Why Athletes Need Athletic Tape

By Author: Gary Dimitroff
Total Articles: 85
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If you are a serious athlete, you need to get familiar with athletic tape and its many uses. Wrapping up injured joints and muscles can allow you to keep training without compounding your injuries. Athletic tape is often used in baseball, hockey, and other sports to improve grip. Martial artists often use it to protect their skin against mat burn while practicing take-downs and grappling.





Athletic tape is fairly easy to use, is cheap, and can vastly improve your game! First, pick the type of tape you need: adhesive or non-adhesive. Adhesive tape can hurt a little bit when you peel it off if you put it on an area that has a lot of hair, but non-adhesive tape needs to be held on with some sort of bandage.





Personally, I prefer adhesive tape - when I played football, the adhesive made it easy and quick to apply, and ensured it stabilized my hurting muscles and joints while not getting torn off easily - it was a great fix for an injury that allowed me to get back onto the field pretty much immediately. However, non-adhesive tape might be perfectly fine for ...
... you. It just depends on how you are using it.





To apply the tape, first cut off a few pieces and apply them to the area (such as a wrist or ankle) in the direction of the limb. Make sure your joint is not extended and your muscle is as relaxed as possible when applying.





Now take the roll of tape and begin wrapping securely. You don\'t want any slack - the tape has to stabilize the joint remember. Be careful not to wrap it too tightly though, you don\'t want to cut off circulation. Once the affected area is securely wrapped up, you are done!





Make sure you don\'t keep the tape on for extended periods of time (put new tape on after you are done exercising, and don\'t leave tape on for more than a couple days). Your skin needs to breathe. This isn\'t that much of a concern as most tapes are made of cotton allowing air to reach the skin, but just remember to take it off after a few days at most and put a new wrap on if you still need it.





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