How to find the best yoga mat

Transcript

yoga mats may be the only thing you ever have to buy for your yoga practice so the thing to look out for is the material the thickness and the weight of your yoga mat but the question is what type of material what thickness what weight should our yoga mat have and also what happens if we have a sweaty practice [Music] so yoga mat grip is incredibly important when looking for a yoga mat interestingly one of the key questions i've been asked on this channel is what's the best yoga mat for group what is the best yoga mat if we have a sweaty practice so thank you for all these comments and let's see if we can try to address this and so group is incredibly important because it can actually make our practice just that much easier so for example if your yoga practice involves staying in downward facing dog for a few breaths then having a yoga mat with good grip is key i have seven yoga mats here and they're considered to be the best on the market and they all offer a very good grip but which one offers the best grip and which one would be the best for you so in order to answer this question i decided to do a little experiment i was writing an article on my blog discussing yoga mat grip and my inner scientists decided to rate to the grip with both dry and wet hands so let's have a look at what i did i laid out all my yoga mats and rated them with a b or c on how grippy the surface was both when my hands were dry and when they were wet [Music] okay so here's what we're going to do this is to help mimic sweat it's just water and then i've got my dry hands and then i'm going to spray my hands and then i'm going to test the grip with dry and with wet hands can you tell once upon a time i used to be a scientist we come into downward facing dog for me i think it's the best way to check the grip there's no slipping at all so let me spread my hands all right let's check my hands so i'm slipping so my hands are slipping here okay light form dry hands yeah i mean this is a silky smooth surface and i would give it a really good mark oh wow still a very very very good grip very good grip good grip even with wet hands dry hands okay with dry hands there is a bit of of sliding wet hands okay very good grip with wet hands dry hands a very good grip different surface from the other mats this isn't silky and smooth this is a bit of a rougher texture and yeah very good grip even with wet hands hold on actually my hands are slightly moving here dry hands exceptional grip very good grip dry hands yeah this is a super grippy yoga mat wet hands okay there's a bit of sliding here now stay till the end of the video where i do my water absorbing test on all of these yoga mats overall all these yoga mats have great grip and so if you'd like more information then check the description box below where i've linked my article yoga mat thickness is also important because this will determine how much cushioning our yoga mat will offer us during our practice now most yoga mats range from four to five millimeters some are thinner just 1.5 millimeter one typical example is the manduka travel mat which is so thin it can be folded and simply placed in your backpack however it's a bit too thin for an everyday practice now my favorite yoga mat thickness is actually six millimeters thick and this is considered to be quite a thick yoga mat both my manduka pro and my b mat are six millimeters i love this thickness because it makes for a comfortable yoga practice and also helps to protect your joints so if you're looking to protect your joints aim for six millimeters otherwise the 4.2 millimeter life form and the 5.5 little lemon and sugar mat will be perfect for most practitioners now the weight of a yoga mat isn't so much about during your practice it's more about the before and the after so if you plan on leaving your mat just in one place then you can aim for a heavier yoga mat now yoga mat ranges from about one kilo to just over three kilos my favorite manduka pro is my heaviest yoga mata 3.4 kilos and it lives in my yoga studio similarly the sugar mat is also heavy yoga mat at 3.3 kilos both are good options for a mat that you will keep in one place now in the medium range of yoga mats are the live format at 2.5 kilos the lululemon at 2.4 kilos and the b max strong at 2.3 kilos slightly lighter now is the jade harmony 1.9 kilos and then the lightest of them all is the manduka travel mat it weighs just 0.9 kilos making it the perfect yoga mat for travel and so let's talk about what i tend to use so i've got all of these yoga mats and i will say they're all really great they all have their advantages and their disadvantages as with everything in life the mats that i tend to lean towards are my manduka pro now this is a close cell yoga mat i tend to not really sweat a lot when i practice and so i can get away with this however when i've been in more humid countries like for example in india where just everyone sweats a lot there i tend to place a cotton rug on top so when i go to my school in india that's where we're also told to bring a cotton rug with us because most people tend to sweat quite a lot over there and so that that's my winning combo the buddha cup pro with a cotton rag on top alternatively if i know that i can't fit this yoga mat in my suitcase i'll go for either of the lighter ones and they're all actually really really great they're all linked in the description box below if you'd like to check them out and as promised let's do our water absorption experiment so let's see so manduka pro is a close cell yoga mat it stays on the surface let's see if i wipe it around okay nothing seems to be getting absorbed it can spread out quite a lot now let's just do a little grip check yeah with a bit of a noise so manduka pro is much loved in the shlanga yoga community so for those who sweat a lot what we tend to do is we would now put our cotton rug on top and if our hands are dry and the cotton rock is dry we slip however if our hands are wet and we have our cotton rug then we have perfect grit let's see if i move it around ah it starts to get absorbed into the surface so i pour the water on let's see if i move it around yeah this also gets absorbed into the surface okay similar to sugar matte and the life form it gets absorbed into the surface if i move it around yeah a bit slower than before it gets absorbed into the surface so this is a rubber mat so and it's an open cell mat so this is what we would expect another rubber yoga mat okay let's see it's another one a bit faster than the bema [Music] okay it kind of needs to be spread out quite a lot to get a bit absorbed and oh my god okay yeah all right so the grip is horrendous one little bonus thing is if having a clean yoga mat is a priority for you then it's very important to be able to have a yoga mat that you can clean regularly and quite easily now if you want one that's easier to clean then go for a closed cell yoga mat such as the manduka the life form the lululemon and the sugar mat a rubber yoga mat which will also absorb your sweat might be a bit harder to clean it will need more of a deep clean so such as the jade and the bee yoga mat so those will will require a bit of a deeper clean because they will absorb your sweat and just one bonus tip for everyone is especially if you sweat a lot please let your yoga mat air dry to avoid any horrible smells i would like to mention also other factors such as what type of yoga do you practice and are you looking for an eco-friendly yoga mat but we've run out of time so maybe we'll make another video on that so if you'd like more videos on this topic then give me a thumbs up otherwise you could always just let me know in the comments below now to this channel if you're new here and if you'd like more advice or general tips on yoga then check out this video series here and i'll see you in the next video bye