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Rigid Sports Taping Physiotherapy

The function of rigid sports taping physiotherapy is both to

  • prevent injury / injury aggravation and
  • facilitate the injured patient/active individual  to return to work, sports and life

What rigid tape does is that it limits abnormal and/or excessive movement of a sprained joint whilst supporting the muscles that are compromised by the sprain.

To add to the benefits of having rigid taping, having these supportive sports tape structures helps enhance the proprioceptive feedback to the sprained joint during performance

Is proprioception important? Yes, of course. Our proprioceptive system is like a satellite navigation system that lets you know where your body is in space.

Sounds big and vague, but what that means is that your proprioception allows you to:

  • know where your toes, feet and ankle is, for walking, running, jumping
  • know where your fingers, hands, wrists is, for typing, using, holding, cooking
  • etc

An example is the common injuries of ankle sprain and back pain. Once our senior physiotherapists tape the ankle, the sports tape will prompt the patient before reaching/pushing ankle maximum instability.

Likewise for the back pain with sports tape - the tape will prompt patient to not overstrain it.

You see, the rigid sports tape behaves as an external protective proprioceptive feedback tool that helps patients and athlete to actively or subconsiously contract the muscles that limits instability, and this prevents injuries and/or aggravation of injuries.

Frankly, rigid taping is more appropriate and effectiveby providing early proprioceptive feedback rather than their original function to limit the excessive motion, but both functions work synergistically together.

To sum it down, the purposes of rigid sports taping includes

  1. supporting ligaments and capsules of unstable joints by blocking and limiting abnormal (excessive) anatomical movement
  2. Early proprioceptive feedback enhance sensory cues in injured limbs and joints
  3. Compressive and limiting ability helps to prevents further aggravation to muscle-tendon units
  4. Helps to secure splints, protective padding and wound care dressing in place