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Abstract


Kinesio Tape™ (KT) is an elastic therapeutic tape used to facilitate treatment of sports injuries. Use of KT to facilitate performance in healthy individuals is growing in popularity despite a lack of evidence to support this use. PURPOSE: To investigate the acute effects of using KT on performance in agility, sprinting, and strength tasks. METHODS: Eight female college athletes (20.2±1.7 yrs, 75.5±9.6 kg, 165.1± 9.1 cm) performed a 40 yard linear sprint, a 20 yard agility run, and a maximal effort isokinetic knee extension task under three taping conditions; KT, placebo KT, and no tape. In addition to the measured performance, after each trial, each participant provided a rating of perceived performance. One-Way Repeated measures ANOVA’s were used to assess changes in dependent variables across taping conditions. RESULTS: KT was not found to improve any measure of performance (p>0.38) or perception of performance (p>0.17) (Table 1). CONCULSION: These data suggest that KT does not improve performance in healthy athletes and has no consistent placebo effect on female athletes.

Table 1. Mean(sd) of performance and perception values across all conditions.


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