Sports Taping in Physiotherapy

There are two broad categories of taping commonly used in physiotherapy. Rigid sports taping is a firmer, less elastic tape typically used to restrict unwanted movement at a joint, such as limiting excessive ankle inversion following a sprain. Kinesiology taping, by contrast, is a more elastic tape thought to work primarily through its effect on the skin and underlying sensory receptors, potentially assisting with proprioception, muscle activation, and mild swelling management, all while allowing a much greater range of movement.

Used well, taping can provide mechanical support to a joint or muscle during a specific activity, reducing excessive or unwanted movement while a structure is still recovering. It can offer a genuine sense of confidence and support to someone returning to sport or activity following an injury, which shouldn't be underestimated as a factor in successful rehabilitation. It can provide sensory feedback that assists with muscle activation or postural awareness in certain presentations. And in the acute stages of an injury, certain techniques can assist with managing swelling and reducing muscle spasm.

Rigid tape is best used for structures that need significant support, think about ankles, knees and sometimes shoulders. Someone who has recently suffered an ankle sprain and is returning to sport 6 weeks post injury will still have a reduction in passive stability as the ligament is still remodelling. What the rigid tape provides is an increase in structural and passive stability to significantly reduce the risk of re-injury.

For knees a common use would be to support an MCL or an ACL injury in the early stages of either returning to training or returning to gameplay. The stiffness of the rigid tape will provide an external resistance to the valgus movement that occurs when people suffer these injuries.

When looking at a shoulder, the most common use would be for someone post shoulder dislocation or subluxation to provide support and rigidity to the joint. Shoulders are incredibly mobile joints, because of this, it also makes them more unstable and susceptible to dislocation, utilising rigid tape to provide extra support will significantly reduce the risk of recurrent injuries.

Kinesiology or K-Tape as I commonly call it is much more mobile and stretchy than rigid tape. K-Tape will allow you to have much more freedom of movement and more give throughout your movement, what it gives up in stability and support it gains in freedom of movement. Someone returning post ankle sprain would not want this trade off, the stability that rigid tape provides is too valuable. However, for someone who has an irritable shoulder that is sore through movement but can still move will better appreciate the freedom of movement that the tape provides, whilst also appreciating the deloading effect from the tape.

Another common use for K-Tape is with muscular injuries such as a hamstring, calf or quadricep strain. I will utilise K-Tape to "assist" the muscle through its movements and actions required for the sport. If an athlete has suffered a hamstring strain, you could apply K-Tape along the hamstring as a way to assist the hamstring at its longer ranges where re-injury is more likely. When the hamstring reaches its later stages of the sprint movement, the K-Tape will be on stretch and will want to retract, theoretically this will reduce the eccentric load placed on the hamstring during this action.