If your tape wrinkles during application, it’s going to create a pressure point that gets progressively worse throughout wearing; Eventually it becomes painful and a compensatory motor pattern emerges. The same can be said for taping just about any body part, and there are a ton of ways you can tape someone that will decrease their performance.

But can taping actually increase performance?

RELATED: Effects of Ankle Taping on Performance and Safety

Types of Taping and Types of Outcome

Probably not with the (usually) white tape that you apply after pre-wrap – the stuff you’ll find in the medkit of your kindly high-school athletic trainer. I use this stuff all the time.

But that’s not the only kind of tape I have in my kit. There’s also a type of self-adherent tape, which only sticks to itself and not to skin or hair (it’s normally used on horses, rugby players, and other animals). That’s good for taping a head (normally to cover a bleeding wound) or any area that’s inappropriate for pre-wrap plus tape. These kinds of tape don’t improve performance above baseline (although there’s a lot to be said for limiting the amount of blood you allow to escape from your head).

With taping, we’re talking about a desired outcome that falls into three categories:

1. Pain Relief – Something hurts and you tape the area to make it hurt less
2. Use – A part of you is injured and you plan on using it anyway
3. Performance – Nothing hurts and you’re trying to get an ergogenic effect

Scenario number one is usually covered with number two, in varying percentages. This is why people have used athletic tape for the past fifty years. Now there’s kinesiology tape – this is the stuff that everyone at the 2014 CrossFit Games was wearing. By everyone, I mean mostly the people not competing.

“The rigidity has a stiffening effect of your own muscle around the ankle, and that, kids, is how tape actually works.”

I got stuck on a line behind a couple of obvious firebreathers discussing the merits of the tape, and although their discussion approached poetry-slam levels of pretentiousness, it made me want to investigate further. Does this stuff actually work?

How Taping Actually Works

When I tape an ankle injury with the white stuff, I know exactly how it’s working. When you first tape an ankle, the restrictive nature of the tape will limit movement and keep the injury from extending past its injured range of motion. The tape does this primarily through proprioceptive awareness. Or rather, your body does this because it is made aware of its limited mobility through feeling the tape.

As for the tape itself, by the end of a typical football game (or whatever), it’s sustained so many micro-tears that it’s not providing any stability on its own – but because your nervous system senses its presence, it still has an effect (though obviously less than when it was first applied). The rigidity has a stiffening effect of your own muscle around the ankle, and that, kids, is how tape actually works (c’mon, you didn’t think that a piece of cloth tape would be strong enough to hold your joint in place, right?).

RELATED: The Science Behind Why “I Think I Can” Actually Works

That’s what tape does – alters your muscle recruitment pattern through increased proprioception and CNS awareness to provide more stability to the injured area. So if we can alter the way our muscles fire with regular white tape, it’s not a huge leap to think we can figure out a way to get some performance gains out of the stuff.

Look at the Science Behind the Practice

Still, we’ve seen tons of top-flight athletes using Kinesiology Tape, and that’s more than enough evidence for it to start trending among weekend warriors. But just because an Olympic gold medalist uses something, doesn’t mean it actually works. Since I used up the Breathe Right analogy in my last article, I’m going to use this one:

See the dude pictured above? He’s running a marathon in the 1908 Olympics, and he crossed the finish line first. The thing he’s holding in his right hand is a wedge of cork, which runners believed would allow you to flex your hand muscles while you ran, without straining them, and somehow this would make you faster and able to concentrate harder.

He had also just drunk a bit of strychnine (yes, the poison). Again, thinking it would help him run faster. Again, this is why I don’t trust athletes 100% when it comes to the things they do and believe will help them perform better. So I generally look to the science behind the practice.

What the Studies Say About Taping for Performance

What I’d really like to tell you at this point, is that I found hundreds of studies where people strapped on a bunch of kinesiology tape and started crushing their PRs and that it was all rigorously documented by scientists, in studies not funded by the companies who manufacture the tape. That kind of evidence doesn’t exist.

“The findings would seem to indicate that the positive effects some claim to get from using kinesiology tape may be a placebo effect.”

Very little has been written on the topic of taping for increased performance. Data is so scarce that I’d be willing to accept a less than robust body of work. I’d be happy with one great piece and another couple good works (think Chuck Palahniuk), or one great piece and maybe one other decent piece (think Cormac McCarthy). I’d even be happy with a single widely regarded work (J.D. Salinger, God, etc.).

But here’s what I got instead:

• …after wearing [kinesiology tape] for an extended amount of time, proprioceptive deficits were improved¹
• …[kinesiology tape] decreases the rate of medial loading in MTSS [medial tibial stress syndrome] patients…²
• Facilitatory taping… enhanced the activity of the underlying muscle… inhibitory taping application did not produce significant results³
• …kinesiology tape may have limited potential to reduce pain in individuals with musculoskeletal injury; however, depending on the conditions, the reduction in pain may not be clinically meaningful⁴
• … application of kinesiology tape decreases fatigue-induced joint repositioning error⁵
• …tactile stimulation in the form of Kinesiology tape inhibits the decline of both strength and electromyography⁶
• …tape may improve static restraint in the ankle joint without altering peak motion or dynamic postural control⁷
• …for a majority there were no statistically significant differences found in both the study group and control group⁸
• …greater mean muscle activity was found when ankles were taped with nonelastic tape compared to no tape…[kinesiology] Tape had no significant effect on mean or maximum muscle activity…⁹

I’m sort of convinced that kinesiology tape can be useful for performance, because there were some encouraging results in a few studies, but I doubt most people are using it correctly. As usual, there’s a fine line between being a trend jumper and being on the cutting edge. Sure, you were eating paleo ten years ago and got your first pair of minimalist running shoes in 2006, but there’s a Soloflex, a Thighmaster, and a Shakeweight in your basement.

Perhaps the best study I reviewed was one where thirty healthy participants performed isokinetic testing under three taping conditions: true facilitative kinesiology tape, sham tape, and no tape. Participants were blindfolded for the tests, so they didn’t know which tape was being applied. There were no differences in their peak torque, total work, or time to peak torque in any of the three taping conditions. The findings would seem to indicate that the positive effects some claim to get from using kinesiology tape may be a placebo effect.

RELATED: Kinesio Taping: Does it Work?

Summary

Is that the worst thing in the world? If your bench press goes up by twenty pounds, do you care if it was a placebo gain? I don’t. Twenty pounds is twenty pounds. But here, the science isn’t telling us we’ll put twenty pounds on our bench press. It’s telling us that there are potential structural and neurological effects to be had from the tape, but more research is clearly needed.

I have no problem with athletes using whatever they think is going to help their performance, so if you like this stuff, by all means, use it. It’s not going to hurt your performance. I’m just not totally convinced that it’s going to help you, either.

References:

1. Simon J. et al. “The effect of kinesio tape on force sense in people with functional ankle instability.” Clin J Sport Med. 2014 Jul;24(4):289-94. doi: 10.1097/JSM.0000000000000030.

2. Griebert MC. et al. “Lower-leg Kinesio tape reduces rate of loading in participants with medial tibial stress syndrome.” Phys Ther Sport. 2014 Jan 29. pii: S1466-853X(14)00002-9. doi: 10.1016/j.ptsp.2014.01.001. [Epub ahead of print]

3. Gusella, A. et al. “Kinesiologic taping and muscular activity: a myofascial hypothesis and a randomised, blinded trial on healthy individuals.”  J Bodyw Mov Ther. 2014 Jul;18(3):405-11. doi: 10.1016/j.jbmt.2013.11.007. Epub 2013 Nov 8. 

4. Montalvo, AM., et al. “Effect of kinesiology taping on pain in individuals with musculoskeletal injuries: systematic review and meta-analysis.”Phys Sportsmed. 2014 May;42(2):48-57. doi: 10.3810/psm.2014.05.2057.

5. Konishi Y. “Tactile stimulation with kinesiology tape alleviates muscle weakness attributable to attenuation of Ia afferents.” Sci Med Sport. 2013 Jan;16(1):45-8. doi: 10.1016/j.jsams.2012.04.007. Epub 2012 Jun 6. 

6. Fayson SD., et al. “The effects of ankle Kinesio taping on ankle stiffness and dynamic balance.” Res Sports Med. 2013;21(3):204-16. doi: 10.1080/15438627.2013.792083.13. 

7. Briem, K. “Effects of Kinesio Tape Compared With Nonelastic Sports Tape and the Untaped Ankle During a Sudden Inversion Perturbation in Male Athletes.” Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy. Volume 41, Issue 5.

8. Ptak A., et al. “The influence of short-term kinesiology taping on force-velocity parameters of the rectus abdominis muscle.” J Back Musculoskelet Rehabil. 2013;26(3):291-7. doi: 10.3233/BMR-130382. 

9. Han, JT., et al. “Effects of kinesiology taping on repositioning error of the knee joint after quadriceps muscle fatigue.” Phys Ther Sci. 2014 Jun;26(6):921-3. doi: 10.1589/jpts.26.921.

10. Poona, K.Y., et al.”Kinesiology tape does not facilitate muscle performance: A deceptive controlled trial.” Manual Therapy. DOI: 10.1016/j.math.2014.07.013. Epub 2014 Jun 19

Photos 1 & 3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Kinesio Taping for Performance: How It Really Works appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Although there are a few reasons people tape their ankles, the most common is to restrict the range of motion. The idea is that if we limit the extremes of the ankle’s range of motion we can help prevent ankle injuries. Indeed, lateral ankle sprains account for most leg injuries. Some athletes and coaches have questioned how ankle wrapping affects an athlete’s ability to move. A study published this month in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning addressed this topic.

Let’s get to the bottom of the researchers’ conclusions, because there’s a fair bit to discuss here and not everything is as it seems. The researchers examined the role of taping in various joints, not just the ankle itself. They found that the ankle tape did not affect the motion of the ankle or knee on a treadmill running test, but it did reduce hyperextension of the hip. Since hip flexor tightness is an extremely common problem, this should be duly noted by all athletes and coaches who favor tape. There was no change in economy either, meaning it didn’t take more energy to overcome the stiffness of the tape while running.

Now, let’s get deeper into the results. There was a lot of individual variation in both of the above points. Some of the athletes did indeed experience increased energy demands and various alterations to their joint motions, although reduced hip mobility seemed to be pretty much universal.

I think for anyone involved in athletics, it’s important that we go beyond this particular study’s results. As mentioned earlier, lateral ankle sprains are the most common leg injury, but no one is getting a lateral ankle sprain on a treadmill, which is what the researchers used in their tests. Lateral ankle sprains come from more dynamic activities we find in the field, on the court, or on the mat, where the answer isn’t so clear-cut.

For an ankle wrap to be effective, it must limit the ankle’s range of motion. However, when dynamic demands are high, that motion needs to come from somewhere, and it may move up the chain. The researchers noted that some athletes feel more confident with their ankles taped, knowing they won’t roll an ankle, but the force required for dynamic movement might just move on up to the knee. It’s a bit of rhetoric, but I can comfortably say I’d rather sprain an ankle and be out for a game than pop a knee ligament if I had to choose between the two.

It’s clear that in fairly static activities, ankle wrapping doesn’t have much negative effect, except on hip mobility. But this isn’t really where we need ankle protection anyway. As the researchers note, more information is needed on the effects of ankle wrapping in a more dynamic setting. In the meantime, I’m going to keep my ankle strong through exercise and leave it unwrapped.

References:

1. Sally Paulson, et. al., “Prophylactic ankle taping: Influence on treadmill running kinematics and running economy Running,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e3182a1fe6f.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Effects of Ankle Taping on Performance and Safety appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

If you are a CrossFitter or Olympic weightlifter, then you know athletic tape can be your best friend or your biggest nightmare. As athletes we use sports tape in a variety of ways, typically for support and comfort, and also to prevent tearing. But how many times have you taped properly (or so you thought) and then during the workout the tape came off and became a bigger nuisance than if it wasn’t there to begin with? Now your workout worries have gone from ‘Am I going to rip?’ to ‘How can I fix this thing?’ At the end of the day the goal of the workout should really be focusing on performing the task prescribed.

When I started CrossFit there was no workout I wouldn’t do with athletic tape. Not only did I use it for everything, but it seemed like I had to use copious amounts of tape to make it stay in place, and only remedially. But soon the headache (and cost) became bigger than the benefits and I stopped using tape with the exception of taping my thumb for hook grip. While not as bad as other applications, I still found myself constantly fixing and re-taping my thumb between lifts.

Fast forward about a year and I was at the Outlaw Open competition in Palm Springs when I was given a sample of Goat Tape, which claimed to be the stickiest tape in the world. I took the sample, put it in my bag and forgot about it. In my mind, it was just another brand of athletic tape. Big deal! When it came time for the Olympic lifting total part of the competition, I rummaged through my bag to grab my usual roll of sports tape, but it was nowhere to be found. The light bulb went off in my head and I remembered the sample I had been given earlier. I thought, “It can’t be that bad, I will use that.”

Little did I know my life was about to change. I taped my thumbs and for the first time ever I went through all six lifts of the lifting competition without having to re-tape. Not only that, but my thumbs moved well and were protected. It almost felt like a second skin. I’m not sure if it’s the stickiest tape in the world, but it is definitely the stickiest tape I have ever used.

Unfortunately the sticky factor works against you when it’s time to remove the tape. It feels like your skin and nails are being pulled – and they are, in fact. Nothing dangerous, but it was definitely a strange experience the first few times I used it. In some cases a pair of scissors may come in handy to aid the removal of the tape. The remaining glue residue on the skin and nails can also be a little bit of a pain, but in my opinion the benefits majorly outweigh it.

The benefit isn’t limited to weightlifting and the hook grip thumb, either. Let’s talk about protecting hands from rips and tears during pull ups, toes to bar, or any other exercise that uses the bar. In the past when I used conventional sports tape, after a few repetitions I was already getting upset at how the tape kept moving. I would waste time fixing it and ultimately I would remove the whole thing mid-workout and go without. That’s not the case with Goat Tape. Basically once it’s on, it is on until you want it off (and you may need someone to help you take it off too!). It is my hand saver.

So what makes Goat Tape so different? The tape is made from soft non-stretch cotton and features high tensile strength, in addition to signature Malaysian-grade adhesive. It is really easy to use and rips lengthwise and width-wise, making application straightforward and hassle-free.

There are also a couple of cool features about the company that makes Goat Tape. A portion of each purchase is donated to the organization Mercy Corps. You can also customize the tape with a gym logo or motto. All in all, Goat Tape is a far superior athletic tape on the market, with successful multiple uses, and from a company that gives back to the community. My bag will never go without a few rolls of this tape!

Goat Tape standard roll (1.5″ wide x 10 yards long) is available for $4.99 and a sample roll (1.5″ wide X 2 yards long) is available for $0.99 at WODSuperstore.com.

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