by rocktapeuk | Mar 23, 2015 | Medical
First a bit of a back story, I started off with my severe chronic back pain over 4 years ago now. I came back from a holiday in turkey with severe back pain, which at the time we just put down to sleeping in a terrible bed for two weeks. The first night back home I woke up unable to move from my neck down, over the next few hours my upper body started to regain feeling but not entirely and my legs regained a small bit of feeling but where more or less entirely numb. I have spent many weeks in hospital over the past few years, there have been times where I was well too though. To start with these “healthy” periods where lasting a matter of a few weeks before the back pain came back and I lost feeling in my legs. The pain has been constant ranging from lower back where it is at its worst (especially on the left side) to my shoulder blades, my spine also suffers from intermittent shooting pains which are terrible. My problem has never been fully diagnosed, but now im in a healthy period my back pain is still very severe effecting my daily life. My hands are still a little numb as are my feet but nothing compared to what im used to whilst in the wheelchair. There is a hell of a lot more to my story but far too much to explain in one post!! I started using ROCKTAPE during one of my well periods when I was able to get to the point where I...
by rocktapeuk | Mar 4, 2015 | Medical, Studies
Simple ROCKTAPE Applications for Common Aches and Pains By Paul Coker A lot of folks involved in kinesiology taping will tell you that tape should only be applied by a super-special, highly trained, jedi tape ninja. (Actual title may vary). They will discourage athletes and members of the public from even attempting to self-tape. They will probably also tell you that only therapists trained in their education system and accredited by their official sounding, but sort of made up, association should tape you up. I don’t really agree with any of that, bear in mind I am a physiotherapist, tape instructor, and tape company medical director!! I think that in many situations, many people can and should consider self-taping. There are some caveats and exceptions that I will mention. First and most important; if you have a pain that is any of the following you should see e a experienced, competent therapist/medic. You have a pain you rate as strong or severe (on a scale of 0-10: 6 or above) You have a pain which doesn’t stop or become mild (under 3/10) in any position You have a pain which is worsening despite resting it. Self-taping is best suited to those little niggles, aches and pains. The ones that don’t exactly stop you in your tracks, but none-the-less, stop you moving freely, playing your sport, standing at work. If you are anything like me, and 95% of the world, you know the kind of niggles I mean. Now before you grab a roll of ROCKTAPE and get sticking, there are a few things you need to know to ensure...
by rocktapeuk | Dec 18, 2014 | Medical
Highlights • My experience so far has been to use kinesiology tape, as a treatment adjunct, with patients who present with Parkinsons Disease (PD), Multiple Sclerosis, Stroke, Spinal Cord Injury….. • Patients report increased confidence, awareness of limbs, movement control and ….. • We put tape where we put our hands and we use it for the same reason that we put our hands onto patients – sensory input, guidance, correction of alignment, balance of …… Full Article by Melissa Benyon Neurological Physiotherapist and Rocktape FMT Neuro Course developer. I started using therapeutic taping back in the late 1990’s, where my main objective was to purchase the most rigid zinc oxide tape on the market – how things have moved on! I used it for patients with neurological deficits, primarily for pain management, correction of shoulder alignment problems, stabilisation and muscle inhibition and recruitment and found it helpful. Following my attendance at a Rocktape taping course in 2014, I started using kinesiology tape – tape with elastic properties enabling the therapist to vary how much the tape is tensioned during application. I offered to get involved in teaching for Rocktape and consequently also started reading around the subject, searching on the TRIP database to look at what research was out there – did it demonstrate positive outcomes? and what mechanisms for actions of the tape could be described? There is a lot of research available investigating the efficacy of kinesiology tape in the musculoskeletal field, although research in the neurological arena is much less prevalent. Increasingly studies are targeted at patient groups with pathology, as some studies investigating the...
by rocktapeuk | Nov 6, 2013 | Medical, Rocktape Kinesiology Tape
Medical Director of RocktapeUK and Physiotherapist Paul Coker give us the lowdown on all things kinesiology tape. Few people can have failed to notice the rise and rise of this often brightly coloured tape in recent years. Whether adorning Gareth Bales legs, Novak Djokovic’s back or covering half of TeamGB at London 2012, kinesiology tape (hence forth I’ll go with just tape) has been rapidly gaining popularity with athletes, patients and therapists alike. While some people remain sceptical, and doubtful that is nothing more than a passing fad, convinced that all its reported positive effects are down to a heady cocktail of placebo effect and vanity. Others, myself included, have seen and felt its unique effects to reduce pain and enhance performance. Every day in clinic I see patients delighted and amazed when I tape them. Every time I teach a taping course I see sceptics become converts by wearing and feeling the tape work on them. For many people, at the point they realise their pain/problem feels better when wearing tape, they stop asking questions. I am not that sort of people, this is for all those sceptical scientific, pragmatic, rational people..like me. I’m not going make the usual outlandish claims about what tape can do, and more importantly that we fully understand it. If I’m really honest there is much we don’t know about what tape can and can’t help, how it does what it does, what system within your body it is affecting. You know; the details. Let’s start with what we do actually know. “Does this tape make my calfs looks fat?” Ultra running legend...
by rocktapeuk | Nov 6, 2013 | Medical
I’m a runner: not a good one, in fact ‘average’ would be being kind. I’m also a physio and certainly better at that than running. After years of doing both, I should know better than to fall into the ‘too many miles, too soon’ trap, but who takes their own advice? Evidently not me, so, with 2 off-road ultras looming this summer, I started to whack some long runs in a few months back. I’m not as young as I used to be, so getting down stairs the morning after running for over 2hrs ain’t always that pretty. Gradually, I started to get some more persistent pain in the front of my hip. As much as I tried to ignore it, I had given myself a grumbly hip flexor tendon (Iliopsoas reactive tendonopathy, if you’re into long words). Basically, it hurt to put socks on, dip the clutch and run up hills. It wasn’t a bad hurt, but enough of a niggle to put me getting to the start lines this summer in serious doubt. I was still running, but more than an hour or uphill wasn’t much fun. So, naturally, I started taping myself to try to get some relief. I started with our standard ‘X marks the spot’ style symptom-reduction taping; it helped a little, but my grumbly tendon grumbled on. So, out of necessity, I have been getting a little experimental over the last few runs. I’ve had my lateral line (outer leg) taped and a spiral ‘posture’ tape to help reduce hip internal rotation and inward knee drift. These helped a little, but, and I...
