KT Tape: Help or Hype?

Overview

Objectives Does Therapeutic Kinesiology Tape (KT) actually improve an athlete's performance and does the athlete's opinion about whether KT tape is helpful affect their performance. Methods I had athletes at a Cross Fit gym perform a series of 4 different varied exercises with and without KT Tape applied and measured the affect it had on their exercise performance. Also, prior to each athlete's participation I asked each one about their opinion of KT Tape and whether they thought it would or would not improve their performance. Materials: KT Tape, tape measure, stopwatch, Cross Fit gym athletes, barbells, dumbbells. Results My overall results show that KT Tape improved an athlete's performance in 3 of the 4 exercises. Athletes who thought that KT Tape would help their performance, performed better with KT tape on in 3 of the 4 exercises. Athletes who felt KT tape would not be helpful also performed better in 3 of the 4 exercises. Conclusions In my experiment KT tape did produce an improvement in the althetes' exercise performances. This was a surprise to me because I thought KT tape would be ineffective. I thought that athletes' opinions would have more of an affect on their performance. I was surprised to find that athletes who originally thought KT tape would not be beneficial actually showed improved performance with the KT tape on. I expected there may be a placebo effect with the athletes that thought KT Tape would help, but was surprised to find even the athletes who felt KT tape would be ineffective performed better with KT Tape. My thoughts as to why KT tape was effective at increasing exercise performance is that the tape may improve the athletes awareness of movement as they feel the pull and tension the tape applies during joint movement making the athlete more focused on the specific movement during the exercise.

Competition history

• CSEF 2019 Product Science (Biological) (Junior Division Only) · Entry J1904

Resources

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