I sweat. A lot. I'm the guy that has to do full body wipe down with a towel after a practice. After talking to another guy after the Ashtanga class last Tuesday, I realized that I'm not the only guy with this problem. As a result, I thought I'd post up my solution to my sweaty mat problem.
Now, I think of it as a good thing (toxin flush), but it can be kinda dangerous when you're rocking a Wide-Legged Forward Bend (Prasarita Padottanasana) and your foot slips. As a result of pulling a groin one particularly sweaty practice on my old mat, I decided to go ahead and take the plunge and bought myself (and my lovely wife/co-blogger) a Lululemon The Mat. It was an AMAZING purchase. It absorbed a ton of sweat, stuck to the floor AND my feet, and was generally one of the best purchases I've had in any hobby of mine to date. This set up worked well for about 2 or 3 months, until it started getting pretty warm outside, then I started to really really sweat. I started to sweat puddles. I literally soaked THROUGH the mat. It got to the point where I would soak through the mat and make the floor slick underneath the mat where it no longer had any traction. See what I mean when I say I sweat a lot?
After some catalog surfing and contemplating, I decided to get a highly absorbent mat towel. Now, I've got no problems. Heavy sweat is when this bad boy really shines. For the first few minutes of practice, though, it becomes vital to moisten the towel, as these things only have traction when moist. Now, this solution is not perfect, but it is a decided improvement for the chronically moist. Namely, during a highly active practice, it will bunch a bit. It's not a horrible problem, and you can usually straighten it back out with a carefully guided foot. I'm still in the process of finding a solution to this issue, but at this point the pros definitely outweigh the cons.
As for The Mat, depending on the situation, you can either have the rubber side down or up. If I know that the floor is immaculately clean, I put the rubber side up. If it's not perfectly clean, but the rubber side down. Another way to think of it is that the rubber side is not as absorbent as the other aide, so if it's going to be an extremely sweaty class, it may be a good idea to keep the rubber side down and put the towel on top. I haven't noticed much of a difference between the two setups.
Completely unrelated side note, the video above is from Dr. Horrible's Sing A Long Blog's Commentary: The Musical. It's talking about a evil henchman's chronic problem of being sweaty (see the tie-in, yet?). If you haven't seen the movie, you have not yet truly lived. Please do yourself a huge favor and take less than 2 hours out of your busy life and watch what is possibly one of the funniest movies of all time. Once you're done with that, go ahead and listen to Commentary: The Musical on your drive into work one day. You won't regret it.
Anyone else have a success in dealing with this? Let us all (2 of us, at this point) know what you've discovered so we can stop slipping!
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