Best Exercise Mat UK 2026: Thick Mats That Survive Real Workouts

Buy the wrong exercise mat and you will know within about ninety seconds of your first plank. Too thin, and your elbows and knees take a hammering on the floor beneath. Too soft, and the thing bunches up under you every time you shift position, which turns a set of mountain climbers into a wrestling match with your own kit. The mat market is also confusing on purpose: the same 183 x 61cm slab of foam gets sold as a yoga mat, a Pilates mat, a fitness mat and an exercise mat depending on which listing you land on.

What actually separates them is thickness and material. If most of your training happens on your back, your knees or your forearms, you want 10mm or more of NBR or TPE foam. If you spend your session standing up, a thick mat is a liability. Here are five mats on Amazon UK that get the balance right for different kinds of home training, with the honest weaknesses of each.

1. Amazon Basics Yoga Mat 10mm: Best Overall

Ignore the "yoga mat" label on the box. At 10mm thick and 183 x 61cm, this is a general-purpose exercise mat that happens to be sold under a yoga name, and for around £18 it does the job most people actually need. The foam is soft enough that kneeling lunges and glute bridges stop being unpleasant on a wooden floor, and it rolls up small enough to live behind a sofa rather than in a cupboard.

Owners consistently praise the cushioning and the price. The complaints are equally consistent, and they are the ones every foam mat attracts: it slides on laminate until you break it in, it smells of new foam for the first week or so, and the surface picks up dents from anything left sitting on it. Roll it up after each session and it stays flat for years. Leave a dumbbell on it overnight and you have a permanent divot.

For most people doing bodyweight circuits, core work and stretching at home, this is the mat to buy first. Spend the money you saved on resistance bands instead.

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2. Karma Fitness Large Exercise Mat: Best Extra Wide

Standard mats are 60cm wide, which is fine until you try a bear crawl, a Turkish get-up or anything that involves your arms travelling sideways. At 80cm, the Karma Fitness mat is a third wider, and that extra 20cm changes what you can train on it. It is also double-layered TPE rather than NBR foam, which means it holds its shape under repeated pressure instead of slowly compressing into a pancake.

The diamond texture on both faces grips better than any of the cheap foam mats here, so it is the one I would pick for anything involving jumping or fast direction changes. At around £40 it costs more than double the Amazon Basics mat, and the extra width means it does not roll as small, so storage is a genuine trade-off in a small flat. If you train in a shed or a spare room and leave your mat out, that hardly matters.

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3. ROMIX 15mm Foam Exercise Mat: Best Cushioning

Concrete garage floor? Tiled kitchen? This is the mat. At 15mm the ROMIX gives you half again the padding of a standard 10mm mat, and for anyone doing rehab work, long stretching sessions or a lot of supine core training, that difference is felt immediately in the tailbone and the shoulder blades. It measures 180 x 60cm and ships with a carry bag and strap, which is more than most mats at this price bother with.

The thickness cuts both ways. Standing on 15mm of memory foam feels unstable, so single-leg work, balance drills and anything explosive are worse on this mat than on a thinner one. It is also bulkier rolled up. Buy it if your floor is hard and your training is mostly horizontal; skip it if you do a lot of standing work. Pair it with a foam roller and you have a decent recovery corner for under £40 total.

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4. NORTHERN Tri-Fold Foam Mat: Best Folding Mat

Rolled mats have one irritating habit: they never lie completely flat, and the corners curl for the first several months. A tri-fold mat solves that by folding into three flat panels instead, so it drops open and stays open, and it slots down the side of a wardrobe rather than standing in a corner like a rolled carpet. For anyone training in a shared living room, that matters more than the spec sheet suggests.

The high-density foam is firmer than the NBR mats above, which suits press ups and planks better than it suits lying stretches. Watch the fold lines: on any tri-fold mat they are the weak point, and heavy repeated use eventually shows there first. Around £25 is fair for the convenience.

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5. KAYMAN Exercise Mat 6mm: Best Budget

Under a tenner, 183 x 60cm, 6mm of NBR foam with a ribbed non-slip surface. There is not much to say about the KAYMAN except that it does the basics and costs less than a takeaway. The 6mm thickness sits between a yoga mat and a proper exercise mat, so it grips better than the thick foam mats when you stand on it, while still taking the edge off floor work.

It will not cushion your spine on concrete, and at this price the foam is not going to last a decade of daily use. As a first mat, a second mat to leave at the office, or something to keep in the car boot, it earns its place. Anyone doing serious floor volume should go thicker.

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How to choose an exercise mat

Match thickness to your training, not to a number. The NHS recommends muscle-strengthening work covering all major muscle groups on at least two days a week, and for most people at home that means floor work: planks, bridges, dead bugs, press ups. If that describes your sessions, 10mm to 15mm is right. If you are mainly doing standing dumbbell work or balance training, thick foam actively works against you and 4mm to 6mm is the better call.

Size matters more than people expect. A 183cm mat suits anyone up to roughly 6ft; taller trainers end up with their head or heels off the end during lying work. Width is the bigger constraint though, and the jump from 60cm to 80cm opens up crawling patterns, wide-stance work and anything where your arms sweep out to the side.

NBR is soft and cheap; TPE is dense and lasts. NBR foam gives you the most cushioning per pound spent, and it is what almost every budget mat uses. It also dents, tears at the edges over time and compresses permanently under sustained pressure. TPE costs more, springs back, and survives being trodden on in trainers. Neither loves being stored in direct sunlight.

Think about the floor underneath. No mat fixes a bad surface. If you are dropping dumbbells or doing repeated jumping, proper gym flooring protects both your floor and your joints far better than adding foam thickness, and the British Heart Foundation's guidance on staying active is a good reminder that consistency beats kit. A mat on top of interlocking tiles is the setup most home gyms end up with.

Give a new mat a week. Fresh NBR foam smells, and it slides. Both problems fade. Unroll it and leave it out for a few days, wipe it down with soapy water, and it settles into something far more usable than it felt out of the packaging.

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4. How to do a plank properly
5. Home gym equipment reviews and guides