How to Mount Mats to the Floor and Wall

The renos of my new dojo location are coming along strong. The other day we finished mounting our mats to the floor so they won't shift. We also mounted some to the walls for safety and for doing self-defense when backed into corners. I'll describe how we did it.

First, we measured out exactly where we wanted the mats laid out in the space. We then screwed some wood down around the outsides of the area to keep the mats in place. Lastly, we stained it with a dark stain so that the wood matched our dojo's decor.



Mounting the mats on the walls was a bit more effort. We used Scotch Outdoor Carpet Tape to do the initial mounting. To be honest, this would have been more than enough to keep the mats on the walls. One of my guys even did a full chin up off one of the mats and it still stayed up. Aestheically though, it needed a frame. To frame it, we mounted wood around the outside of the wall mounted mats, then nailed in a flatter peace of wood that overlapped the mat to keep it in place. The frames were then stained. Make sure you use painter's tape to protect the mats and walls. If you want to be even more careful, you're better off staining the wood before you mount it, but the timing didn't work out well for us to do this. You can see the details below:



And here is the final product (before we removed the painter's tape):