Sports Injuries Part #3 Be careful with braces and tape

Taping and Bracing of joints has become the most common way of dealing with an injured joint. It is so hard to watch a game from High School

to the professional level without seeing taped up ankles and braces on every joint in the body. I have never liked this concept. In High School I had to constantly get my ankles taped in football. Before practices or games. Why? Because I rolled an ankle once at practice and so I was then doomed to taping my joints constantly over the next few years. The result is an incredibly weak set of ankles.

The main reason I never liked it is that at no point was the question of why asked. Why did I roll my ankle? They just wanted to immediately brace it going on the assumption that I had weak ankles. The way I look at this issue now is that if the joint is to weak for you to play on, should you be playing on it? Now perhaps in College or at the professional level you can make an argument for bracing and taping but only as a very temporary solution in an important situation. However, even in this situation the reason the joint sprained in the first place must be addressed and more importantly dealt with. 

In the next few posts I want to give you a different perspective on why joints are so easily sprained these days and how there might be a better option than taping and bracing. Also I would like to give you some tools to use that may assist you in recovering from joint injuries a little quicker.