If you exercise at home, or even at a gym or fitness center, a fitness mat can be a very helpful, yet very simple and affordable, investment for your workout routine. You might think that these mats are only for yoga, and that they don’t serve much real purpose other than to make the user feel trendy. While some people may only buy them for this reason, the truth is that fitness mats serve a wide range of purposes that might not be immediately obvious if you haven’t had the opportunity to use one.

Fitness mats, of course, can be used for yoga, and in fact they are very useful to yoga students for a number of reasons. First of all, their some what sticky texture allows both hands and feet to apply sideways pressure without sliding. This is particularly helpful in yoga poses that move the center of gravity out over the limbs, or in which the legs and arms are spread. On a regular floor or carpet, you would fall, but with a fitness mat you stay in the desired position.

The second advantage is the slight padding of the fitness mat. Some are thicker than others, but the light sponginess of even a thin fitness mat is just enough barrier to keep contact with the floor gentle.  This is especially helpful to avoid bruising and discomfort of the feet, and for poses where you lay down, it makes your head much more comfortable than it would be against the hard floor.

These two advantages extend well beyond yoga, making a fitness mat just as useful for Pilates, aerobics, stretching, and general exercises as well. For Pilates, you lay on the mat just as with yoga. For aerobics, the mat is very helpful for floor-based activities. And it can also be used for general exercises such as sit-ups, push ups, leg lifts, and others.

What’s more, an exercise mat helps you feel as though you have your own little space in which to exercise. This space is clean, which is nice on a questionable flooring surface. And it also gives you a place to focus, and makes it easy to align your body because you have a visual cue to keep you from positioning yourself incorrectly. No matter how you exercise, a fitness mat can help that exercise be more comfortable.