Everyone at our judo club has a little more spring to their step, literally. Over two weekends, some of our members built and assembled a sprung floor using used car tires, lumber, and plywood. The basic construction is that a frame was built around the whole area, tires were layed out in the frame, 2x4s were layed on top of the tires, plywood covered all the 2x4s, then the judo mats were arranged as usual on top of the plywood. The whole purpose of the floor is take a little more of the impact out of the falls. Before, the mats just lay on carpet that was sitting on concrete.
So how does it work? Pretty good. Walking across the mats feels no different than it used to, but taking a fall from even the roughest throws doesn't have that bone crunching impact that it used to. I'm feeling much better and less beat up today than I usually would at this point. As one of my slightly older judoka buddies put it, "This new floor is going to add 15 years to my judo career."
