Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, Arizona, sought a high-performance flooring solution during the remodel of its 234,000-square-foot student fitness center. Ecore Athletic flooring played a feature role in helping transform the fitness center into a space that fosters health, wellness, engagement and community for students and staff.
“We were unhappy with the previous flooring that was installed in our weight rooms, which consist of dumbbells, free weights and lifting platforms,” says Dustin Soderman, associate director for facilities and operations at Arizona State University. “The flooring was too slick with no traction, and our weight machines would move all over the place. Also, the product didn't dampen the noise very well, either.”
Seeking a more advanced flooring solution, Soderman and his team researched optimal athletic flooring surfaces and contacted Advanced Exercise, a leading fitness equipment and facility design resource provider.
“We wanted a flooring product with a long life span that was easy to maintain, offered strong traction and had the ability to take a decent amount of punishment from weights dropping on it,” said Soderman.
The Advanced Exercise team recommended the installation of Ecore flooring for the ASU fitness center. Ecore offers a wide range of campus recreation flooring solutions, each engineered to offer safety, ergonomic and acoustic benefits. Ecore flooring is engineered to support joints, reduce impact and return positive energy back to the body so people can do the activities they love longer. It’s extremely durable and quiet underfoot, too, making it ideal for high-traffic, multi-use campus buildings.
Working with Soderman, Advanced Exercise specified two products from the Performance collection of Ecore products: Performance Rally and Performance Beast Plus. Tailored for heavy conditioning, Performance Rally is a 14.5mm Vulcanized Composition Rubber (VCR) product. Using patented itsTRU technology, a 2.5mm VCR wear layer is fusion bonded to a 12mm shock-absorbing VCR base layer to achieve a dynamic force reduction of 35.4 percent. This dual durometer system is engineered to absorb the impact force related to aggressive functional training, providing an ergonomically advanced surface that works in concert with the body.
Performance Beast Plus is the ideal floor for power, strength and functional training applications. This 14.5mm performance floor features a 2.5mm VCR surface fusion bonded to a 12mm VCR base layer using itsTRU technology. The result is a floor designed to withstand extreme weight impacts while minimizing bar bounce. Using Performance Beast Plus with Performance Rally creates the ideal fitness floor solution without transitions.
Ecore’s patented itsTRU technology is a manufacturing process that starts with VCR rubber that is diverted from landfills and incineration and upcycled using a pressurized process that fusion bonds the VCR to virtually any flooring surface. This innovative technology develops and captures energy, so flooring surfaces can absorb force while returning usable energy back to the people using the surface.
With the new Ecore Athletic flooring in place, Soderman reflected on the value it has added to the facility.
“The resiliency of the Ecore flooring is outstanding, and it's also really great with noise abatement and acoustics as well,” said Soderman. “The fitness center is such a large area that it's important to reduce noise wherever possible.”
Soderman also is a fan of the customization options that Ecore offers.
“We liked that we could customize the flooring to include our school logo and colors in the design. Ecore flooring offers customizable options, like logos, colors, or even inlaid turf graphics, so we turned our student recreation flooring into a space that really showcases our school spirit.”
Most importantly, ASU students and staff are big fans of the flooring as well.
“Everyone truly loves the floor and we have not heard one negative word about it,” Soderman added.
