Treatment: Sports Taping
Sports taping with rigid tape can prevent injury or facilitate an injured athlete’s return to competition. In general, the tape should limit the abnormal or excessive movement of a sprained joint while also providing support to the muscles that the sprain has compromised.
In addition, taping helps to enhance proprioceptive feedback that the tape provides the athlete during performance.
For example, athletes who have injured the anterior cruciate ligament and suffer from rotary instability in the knee may receive sensory cues from the brace before it limits rotary movement.
This early proprioceptive feedback may enable the athlete subconciously to contract the muscle that control rotary instability. Similarly athletes involved in volleyball and basketball may recieve sensory cues from a taped ankle.
Tape, in this instance, can be more effective in providing proprioceptive feedback than actually limiting excessive inversion
Purpose of taping:
- Support the ligaments and capsule of unstable joints by limiting excessive or abnormal anatomical movement.
- Enhance proprioceptive feedback from the limb or joint
- Support injuries to the muscle-tendon units by compressing and limiting movement
- Secure protective pads, dressing and splints
In addition to providing clinical sports taping services, Core Concepts is a leading instructor of sports taping courses in Singapore, having conducted courses for PE teachers, sports trainers and physiotherapists.
An example of ankle taping can be found amongst our expert articles, Sports Taping – Ankle.