Kinesio Taping

Kinesio taping is used widely in the sports arena, it works on the fascial layers underneath the skin , these are part of our information highway and fluid transportation system. It can be applied in many different ways depending on what you need treated, such as reducing swelling in tissue (including bruising), reducing pain, changing the signalling going to muscles (for instance if you need to get a lazy muscle to switch on).

The tape comes in different colours, while there is no difference in the tape, Eastern thinking associates colour to temperature, with blue being cool and red being warm. When we trained my learning partner and I were sceptics and one of the exercises we had to tape a Union Jack shape onto the back using 2 strips of blue and two strips of red - we both guessed the colours correctly based on the temperature (hot or cold). Not scientific, but rather interesting.

The tape is water resistant and can be used during sport, it remains on for up to 5 days, so if you need this prior to an event we would suggest testing it in advance of your event to ensure they way in which it is applied does not adversely affect the performance or pain levels in the tissue. We suggest this as there are any number of ways to apply the tape and in some instances your tissue may not respond in the way we expect and we may need to adjust the application.