt during transport, enhancing its longevity.
We recruited two accomplished NYC-based yoga instructors, hatha/vinyasa specialist Juan Pablo Gomez and hot-yoga practitioner Arden Goll, to practice on and carefully evaluate yoga mats for the 2016 rewrite of this guide.
To better understand environmental claims made by mat makers, we talked to Michael S. Brown, PhD, of Brown and Wilmanns Environmental, a consulting firm that specializes in advising product manufacturers on how to make their products and practices more sustainable, as well as William Carroll, PhD, an adjunct professor of chemistry at Indiana University. For an update to this guide, we again checked in with Brown and Wilmanns Environmental, talking with co-founder Eric Wilmanns.
We also talked to Charles Gerba, PhD, a professor of microbiology and environmental sciences at the University of Arizona, and interviewed Tsippora Shainhouse, MD, a board-certified dermatologist in Beverly Hills and clinical instructor at the University of Southern California, to learn if a dirty yoga mat could make you sick.
Amy Roberts is a certified personal trainer and long-time amateur yogi with extremely discerning tastes when it comes to yoga mats, and nearly everything she buys. She has reviewed all manner of fitness products for Wirecutter, including resistance bands, foam rollers, and pull-up bars.
Wirecutter senior staff writer Ingrid Skjong is a certified personal trainer and off-and-on yoga enthusiast. She has taken numerous yoga classes (including prenatal yoga) and knows when a yoga mat feels right and performs well. She has delved into other fitness-related reviews, for running shoes, treadmills, connected indoor-cycling bikes, and GPS running watches.
Both of our yoga instructors praised the Voyager highly for its portability and traction, selecting it as either their favorite or second-favorite travel mat. Depending on the style of yoga you practice or your preferences, though, you may need to make a few adjustments. Our hot yoga instructor noted that the rubber felt almost too grippy and somewhat coarse on her skin and she had to put down a towel to absorb sweat near the end of class. Still, she preferred it over most of the travel competitors, which could become slippery during a heated session.
Although you can wash most yoga mats in a machine, the stretching and tumbling can easily tear a PVC or non-rubber mat. Rubber mats may fare better in the washer but suck up a ton of moisture and can take forever to dry.
Yoga mat materials can create a thicket of concerns for many yogis, and many companies that make yoga mats try to appeal to the environmentally sensitive nature of their audience. JadeYoga says it does not source the rubber for its mats from Amazon trees. Manduka will take your old mat (for a $10 fee on top of a new mat purchase) and have it downcycled.
We were interested in testing the Hugger Mugger Para Mat, which did well in a previous review, when we learned that a new XLXW version measuring 28 inches wide and 78 inches long was launching. Though our yogis enjoyed practicing on the extremely grippy, luxuriously thick ( inch or 6.2 millimeters) natural-rubber mat, they found it very heavy to haul around (nearly 10 pounds) and extremely pungent (our hot-yoga instructor described it as smelling like a tire factory, which even bothered her neighbor in class).
The Kulae tpECOmat Ultra mat is made of a TPE material with an extra-plush 8-millimeter (5/16-inch) thickness. The hatha instructor and Amy were big fans of the lightweight yet densely cushioned material, which Amy particularly enjoyed in restorative yoga practice during long-held floor poses. Our hot yoga instructor found it slippery and commented that the material stretched a bit underfoot. Its thickness makes this mat a bit unwieldy to carry when rolled up, despite its 4-pound weight.
The microfiber top surface of the Toplus 1/16 Inch Travel Yoga Mat has a nice feel, and the mat comes in a tidy plastic sleeve for storage. But our hatha instructor was not impressed with the traction; and though our hot yoga instructor thought it was decent on her trial run, she preferred the JadeYoga Voyager.
We also considered YogaPaws, a set of padded gloves and socks that could easily be the most portable mat-replacement option for traveling yogis. Unfortunately, neither yoga instructor nor Amy much liked practicing in them. Even the thinner version feels thick under your hands and feet, and the socks have a tendency to shift around as you practice.
Yoga mats have come a long way since the original mat, which was made from carpet underlay. Nowadays yoga mats come in a vast range of materials and designs, and with so many yoga mats available it can be difficult to choose one, especially as a beginner. 59ce067264