When I used to run half marathons, I didn’t get many injuries, if any. However, after an impact injury, I began to search for different methods to help me recover from knee surgery. Enter Rocktape AND NKT. After just one session of using this techniques, I could feel the difference and decide to pursue certifications in order to take these modalities to my clients. Rocktape and NKT are used by many fitness and rehab professionals across the world, helping their clients heal and perform optimally. The uses of each are too numerous to put here in one post, so I’m going to highlight each modalities and then tell you when I have incorporate them into my sessions with clients. Let’s Rocktape, because that’s what I fell in love with first. It can used to increase the utilization of a muscle, to help relieve pain, reduce inflammation and help achieve proper form in sports. Now that’s just a basic list, I’ve seen Rocktape used for some amazing things. It all comes down to using the bodies’ largest organ, the skin. When the Rocktape is applied to the skin, it is applied in a specific manner so that the tape can help lift the skin away from the underlying muscle and fascia, creating a nice decompression. Also, Rocktape uses the sensory input from the skin to basically turn your brain’s attention to that area or motor pattern. The results can be so quick, it is just amazing. Applications can last for a longer time than other types of taping due to the adhesive material Rocktape uses. It is the highest quality that I have found and used. Most flake up after a day, whereas Rocktape can last weeks. My personal record is 3 weeks for a knee taping I applied on myself. I have a few cool experiences with Rocktaping clients that I’d love to share with you! First up is my dad! He was my first official client taping. Sure I had taped myself hundreds of times as well as my friend Melanie who offered to be a guinea pig, but this was my first specific case I had been approached with. Dad told me that he was struggling after he had just severely sprained his left ankle. His ankle was about the size of a softball when I did the first application and he was in a lot of pain when walking. Using a basic taping (as shown above) I covered several problem areas, as well as, gave a bit of support to the ankle. There are many many ways to tape an ankle; however, this one fit his specific issues the best. When he moved his ankle you could automatically tell a difference by his range of motion; then when he stood up, his face said it all. We left the taping on over 2 weeks (yes the tape lasted 2 weeks even with showers and activity!) and by the second week all of the sweeping and soreness had gone down. Second, is my good friend Kimberly who is a fellow Certified Essentrics Instructor. At training in Colorado, she was telling me about how her ankle was injured a long time ago and she had to be super careful of how she walked to allow falling. Looking at her feet just sitting in staff pose (sitting on ground, legs straight in front but modification of toes pointed) you could see her left foot just collapse in at the ankle, big toe touching the ground. She told me “this is my normal, has been for years now”. Challenge accepted. Pictured above is her feet AFTER taping and some NKT testing. Look the big toe of her left foot. IT’S NOT COLLAPSING TO THE GROUND! For years, her ankle ligaments were so damaged that her foot wouldn’t allow her just relax her foot forward. Her brain was in complete disconnect. Now, after some arch reminder and lateral calf taping, BAM. She said she couldn’t remember the last time her foot felt like this and she felt a huge difference during Eccentrics training the next day. These two examples are just a few of the stories I could tell. One time, I taped a dear friend who was pregnant and in her third trimester. She was having severe pains under and on the side of her belly that was keeping her up at night and making it difficult to move. I put a basic sling style and a few additional tapings to support her belly and received a long thank you text the next morning saying how glorious it was to get a complete night’s sleep with no pain. SCORE. Now let’s talk performance. When I took my Rocktape certification course, I went with a good MT friend and we were able to use each other as test subjects for the applications we were learning. During that we covered this giant application. So this might look like just a random amount of tape on my back; however, I promise it has a purpose. Specific applications were needed to help specific things and they could be mixed and match depending on the issue. All in all, this was a great lesson in ways to help with posture, stability, relaxation and many other applications to our specific clients. I have worked with a lot of XC runners lately who LOVE some of these applications to improve their posture during runs and release tension in the upper traps. I’ve had my own stories with my injures and Rocktape. The brain/connection is huge. The swelling and inflammation reduction is huge. I can’t imagine my few surgeriy recoveries without some Rocktape utilized sometime during the process. It has helped my clients and I in so many ways and I look forward to helping YOU as well!!! Hope you enjoyed this run down of Rocktape, look out for an NTK write up soon! Ciao! Cassandra M.
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AuthorCassandra McCoy Archives
October 2018
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