Sports Taping for Runners
It’s Wednesday which means that I just survived my first huge event at work. I had been informed by my boss that if I can survive this month, I can survive anything this job throws me, so I am relieved and quite frankly, ready to sleep for a week.
My training took a back seat this week, but I am dealing with an injury (which I will discuss more on Monday) so if I was going to be derailed at any time in my training cycle, this was the best time!
Speaking of injury and the fact that I am focusing a bit on gear this week, I received a reader question that deserves it’s own post.
Do you use sports tape in your training? If so, how do you use it?
The answer? If I have tape on my body, it’s probably bad news bears. I avoid it like the plague until I am struggling with an injury and need a bit of reinforcement and suddenly, it’s my best friend. Since I have been rocking the tape recently, I figured there is no time like the present to talk about what it is and why I use it.
Sports tape is applied along muscles, ligaments, and tendons (soft tissue) to provide a lightweight, external support that helps you remain active while recovering from injuries. I have used it in the past to support my IT band around my ankle as well as supporting my tendon while struggling with achilles tendonitis.
How to use it? All of the sports tape that I have used in the past have been pre-cut. I make sure my skin is clean and dry and take a strip and rub it vigorously to heat up the bonding agents to make it stick on my skin as long as possible.
I rip the back of the tape in the middle and stretch it over the injured portion of my (often) leg, but make sure I ease up on the tension towards the ends of the tape.
I then cut a strip in half (making sure to round the corners to make it stick longer) and follow the same protocol that I did with the longer strip.
Here are a couple of the ways to apply it to assist in some of the more common running injuries:
Shin Splints
See more instructions for other injuries here.
I use Strength Tape which retails for about $19.95 in most sports stores. It is a bit different than other sports tapes on the market because it has a component called IonTech which is infused with seven specific minerals that emit ions.
On another note, let’s talk on something other than injuries for a moment. I am doing the Chase the Coyote race this weekend and would love to have you join me. You can register here, but check out my course preview first.
Do you use sports tape?
I have a bunch of KTape. I used it a couple times but the damn thing would not stay on!
That is something I struggled with too, but I found that rubbing it to heat the tape helped keep the longevity for me!