Kinesiotape: How and Why?
From high school basketball forwards to NFL quarterbacks to Olympic sand volleyball players, you have most likely seen athletes with tape on their shoulders, knees, or backs. This tape is called ‘kinesiotape’. Home Team believes that everyone is an athlete – some are in training and some are not. With that being said, anyone can use and find relief with kinesiotape. There are many different brands of kinesiotape – one is Rock Tape® which is Home Team’s preferred kinesiotape. Through our experience, we’ve seen Rock Tape have more stretch and stronger adhesive.
What is Rock Tape?
Rock Tape is an elastic adhesive tape designed to facilitate the body’s natural healing process while providing support and stability to muscles and joints without restricting the body’s range of motion. It also can aid in the decrease of swelling and bruising, too. The strong, yet gentle adhesive is water resistant for swimmers and athletes that sweat more and able to stay on the skin for 3-5 days.
How can Rock Tape support and stabilize?
Rock Tape also stimulates the nerve endings in the skin. With stimulation of the nerve endings, the brain becomes more aware of that area and how that area is moving. Awareness of how much a joint is or isn’t bent is called proprioception. Proprioception can be thought of as the brain’s perception of a specific joint or muscle. When the tape is on, it acts like the physical therapist’s hand guiding, cueing and stabilizing the movements and posture long after the client has left the clinic. This can be very beneficial for runners with knee pain. The tape helps provide stability to the kneecap as it moves with the knee during the running motion. Home Team will often use it for women during pregnancy; the tape acting as a sling to support some of the weight of the growing baby ultimately helping support Mom’s lower back.
How does Rock Tape help with bruising and swelling?
To fully understand the benefits of Rock Tape with bruising, swelling and inflammation, we must first understand how swelling and bruising work. Swelling or inflammation, also known as edema, is an accumulation of substances in an area of tissue. With an injury, those substances are healing substances that are trying to repair any damage that occurred. With long-term swelling, the substances are typically waste products that the body is unable to get rid of fast enough. In both cases with more substances, the body adds fluid to thin out the substances. Swelling will typically settle to where there is the most space in a joint, so depending on the location, gravity can start to pull it further down into the leg or arm. This is where Rock Tape comes in to play. The elasticity in the Rock Tape causes the tape to recoil which creates a lift and decompression of the inflamed, swollen, or bruised tissues. The decompression creates space between the skin and layers of tissues underneath. Swelling and bruising move where there is the most space, so Rock Tape will decrease the time to get rid of the swelling and any bruising. Typically, the bruising will be almost completely cleared in 1-2 days. The decompression also allows the multiple layers of tissue and muscles to move past each other easier, which makes movements more fluid and pain free. The swelling starts to move into this newly created space over a larger area of the body.
When Home Team uses Rock Tape?
Home Team uses Rock Tape to quickly decrease swelling or bruising to restore range of motion and decompress the tissues. The other reason we use Rock Tape is to quickly start to correct posture and/or support muscles that have been overworking due to compensations. Get hit by a baseball or softball that caused a big bruise? Sprain an ankle during a run or game? Have some knee pain during running? Muscle pain during running? Headaches at work? Home Team can use Rock Tape to quickly change your pain or bruising to help you get back to what you want to be doing! Book an appointment or stop in to see us at SureFire Fitness.