Support without splinting
Kinesiology Taping
Elastic therapeutic tape that supports a muscle, joint or ligament while leaving your full range of movement in place, applied by a Certified KT Tape Practitioner.
Tape that moves with you instead of stopping you
KT tape is elastic, not rigid. Where a brace or a splint works by limiting a joint, kinesiology tape works by staying on the skin through the whole range of motion, so the muscle, joint or ligament underneath it gets support without losing the movement it still needs to do a day's work. It is believed to reduce pain, improve circulation and promote lymphatic drainage that brings swelling down, and it shows up in the plan for chronic conditions as often as it shows up right after surgery.
Why the strip goes where it goes
The direction and tension of the strip is not decorative. Jennifer places it to unload a specific muscle or to cue a joint toward a better position, which is why the same complaint can get a different tape job from one visit to the next. It is one tool in a session, usually paired with manual work or an exercise, not a stand-alone fix.
Jennifer Kirby, PT, DPT is a Certified KT Tape Practitioner who tapes patients in their own home, anywhere within 30 minutes of Eau Claire. Call (715) 450-5001.
A brace takes a decision away. Tape asks the tissue to help make it.
A rigid brace solves a problem by removing a choice: the joint physically cannot go past a certain point, so pain from that motion stops. That works, and sometimes it is exactly the right call. But it also means the muscles around the joint stop having to hold their own position, and a joint that has been braced for weeks can come out of it weaker than it went in.
Tape does something different. It gives light, constant feedback through the skin without taking the joint's job away from it, so a shoulder can still reach for a top shelf, a knee can still bend for the stairs, and the tissue underneath is still doing the work of controlling that movement instead of being told it cannot happen at all. For someone who has to keep working, keep lifting a toddler, or keep climbing the same flight of stairs every day regardless of the injury, that difference is the whole point.
How long a strip actually lasts
Kinesiology tape is built to stay put for several days at a stretch, not a single session. The adhesive is designed to hold through a shower, so you are not peeling it off before you wash and reapplying it after, and the elastic itself keeps most of its pull the whole time it is on, rather than going slack by day two. Jennifer will tell you what to expect from that particular application before she leaves, because taping over a knee that bends all day behaves differently than taping a forearm that mostly stays still.
When it starts to lift at the edges, that is the sign it has done its job for that stretch, not a sign something went wrong. Whether taping continues into the next visit depends on how the rest of the plan is going, which is the kind of call that gets made in the room with you, on the joint that is actually giving you trouble, not on a general schedule. Read what a first visit involves or get in touch to ask whether taping fits your injury.