Buyer beware: 5 questions to ask before you buy an inflatable grappling mat

Buying a mat online is a leap of faith. You cannot roll on it first. You cannot press a hand into it and feel whether it is going to hold you.

So here are the five questions people actually ask us before they buy, and straight answers to all five. Buyer beware is good advice! Ask these of any inflatable grappling mat, not just ours.

Is it firm enough for grappling?

This is the first thing everybody asks, and it is the right thing to ask first.

A FlowMat runs at 10 PSI. That number is the whole answer. At 10 PSI the surface is firm under a post, not bouncy, and not soft enough to roll an ankle in.

Underinflate it and the surface moves under you, and that is true of every inflatable mat on the market. Get it to pressure and it stops being a question. The top is anti-slip PVC, so your feet hold where you put them.

Is it just a big air mattress?

No. And the difference is the picture above.

An air mattress is two sheets of material with air between them. Put weight in the middle and it balloons at the edges, because nothing is holding the two surfaces to each other.

A FlowMat is drop stitch. Thousands of internal threads run between the top and the bottom and pull them flat against each other. That is why it holds a shape instead of a bulge, and it is the entire reason a drop stitch mat can be trained on when an air mattress cannot.

The seams are heat welded as well. The material is fused to itself rather than glued between two layers.

Will it hold up to hard training?

Look at the edge in that photo. That is where an inflatable mat fails, if it is going to fail.

The webbing handles run into the rail rather than being stuck on the surface. The seam is welded. The top is textured, and that texture is what gives you grip and what takes the abrasion.

Every mat is built by hand, to order, and it comes with a 12-month warranty. If something goes wrong with the mat in the first year, that is ours to fix.

Is setup a pain? Can I use it at home?

Under three minutes, with the pump that is already in the box.

Unroll it, take the valve cap off, push the nozzle on, switch the pump on and walk away. Come back, check it is firm, screw the cap back on. That is the whole job.

The same pump deflates it, and it packs back into the duffle that comes with it. A hundred square feet of training floor in your garage, and the garage is a garage again afterwards! That is the point of the thing.

The pump, the duffle and a repair kit are all included, and shipping to the lower 48 is free. We wrote the whole setup out step by step if you want to see exactly what you are in for.

• The full setup guide, start to finish

What if I do not like it?

Then send it back. Here is exactly how that works.

Every FlowMat comes with a 99-day money-back guarantee. Train on it, roll on it, put your whole team on it. If it is not what you wanted, email us and we will arrange the return and your refund, less a $79 restocking fee per mat. You do not have to tell us why.

The 99 days run from the day your mat is delivered, not the day you ordered it. Every mat is hand built to order and takes 4 to 5 weeks to make, so counting from the order date would spend a third of your trial waiting for it to turn up.

That is 99 days of actually training on it, which is the point. We would much rather you found out on your own floor than took our word for it, and that is the reason the guarantee is that long.

• The returns policy in full

The short version

That is the honest version of all five. If there is a sixth question we have not answered here, ask us, because we would rather answer it now than have you guess. Thanks for reading!