From back gardens in Birmingham to gymnastics clubs in Glasgow, inflatable training mats have quietly become one of the most talked-about pieces of kit in British sport. Here’s the story behind the surge — and the small UK business making it happen.
Ask any gymnastics coach in Britain what piece of equipment has made the biggest difference to their sessions over the last few years, and a lot of them will give you the same answer. Not a new beam. Not updated vault padding. An inflatable mat. Specifically, the kind you pump up in minutes, set down wherever you’ve got space, and pack away just as fast.
It sounds almost too simple. But that simplicity is the whole point.
The mats in question are built from drop-stitch fabric — the same tightly woven material you’ll find in inflatable paddleboards and whitewater rescue equipment. Pump one up to the right pressure and you get a surface that’s firm underfoot, responsive off the bounce, and genuinely forgiving when someone lands badly. Coaches who’ve worked with traditional foam rolls for twenty years tend to notice the difference almost immediately. The feedback on jumps is cleaner, the confidence of younger athletes improves faster, and the number of minor training injuries drops noticeably.
A Business Built Around One Simple Idea
That’s the market that AirTumble Track set out to serve. The company was built on a fairly direct premise: source the best inflatable gymnastics equipment available, price it fairly, and actually be helpful to customers trying to figure out what they need. No confusing upsells. No cutting corners on materials to keep the numbers looking good. Just solid kit, shipped quickly, with someone knowledgeable at the end of the phone if you’ve got questions.
It’s a fairly old-fashioned approach to retail, honestly. But it seems to be working.
The range covers everything from short 3-metre home mats — popular with parents of kids who are taking their first gymnastics classes — all the way up to 10-metre professional tracks used by club coaches for tumble runs and conditioning drills. Thickness options vary too, because what a five-year-old needs for safe cartwheel practice is quite different from what a senior-level athlete needs when working on back tucks. Getting that right matters, and it’s the kind of detail that tends to separate a knowledgeable specialist from a generic sports retailer.
Why Gymnasts Are Ditching the Old Foam Rolls
The main thing people ask about when they’re considering an Air track for the first time is durability. It’s an understandable concern — you’re talking about an inflatable product that’s going to have people bouncing on it, rolling across it, and dragging it in and out of storage regularly. The honest answer is that the lifespan depends largely on how it’s used and stored, same as any training equipment. Mats that are kept out of direct UV and stored dry tend to last for years without any issues. The seam construction on quality mats is reinforced specifically to handle repeated flex stress, and reputable suppliers carry repair kits for the rare occasions when a small puncture does occur.
There’s also the practical question of space. Most gymnastics families don’t have a dedicated training room. The appeal of an inflatable mat is exactly that it doesn’t live permanently in your living room — you get it out, you use it, you deflate it and roll it up. For home use, that flexibility is almost as valuable as the training surface itself.
Who’s Actually Buying These Mats?
The customer base turns out to be broader than you might expect. Yes, there are the gymnastics families — parents buying a gymnastics mat so their daughter can practise at home between classes. But there are also martial arts instructors who use them for breakfall training, cheerleading squads who need portable tumbling surfaces for away competitions, and fitness coaches who’ve discovered that the bouncy, forgiving surface is genuinely useful for plyometric conditioning work.
Parkour practitioners have become surprisingly loyal customers too. The ability to set up a safe landing zone anywhere — indoors, in a car park, in a park — is genuinely useful when you’re teaching progression moves to beginners. A proper gymnastics spring floor isn’t something most parkour coaches can carry in the back of a van. One of these mats is.
Schools and leisure centres have been another unexpected growth area. Budget pressures in PE departments mean that permanently installed gymnastics equipment is increasingly hard to justify. A set of inflatable mats that can be stored flat, inflated for a lesson, and packed away again ticks a lot of boxes for facilities managers trying to make limited space work harder.
The Safety Conversation Nobody Wants to Skip
It’s worth being direct about this, because it’s the question parents ask most often: are inflatable mats actually safe for children to train on?
The short answer is yes — provided you’re buying from a supplier who takes the specifications seriously. The key variables are thickness (thicker mats absorb more impact energy), surface texture (non-slip finishes matter a lot for lateral movements), and inflation pressure (which should match the weight and activity level of the user). Cheaper mats from unknown suppliers tend to cut corners on one or more of these. Quality products from established retailers don’t.
What the research and practical experience of coaches consistently shows is that children learning tumbling and acrobatic skills on well-designed inflatable surfaces tend to develop better technique faster than those training exclusively on foam. The material rewards proper technique and penalises sloppy landings without the hard consequences of a gymnasium floor. That feedback loop is genuinely valuable in the early stages of skill development.
What Comes Next
For AirTumble, the focus right now is on expanding the range in a way that’s actually driven by customer feedback rather than just adding SKUs for the sake of it. New thickness configurations are in development. There’s also growing demand for bespoke branding — gymnastics clubs who want their logo on training equipment, schools who want kit that doesn’t wander off between departments. That side of the business is still relatively small but growing steadily.
The longer-term ambition is to become the first call for any gymnastics coach or sports educator in the UK who needs inflatable training kit that’s genuinely going to last. The market for this kind of equipment has expanded significantly over the last five years. It’s not showing any sign of stopping, and the quality gap between budget products and professional-grade kit is wide enough that there’s real value in helping people navigate it properly.
Whether you’re a parent buying a first Airtrack for your daughter’s birthday, a club coach sourcing equipment for twenty athletes, or a school PE department trying to make a budget stretch — the conversation usually starts the same way: with someone who actually knows the product, asking what you actually need.
That’s still the thing that matters most.
About AirTumble
AirTumble sells inflatable gymnastics and athletic training mats to individuals, clubs, schools, and professional coaching teams across the UK. Free delivery on all mainland orders. Full product range at https://airtumble.co.uk/.
Press enquiries:
AirTumble Press Office | https://airtumble.co.uk/contact-us/
