How to Have a Safe Home Gym on Carpet Floors

It is ideal to lift weights and workout on a solid and stable floor, however that is not an option for everyone. Some home gyms need to be set up on carpet flooring. You can safely workout on carpet flooring, although carpet is soft, lacks support and stability for lifting and for machines and can absorb bacteria. It is advisable, therefore, to lay down hard rubber mats or build a lifting platform over your carpet to get the most out of your home gym.

When Working Out on Carpet is Safe

There is no doubt that you can perform some workouts directly on carpet. Things such as body weight workouts, yoga, stretching, and some cardio can be done with little regard to the flooring it is being performed on. Flooring becomes more important with increasing intensity of these types of workouts.

Performing body weight circuits, or things such as light squats and pushups can certainly be safely executed on carpets. Additionally, core focused workouts should be safe.

If you are performing exercises on weight benches (such as dumbbell bench presses), then you should be safe to simply place the bench on your floor and get to work. You should check to make sure it doesn’t wobble from side to side though!

Treadmills, like Amazon’s #1 Best Seller the NordicTrack T Series, wont budge as you run or walk.

Similarly, a spin bike like this one from Sunny Health weighs enough so it won’t slide around as you go all out. However, you may end up with a lot of sweat on your carpet from riding hard, which is a bit gross (more on that later). For this reason, indoor cycling companies make mats specifically for below indoor trainers, like this one from Wahoo Fitness.

Why You Wouldn’t Want to Build a Home Gym on Carpet

Though you can get some workouts in on carpet, there’s also a reason why you never see carpet floors in commercial gyms or CrossFit boxes. It simply is not the most ideal flooring to lift and workout on.

The first and foremost reason you don’t see reason people don’t workout on carpet floors is because it is soft, spongey, and unstable. As a result, there is certainly a safety concern when it comes to building a home gym on carpet floors.

Lifting on Soft Floors

Much of the cueing when it comes to lifting heavy starts from the ground up. We’re taught to screw our feet into the ground in squats and deadlifts and even to drive our feet into the ground during bench presses. However, when the floor is soft and spongey it is nearly impossible to develop the stable base needed to put yourself in a good position to lift.

Additionally, as you are lifting – particularly when squatting or lunging, your foot will wobble around. This can affect your balance and/or how you apply force into the ground. This instability can potentially lead to compensations (like at your knee or back) that could lead to injury over the long term.

Cardio on Soft Carpet Floors

Performing cardio workouts on treadmills or stationary bikes placed on carpet floors is fine, as outlined above. However, workouts on rowing machines may be problematic. High caliber rowers will lift up and move around their machines as they are laying down the power – even when done on grippy rubber floors. Even the most amateur of rowers could move their erg around a room if the machine is placed directly on carpet floors. This movement will lead to power leaks that will decrease your speed. Your confidence will also wain as you feel yourself sliding around.

Even cardio exercises like skipping can be suboptimal on carpet. Though the carpet will provide a softer surface than skipping on something like concrete, it will also serve as an energy leak. As such, you will need to put more force into the ground on each jump which will increase the fatigue in your lower body. Additionally, the rope will have increased friction from hitting the carpet.

Running and changing directions can also be hazardous when performed on carpet. Any quick deceleration or change of direction will put you at risk of slipping out and falling. This also poses a risk for ligament injuries and sprains at the ankle and knee.

Overall, I would recommend not performing cardio on carpet floors, except on a treadmill or spin bike.

Damaging Subfloors

I’ll start this with the caveat that I know next to nothing about home building and/or carpentry. However, I do know that carpet floors have a subfloor beneath them. These subfloors are typically made of plywood or similar material. As you can imagine, lifting, and more importantly dropping, heavy weights onto a carpet directly on top of subflooring could pose some problems.

This is unlikely to be a problem if you are doing bodyweight workouts. However, you could ruin your subfloor if you are lifting heavy weights, particularly deadlifting or Olympic lifting. Even dropping a pair of dumbbells after a bench press or overhead press could be enough to crack or break your subfloor, which would result in a costly repair fee.

As such, you should really consider the damage you could do BELOW your carpet when considering building your home gym on carpet floors.

Cleaning Carpets

When we workout, we sweat. And when we sweat it drips off of us. Lifting weights and working out on carpet floors means that our sweat will fall onto the carpet and that can get gross over time. Accumulated sweat can lead to a (more) slippery surface and can result in bacteria growth.

It is obviously possible to use a carpet cleaner in your home gym area on a regular basis. However, it is more of a hassle than simply using a Swiffer wet mop type of cleaner so it probably not going to be cleaned as often as a rubber floor.

I certainly know that I wouldn’t use a carpet cleaner as often as a quick clean up with my Vileda Spray Mop.

Also, chalk can be a nightmare on carpet. I’ve written before about the importance of using chalk when lifting weights, so you should have chalk if you’re doing any serious lifting. Dropping the chalk bucket is an offence in any gym because it is so tough to clean. However, on carpet you add in the fact that the chalk will get embedded in the fabric and stick to any moisture.

Even a careful chalk-up before a lift will lead to particles flying through the air, which can lead to headaches.

All the more reason to move beyond building your home gym directly on carpet floors.

Building a Safe Home Gym Over Top of Carpet Floors

Even though working out on carpet floors is less than ideal it doesn’t mean you can’t build a home gym in a room with carpet floors. You may just have to be a bit creative to build out your training space.

1. Lay Down Rubber Flooring Over Carpet

The easiest way to overcome a carpeted home gym is to simply lay down rubber gym flooring over the carpet. I’ve written extensively about home gym flooring in the past. Rubber flooring is safe, easy to clean and built specifically to help protect you and your equipment from damage and injury.

In addition, having carpet underneath the rubber flooring adds noise dampening when dropping weights which might mean you don’t need dropper pads.

In my case, we laid down two layers of 3/8” rubber flooring from Tydax. Importantly, we made the layers overlap so that the seams of the flooring tiles were offset. This made it so there were no “dead spots” where two layers of flooring met at the same seam.

If you’re worried about the noise associated with a home gym then check out my article about some key tips to sound proofing your home gym.

2. Use Mats Under Equipment and for Bodyweight Workouts

Not all gyms need hard core rubber flooring. You could safely place matting over your carpet if you stick mostly to machine workouts or bodyweight activities. Luckily, mats can come in a variety of sizes from yoga mat to mats that take up most of a room.

These are great options because they protect you (and your equipment) from sliding around as you perform your workout. Mats also protect the carpet from collecting sweat.

Most cardio equipment and weight machines will come with rubber feet designed to keep the equipment in one place. These feet will potentially slide around if placed directly on carpet but will “grab” to rubber flooring and mats to stay in one place.

Simply put, they are a (fairly) cheap option to put you in a position to get the most out of your workouts while remaining safe if you are building your home gym on carpet (or any other material, really).

3. Build a Lifting Platform for your Home Gym

Building a platform for you home gym is the next step up from simply laying rubber flooring over your carpet floor. A lifting platform is a special build, (usually) raised area built of wood and rubber as a designated place for lifting weights. Platforms are particularly useful for lifts like the deadlift, squat and Olympic lift variations.

There is usually a metal outer frame that houses the wood and rubber components so that they don’t move. The middle section, where you stand, has multiple layers of plywood and potentially a top layer of more expensive hard wood. The outside sections are topped with rubber flooring, or horse stall mats, to protect your weights and floor from damage.

A great step-by-step guide of how to build your own lifting platform can be found at Art of Manliness or you could check out the options from Rogue.

The Wrap Up on Carpets in Your Home Gym

I hope this article gave you some useful information about the importance of the floor you build your home gym on.

At the end of the day, the most important thing about your home gym is that you actually use it. Likely, if you place your home gym directly on carpet then you will not be getting the most bang for your buck. However, you certainly can build your home gym on carpet floors. Just be careful as it can be slippery and can trap bacteria.

Once you are ready to take the next step then I hope you visit us again as you ponder your gym flooring options.