Asha De­Fre­itas-Mose­ley

Ok sports en­thu­si­asts, have you ever been watch­ing a game, and no­ticed a colour­ful tape on any of the ath­letes? Usu­al­ly the tape is coloured a hot pink, bright blue, black or beige–a very unique and rather un­con­ven­tion­al colour for tape and a very in­ge­nious mar­ket­ing tool. This colour­ful tape is called ki­ne­sio tape. Ki­ne­sio tape was in­vent­ed by Dr Ken­zo Kase from Japan more than 25 years ago and over time has gained such recog­ni­tion that it is cur­rent­ly known through­out the world as "the most ad­vanced and rec­om­mend­ed ther­a­peu­tic tap­ing method for com­fort and sta­bil­i­ty" (www.ki­ne­sio­tap­ing.com). This tape, as sim­ple as it may seem, can help with mus­cle func­tion, im­prove cir­cu­la­tion via the lym­phat­ic sys­tem and joint repo­si­tion­ing.

The tech­nique for ap­pli­ca­tion is one based on the body's nat­ur­al heal­ing abil­i­ty. Un­like oth­er tap­ing tech­niques where­by the tape is ap­plied as an ex­ter­nal sta­bilis­er or im­mo­bilis­er, ki­ne­sio tape em­ploys the body's own bio-me­chan­ics to in­hib­it or stim­u­late mus­cles as they re­late to the in­jury, in or­der to re­turn to nor­mal func­tion.

The key is in the method of ap­pli­ca­tion i.e. how much ten­sion is put on the tape, the di­rec­tion it is ap­plied and where it is ap­plied.

I will ex­plain with an ex­am­ple from which you can draw a com­par­i­son. I am on­ly 5'4" but my sis­ter is 5'9" and as a lit­tle girl her mus­cles grew faster than her bones as nor­mal­ly hap­pens with tall chil­dren. Her pos­ture suf­fered as a re­sult of this. To help cor­rect this, our bal­let teacher would place a ruler against her back, which she wore for a por­tion of the class.

Even­tu­al­ly she would for­get the ruler was even there un­til she slouched and would then feel the ruler pull on her tu­nic and be re­mind­ed to stand cor­rect­ly again. Hav­ing the ruler against her back cued her mus­cles to fire in a way that helped her to stand straight with­out be­ing both­er­some. My sis­ter trained her mus­cles to be­have prop­er­ly while do­ing bal­let al­low­ing her to im­prove her tech­nique and avoid pos­si­ble in­juries due to mus­cle im­bal­ances, sco­l­io­sis and low­er back pain. In this ex­am­ple, the ruler is act­ing as the ki­ne­sio tape does. When the body is in­jured sev­er­al things hap­pen to pro­tect the in­jury site, all aimed to pre­vent fur­ther dam­age and pain. This is called "guard­ing" where­by mus­cle func­tion changes slight­ly to place greater em­pha­sis on self preser­va­tion.

Con­sid­er the fact that when you feel pain in an area, you re­al­ly do not want to move it, thus the mus­cles are ac­tu­al­ly very in­volved with such a re­sponse. Ki­ne­sio tape works with the body to cue the mus­cles to re­turn to nor­mal func­tion (once the pain has been re­duced). In oth­er words, the ki­ne­sio tape is re-ed­u­cat­ing the mus­cles. Tape ap­pli­ca­tions can be done to ac­ti­vate as well as in­hib­it mus­cle ac­tiv­i­ty de­pend­ing on the di­rec­tion the tape is ap­plied and how much ten­sion is put on the tape dur­ing ap­pli­ca­tion. In in­stances of swelling and con­tu­sions, the tape can be ap­plied to en­cour­age cir­cu­la­tion by em­ploy­ing a dif­fer­ent method of ap­pli­ca­tion. The tape ma­te­r­i­al is light, breath­able and flex­i­ble mak­ing it com­fort­able and func­tion­al. The ten­sion on the tape that is sensed by the re­cep­tors in the skin is what the body will re­spond to. It is al­so fair­ly wa­ter­proof which al­lows it to be worn for days at a time.

It is usu­al­ly rec­om­mend­ed that ath­letes keep the tape on for three days and re­move it on the fourth be­fore ap­ply­ing it again. The glue on the tape is not a sol­id paste along the back sur­face. It is ac­tu­al­ly pat­terned to re­sem­ble a fin­ger print mak­ing it eas­i­er to ig­nore. The brain, how­ev­er, still reg­is­ters its pres­ence due to the re­cep­tors in the skin but as some­thing fa­mil­iar rather than for­eign mak­ing it com­fort­able to wear rather than ir­ri­tat­ing. The body is tru­ly an amaz­ing ma­chine. It is more cost­ly than oth­er types of tape but it is al­so a more ver­sa­tile tape. If you doubt the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of this tape, Lance Arm­strong raved about the "mag­i­cal pow­ers" of the hot-pink tape in his 2003 book, "Every Sec­ond Counts."

At the Bei­jing Olympics the ki­ne­sio tape was high­ly fea­tured. You might re­call see­ing the fe­male beach vol­ley­ball ath­letes play­ing with it on their shoul­der. David Beck­ham has al­so ex­pressed his ap­proval of this ther­a­peu­tic tool and has been seen wear­ing it dur­ing com­pe­ti­tion. I have been a cer­ti­fied ki­ne­sio tap­ing prac­ti­tion­er (CK­TP) since 2008 and I firm­ly be­lieve in this method of ther­a­peu­tic tap­ing. It has proven it­self to me time and time again. I have seen doubt­ful ath­letes be­come be­liev­ers. True to the less in­va­sive ways of ori­en­tal ther­a­py, Dr Kase has dis­cov­ered a way to utilise the body's nat­ur­al heal­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty to over­come in­juries and there­in lays the key to its suc­cess.

Ed­i­tor's Note:

Asha De­Fre­itas-Mose­ley, ATC, MC, CK­TP.