Taping
What is taping?
Taping or strapping is a technique used by physiotherapists for injury prevention or rehabilitation.
The specialist physiotherapists at Platinum Physiotherapy are fully trained in how to apply effective taping depending on your goals of treatment. The physiotherapists can also teach you how to apply the tape yourself so you can continue to experience the benefit.
What are the benefits of taping?
The benefits of taping will depend on your injury. Your physiotherapists will aim to encourage some of the following benefits:
- Protection of injured soft tissue structures (ligaments, tendons, fascia)
- Injury prevention
- Encourage normal movement
- Quicker return to sport or work
- Pain reduction
- Improves the stability of a joint
- Reduces the risk of re-injury
- Reduces swelling
Who will benefit from taping?
At Platinum Physiotherapy we use taping as part of a treatment programme for many injuries and conditions including:
- Shoulder injuries
- Ankle sprains
- Knee pain
- Heel pain (plantar fasciitis)
- Tendonitis e.g. tennis elbow
- Muscle strains e.g. hamstrings, groin, quadriceps
The physiotherapists at Platinum Physiotherappy have succeeded in taping sports people with a variety of injuries to allow them to successfully complete a number of events from marathons and rugby games to musicals and dance competitions.
How can taping help me?
Whether you are recovering from an injury or would like to use taping as an injury prevention technique, taping can help you in the following ways:
- Helps to reduce pain by stimulating movement detectors in the nerve (mechanoreceptors) which stop messages passing via pain receptors (nociceptors)
- Restrict movements that may cause further damage to an existing injury
- Facilitate the normal healing process of soft tissues
- Support and protect the muscles surrounding an injured joint
- Remove the pressure from an injury
- Helps to reduce swelling
- Provide feedback to the area to correct any abnormal movements
- Provide proprioception (awareness of joints position) to reduce the risk of re injury
- Improve the coordination of a joint that may be reduced by injury
