Athletes Treating Athletes

As you may recall from our intro post on kinesiology taping, we’re going to focus on each muscle group/joint and show you how to use kinesiology tape in three distinct ways:

1. Immediately after injury  (for swelling and pain)
2. During the healing process (correction techniques to restore normal position and allow for healing)
3. Techniques to help improve strength + function

In this post, we’ re going to be talking about a taping application designed to decrease the amount of pull against the ribs. This is perfect following a muscle strain/rib separation to provide support and allow for rest so that the injured area can heal.

Anatomy

Each rib starts in the back and runs from the spine around to the front of the body where it attaches to the sternum. This creates the rib cage. To allow movement in these bones (i.e. so that the rib cage can expand and shrink for breathing for example) there are small muscles known as the internal and external intercostals. Each of these attach from one rib to the one above. The upper muscles work to elevate the rib cage during inhalation and the lower muscles work to depress the rib cage during exhalation. These muscles are also active during lateral flexion (side bending) and rotation. This is a common area for injury and is particularly susceptible to over rotation and blunt trauma (falls, crashes, etc).

What you will need:

1) Roll of kinesiology tape.

2) Sharpest scissors in the house.

Prep work:

1) Clean skin. This means no oils or lotions of any kind. You want your skin to be clean and more importantly dry. Moisture of any kind = tape will fall off or fail to stick altogether.

2) Hair care. Ideally, the less hair the better. Guys, this means that for best results you will need to trim any long leg hair or shave the calf area.

3) If clean, dry, and hairless skin still = no sticking of tape. Time to get some adhesive spray like Tuf Skin.

4) The tape should last 3-5 days. You can get it wet and shower with it on. Just towel dry it after. No hair dryer! The tape is heat activated.

Taping Techniques

1) Get into position first.

• Prep the skin first. For this application you will want to put the area on stretch. To do this, lift your arm out from your side like the picture above. If it is painful to do this, only go as far as you can comfortably or prop your arm up on something so that it can relax as the tape is applied.

2) Strip #1- correction strip over the painful area.

• Cut the tape so that it is long enough to cover the painful area with 1-2″ of tape on either side (these are your anchors and must be applied without stretch). Round the edges, apply 50-75% stretch and place the tape. Then remove the paper backing and lay down the ends. Don’t sweat the 50-75%. Think medium stretch versus maximum “how far can I pull this tape” kind of stretch.
• You want this strip to be directly OVER the painful area.

3) Step 2- Apply vertical correction strips.

• Cut the tape so that it is long enough to cover the first strip of tape with 1-2″ of tape on either side (these are your anchors and must be applied without stretch). Our goal here is to frame the painful area and to help hold the two ribs together. Same rules apply for these strips as they do for the first strip. Round the edges, apply 50-75% stretch and place the tape. Then remove the paper backing and lay down the ends. Don’t sweat the 50-75%. Think medium stretch versus maximum “how far can I pull this tape” kind of stretch.
• You want these two strips to be on either side of the painful area, not over it like the first strip.
• For further instructions on how to incorporate kinesiology taping into your self treatment regimen click here.

References

1) Capobianco, Dr. Steven and van den Dries, Greg. (2009). Power Taping, 2nd Edition, Rock Tape Inc, Los Gatos, CA.

2) Hammer, Warren. (2007). Functional Soft-Tissue Examination and Treatment by Manual Methods, 3rd edition. Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Inc, Sudbury, MA.

3) Kase, Kenzo, Wallis, Jim, and Kase, Tsuyoshi. (2003). Clinical Therapeutic Applications of the Kinesio Taping Method.

4) Muscolino, Joseph. (2009). The Muscle and Bone Palpation Manual. Mosby, Inc, St. Louis, MO.