[Closed] Kinseology tape/rock tape or similar. Where to buy.

Try a snake oil merchants or a left handed screwdriver shop

(Only joking, have no idea if it's all bs or not)

as long as you know it is snake oil, boots sell it

Recommended by whom?

TX Maxx had tons of the stuff just before Christmas.

It's like it has gone out of fashion for some mysterious reason.

Usually found next to the powerbands and healing crystals

Up and running or sweat shop.

I presume it's not just a case of buying it and sticking it on some sore bit, you'll need to know where to put it to provide support.

I presume it's not just a case of buying it and sticking it on some sore bit, you'll need to know where to put it to provide support.

I'm fairly sure that efficacy will be comparable regardless of where you stick it, so long as you believe it'll work. That's how the placebo effect functions.

Get mine from Sport tape http://mbsy.co/SPORTTAPEuk/200533

Works a treat on my knees, they have application Instr sheets too 😉

you'll need to know where to put it to provide support.

Unless your muscles have become tethered to your skin then you can stick it wherever you like. If your muscles are tethered then you should probably see a doctor sharpish rather than fannying around with sticky tape.

Taping is a long established treatment for sporting injuries, not exactly "snake oil".
The kineso tape is just a more stretchable form of strapping tape with better adhesion, admittedly the jazzy colors make it more high profile and marketable than the bog standard elastoplast colored tape.
But hey what the heck, marketing rocks, just ask an IT consultant 😛

Lucky pants are a long established method for winning sports events too.

Yup, and millenium bugs are a sure fire way to ensure an end of year bonus for a mouse jockey

Taping is a long established treatment for sporting injuries, not exactly "snake oil".

Yes. Only the other day my mother broke her leg, and the fracture clinic stuck four inches of duct tape down her calf and sent her on her way.

Probably not eh, I call bullshit mr mod 😛

That's kinda where I was going with that, yes. (-:

KT is to sports injuries what "egg in a cup" is to Flu 😀

But, egg in a cup is a long established treatment for the flu!

(though by "egg in a cup" I'm actually referring to food and drink and rest, which may or may not involve eggs and / or cups but can nonetheless form a tenuous link for the sake of argument)

well I guess your humour's just too sophisticated for me then Mr C 😉

Still can't see why a coloured tape raises any more doubts than a plain tape - The KT stretches & sticks better so is a more effective version of an established treatment for [i]certain[/i] types of sporting injury - italics added for the pedants

It's good for making pretty patterns

[img] [/img]

[img] [/img]

Or: A face to confuse your opponent!
[img] [/img]

well I guess your humour's just too sophisticated for me then Mr C

Well, I've been accused of a few things in my time, but I think that's a first for "sophisticated."

Still can't see why a coloured tape raises any more doubts than a plain tape

It was invented by a chiropractor and endorsed by Lance Armstrong, so I'm convinced.

The point I was trying (and failing) to make in my jovial stylee was really to call into question your assertion that "taping", whether that tape is day-glo pink rubber or chain-smoker's white zinc oxide, is a "long established" treatment; and that irrespective of how long it has or hasn't been established, whether it has any proven efficacy beyond placebo.

Strapping up an injury (or to prevent an injury) isn't the same thing as slapping a bit of tape randomly on the skin. If people have been treating injuries in this manner - [i]effectively [/i]- for a long time then it's a phenomenon which has passed me by.

(Wow, that was a bloody awful sentence. It makes my eyes itch and I wrote it; sorry about that.)

established treatment for certain types of sporting injury

I have never seen tape used in this way for sports injuries until this came along. "Taping" in the sense that you wrap tape around a joint etc I have seen used but not this method.

Well to some extent I agree the KT has probably been misused/misunderstood to some degree and the difference between "taping" and "strapping" is really just vocabulary.

The radial taping (in the pic of the arm above) is simply a version of tubular strapping - it just looks more spectacular.
It's more effective because it can be applied following specific muscle profiles or boundaries and the tension can be varied more precisely than a technique which relies on just enveloping a whole area.

Edit for surfer - the cobweb style taping is serving essentially the same function as "tubigrip style" supports which have been in use for some time

The abdominal strapping in the pic is I agree, no more than cosmetic, and the tape seems to have been applied under insufficent tension for any possible support.

In fact all the pics show pretty poor strapping/taping technique but you can't rubbish a product simply because it's misused or poorly advertised, that's a criticism (rightly) levelled at individual practitioners and corporations

We're ostensibly in agreement then; if $tape is used in a manner which actually provides support then it'll, er, provide support, and if it's stuck haphazardly about the place by a layperson then at best it'll look pretty.

Far as I can see, the majority of this K-tape is being sold for use in the latter category, so I feel confident that I can in fact rubbish it as a product quite happily. If I bought a CD player that didn't actually play CDs but functioned quite well as a draught excluder, it'd still be a crap CD player.

Yes, fair enough - if a product is used properly it will function well, if it's not it will function poorly.

Conclusion: K-tape is like Norton Anti-Virus.

Placebo or not, it stopped my knee hurting as much in the month leading upto the great north run, a proper knee support helped more, but it irritated my skin if I used it too much, the tape didn't.

So in my case, the purchased tape, which is used by the physio that we use at work, either stopped my knee hurting, or told my brain that my knee wasn't hurting, either way it's win win as far as I'm concerned.

I did like that little survey- too unscientific to call it a study- that found that blue tape was more effective than black, and tape in pretty patterns was more effective than tape without.

I'm ok with placebos though, as long as they don't cause other harm, which I daresay a tape solution for an actual problem could easily cause.