Taping an ankle in sports injury treatments is a common procedure that all athletes should know. Learn how to treat sports injuries in this video on health and rehab.
Put ankle at 90 degrees
Place two anchors at base of foot
Use a figure-eight motion
Mike Vera is an athletic trainer the Roger Clemens Institute at Memorial Hermann Hospital. The Clemens Institute is the largest, most comprehensive medically based sports program in the Southwest.
MIKE VERA: If you want to support your ankles, there are several ways to do it. What we would like to do is show you some ways to tape your ankle. Now, you do not have to be an expert, and there are several items that can help you. One is called underwrap. These are all available at any sporting good store. It is just a foam-type of material that usually people will put down first before they put the tape on. What it does is it provides a barrier to the skin and the tape. So some people are allergic to the tape, so they would use this. Another thing to do is with elastic tape, you can pretty much put it on anywhere. Sometimes people will tape over their sock. It is not a bad call, especially if you are having to do it yourself. Stretch tape, also commercially available, as is the good old clothing tape. Now, all you would do is, when you are taping an ankle, you would simply put your ankle at 90 degrees. If you decide to use underwrap, you want to put a thin layer on usually from the base of your toes up to about the edge of your calf muscle. And then you want to place two anchors of tape and then an anchor down at the base of the foot and use any figure-eight motions starting on the medial side of the foot. You can come down, back over the top, back around the heel and end on the inside or the medial side of the foot. A lot of ways you can do it also is when you do that, you can start a little higher and do several figure eights and then close it up from the top of the foot to the base of the calf muscle. You always want to make sure you the feel support. If it feels tight, you can cut little bit of notches either from the top or from the base for comfort. Remember, if you are taping yourself, it is a little awkward so you might want to practice before you go out in a competition.
Member Comments