In the summer, you can see it — stretched across Olympians’ skin as they compete on the world stage.
But in the winter cold, when athletes are covered from head to toe, it’s harder to see how kinesiology tape helped support Team USA in its quest for gold.
Where was the KT Tape?
“It’s very obvious in summer sports, but in winter sports, it’s still there,” said Dr. Christopher Harper, an orthopedic specialist and member of the KT Tape medical advisory board.
“If you take a close look you can see it in some of the figure skaters,” he said, explaining that while spectators do see a lot of kinesiology tape on athletes’ extremities, particularly in summer but also in winter, the more common use happens on their trunk.
Tape is often used on ribs, back muscles and shoulder blades, areas of the body covered with clothing, he said.
Winter athletes do have some unique use cases, however. Harper pointed to the extreme speeds of alpine skiers who hit speeds of 80–90 mph on their way down the mountain.
“Think about the G-forces on the neck, on the cervical spine. So, often you’ll see taping in the back of the neck.”
What is the strangest way Harper has seen kinesiology tape used? A trend during extra cold competitions when skiers put KT Tape on their faces to prevent frostbite.
“They were putting it on their nose. Just as a wind barrier … That’s not a marketed use, but it seemed to work pretty well for that,” he joked.
But KT Tape on the face was far from the most surprising thing Harper shared during a Deseret News interview.
“A lot of people think the primary use is bracing of a joint or something like that,” he said. “It can be used in subtle ways that way but that’s not really the primary function. The primary function is to improve proprioception, that proprioceptive feedback.”
‘What is proprioception?’
Proprioception is the body’s “sixth sense” if you will. It’s mind-body coordination. The way your brain understands where your body is in space and how it’s moving, even if you can’t see it. And it happens thanks to little things called (you guessed it) proprioceptors in your muscles, joints and tendons, which send signals to your brain.
So how does tape, strategically placed on your body, enhance this mind-body connection? It’s because of your skin.
“Cutaneous feedback actually has a great influence on your proprioception, in other words, your sense of joint space. As well as your anticipatory motor planning,” Harper said. “Your ability to know that you have to do these fine motor adjustments. A lot of that feedback from your body to your brain actually comes from your skin. And so if you enhance that proprioception, it can actually improve your motor control, and that can make a big difference when we’re talking about these high speed, low margin winter sports where every little split second counts. It can give the athlete a bit of an edge.”
Turns out KT Tape is there to enhance an athlete’s coordination and timing. It’s not just a sticky knee brace. Who knew?
A neuromuscular bookmark
Remember those Olympians using kinesiology tape to cover their faces in the frigid cold? KT Tape does have some intended use for keeping things warm, but more in a readiness sense.
“In high level sports, especially the winter sports, if an athlete is between heats or events and they have to be in a staging area, having tape on specific muscles can actually help keep that proprioceptive feedback cued up a bit,” Harper said. “It’s almost like a bookmark for the nervous system.”
During international competitions, athletes can sometimes wait an hour or more in between races or heats. Their bodies go from extreme exertion to rest and sometimes move from very cold temperatures to very hot. All of those changes can take a toll on their ability to bounce back into the competition.
“It helps them hang onto their warm-up a little bit longer,” Harper said. “I do think of it as, like, a neuromuscular bookmark on certain muscles.”
Taping can also be done to alleviate pain or reduce muscle soreness between races.
Not a one-trick pony
Harper said the tape is actually used more in physical and neurological rehabilitation than on elite athletes or Olympians.
“In pediatric rehab, young kids with vascular accidents or stroke or tone issues, nervous system problems, the tape would be used to help correct posture and help train movement. So it was used in rehab much before sports in the U.S.”
And how you tape, matters. Different taping techniques can do different things, including reduce swelling, assist lymphatic drainage, or do that super basic joint stabilizing thing.
It can even help fix your posture. Not just when you’re wearing the tape, but thanks to that proprioception connection, taping can actually train your body to have better posture.
In today’s society, “87% of all jobs are sitting at a computer,” Harper said. “Some people end up with that forward head, forward shoulder posture. There’s ways to use the tape to help posturally cue you, and I don’t like to call it bracing because I think of it as, that tape is on you, and as you go through your everyday stuff and you’re putting things away from the dishwasher up to the cabinet, you know, the tape is actually training you to be in a better position. So it can counteract some of the bad habits that we have.”
There are many subtle ways to use the tape to create an effect in the body, he said. “There are 101-plus uses of KT Tape. It’s certainly not a one-trick pony.”