Hey Team,
Since these garage builds are never actually “done”, I wanted to share a few lessons learned and the latest refinement.
I completed the build last summer, and I’ve been hitting every evening, for the most part. My initial hitting mat was a 1” thick 6×9 Synlawn golf turf. I’m quite happy with it. I wanted to try it to see if it was robust enough to handle repetitive hits and also not impact my joints.
Overall, it’s very solid and shows no wear. I have started to feel some minor elbow, wrist and forearm aching. I believe this is mostly related to improving my impact with respect to compression.
Rather than cause any significant damage, I decided to invest in a SigPro insert and cut it into my Synlawn mat. In order to raise the stance mat up to the ~2.5” elevation of the SigPro, I bought 1” and 1/2” foam gym mats off marketplace. I used carpet tape between each layer to hold it, and then I cut out the insert. The process was straightforward – the final fitment (I wanted snug) was a pretty tedious trimming exercise. I’ve got it in place now, and I’m quite happy with it. The surface is flush with the stance mat, and the forgiveness of the SigPro is hopefully going to help minimize joint damage.
I feel this is a nice economical option to have a firm, quality stance mat combined with the soft, safe SigPro.
by yyz_fpv
2 Comments
Nice job, what did you use to cut?
Looks good. I did the same using a $99 Amazon go sports mat, used 3/4 foam and then plywood to make it flush. Took about 30 minutes all in with the carpet tape bring the slowest part. I found a multi tool with the half moon style edge worked best, made quick work and arrow straight cuts.
I would heavily caution folks on the sig pro softy strip being “safe” though. It is very swing dependent for injury/safety related stuff. It shines with shallow AoA players, but is actually quite awful for players who are at tour average (or steeper) AoAs due to how grabby the dense/thick turf is.