Indoor or Outdoor?

[JusticeZero]

Put your hand on it. Run your palm across the surface quickly while pressing into it lightly.

If your hand isn't actually INJURED after you do this - no lacerations or scrapes or places that feel like they've been bruised a bit or similar - then it's fine. I do handstands and breakfalls on that stuff all the time.

Asphalt concrete - typically used on parking lots, roadways, etc - is a mixture of crushed rock and bitumen, and is what I presume you are referring to.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Asphalt_base.jpg/300px-Asphalt_base.jpg

I haven't personally seen any asphalt concrete that I wouldn't happily train on; it simply isn't a harsh enough surface to be problematic under normal circumstances. If that's an issue, i'm sure you can find surfaces of portland cement such as you might see on most sidewalks. They run lots of that through parks.

[isshinryu5toforever]

http://www.oandkconcrete.com.au/assets/images/Class-3-Crushed-Bluestone-n.jpg

This is what a lot of parking lots look like where I'm from. Some with smaller rock, some with larger. Sometimes they have concrete mixed in, and kind of smoothed. You won't injure your hand running it across the surface, but you may break a few toes as they get caught doing certain techniques. I have trained on it, but I can't say it was the best of times. You can definitely train on it. I just don't know that many people that would love it haha.

I'm also thinking of how diverse a lot of classes are. The bankers in my classes might have a problem with that surface. The blue collar guys wouldn't think twice though.

[JusticeZero]

Sometimes they have concrete mixed in, and kind of smoothed. You won't injure your hand running it across the surface, but you may break a few toes as they get caught doing certain techniques. I have trained on it, but I can't say it was the best of times. You can definitely train on it. I just don't know that many people that would love it haha.

So, basically it's a lot like training on puzzle mats then, I take it.. It still shouldn't give you any issue if you're wearing any sort of shoes - and i'm a firm believer in training in street shoes.

Is this just a chipseal job then, where they throw down a thin layer of something sticky and then dump crushed rock on top of it, run a roller over it and then a broom and call it done? Most people classify that as being on the upper end of "a dirt road".. it's certainly not any sort of real paving, and is still prone to corrugating when you run traffic over it.

Tomorrow i'll stop on the chipseal on the way to class and see how bad it is, if they haven't paved it over already. (They tore a section of road up to redo it, and the first step was apparently to replace it with chipseal.)