flooring

[Yogicmotion]

Ok, so here is another one.

What would you ideal flooring to practice on? Carpet, wood, tile, concrete. What would you put in your kwoon, if you had the choice?

[PM]

linoleum

for the saan da workouts and realistic training of syut techniques, i have cca 20 m2 of 1x1m puzzle tatami

[Asmo]

Once at an competition the traditional section had to do their forms on carpet, as there was also wushu on that field. I saw like 3/4 of my group go worry about it as it was not flat hard surface...

The thought to me did not came up in anyway way because I equally train at home (carpet), outside (uneven, grass, sand) and at the gym (hard sports floor).

The gwoon Frank trains in has a thick carpet. I kinda like that to be honest, its quite different from a hard floor. In the end, again, I think you should be equally comfortable on all kinds of surfaces...

[Daifong]

For myself, wood, concrete, and especially linoleum covering wood or concrete are ideal...

For others, I've seen a fellow stamping on concrete doing Bat Gik Kyun rows at his teacher's direction, develop shin splints to such an extent he was demotivated from continuing further...

I believe those stamping drills ("Fa Jing", i think they called it) are better done on earth ground, or wood, a surface with some "give"...

Now, wood is nice, but hard to keep clean (attractive/ sanitary), as it is porous. An alternative to linoleum covering, there are some commercial resin or polymer-type finishes which won't peel, scratch-proof, easy to clean, like a basketball court...

Still not much protection from Guan Do gouges, etc, but if you own the floor (or can gain a consensus), you may want to consider going this route...

Tile is pretty and likely seviceable when new, but over time prone to breakage, cracks from missing grout and holes from missing tiles over time, then patching it, etc...

I don't care for carpet. It's gets dusty, unsanitary, and catches peoples shoes. getting one's shoe caught, even momentarily can be more of a problem than simply throwing off our timing or inhibiting free movement. Even a small traction hangup can begin to affect one's joints in a negative way. Compound that by lots of repetition (or one good, healthy accident), and there's potentially trouble...

Also, carpeting gives the illusion that a fall is safe, so guys might start throwing here and there during spar sessions...

However, if there is concrete below the carpet, not everybody remembers in timely fashion not to break a fall with their wrist or shoulder, etc problems...

To practice throws/ falls, rolling out mats is best, IMO, as just having full-coverage mats out all the time can be problematic in the same way as wall-to-wall carpeting, traction hangups potentially leading to joint damage...

Good luck,

Mike

[Frank Bolte]

I do not like carpet at all.makes you slowish ( hated the carpet in the restaurant at GM Lam Jos 100ds bday bash) I´d prefer wooden floor or concrete covert with linoleum...tiles are also ok..especially for beginners as they can use the tiles for proper positioning of the feet....or the linoleums design has squares would be ideal...

[laukarfei]

i like training on carpet, id also rather train with shoes off though