Free Sample
The Complete Handbook of Yoga Mat Bags & Straps
The practical reference for buyers, sellers, and makers of yoga mat carriers
by Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: Understanding Yoga Mat Bags & Straps
A yoga mat bag or strap is a piece of load-bearing equipment. It exists to get a rolled or folded mat from one place to another without damaging the mat, putting strain on your shoulder, or making you carry a filthy object against your clothes. That is the entire job. But within that simple job description there is an enormous range of construction quality, material behavior, and ergonomic design that separates a carrier that lasts three years from one that fails on the way to a first class.
To understand the category, you have to stop looking at the bag as a sack and start looking at it as a system with four parts: the fabric body, the closure mechanism, the carrying interface, and the load path. Every carrier you will ever evaluate, whether a six-dollar strap from a discount rack or a two-hundred-dollar premium tote, is a combination of those four elements. Once you learn to read a carrier by its parts, you can evaluate any product on the market without relying on brand claims or marketing adjectives.
The Four Structural Parts
The fabric body is the main enclosure. On a strap, there is effectively no body; the load path runs directly through the webbing. On a tube bag, the body is a cylindrical sleeve that wraps around the rolled mat. On a tote or backpack-style carrier, the body has additional panels, pockets, and compartments. The body is defined by its