circumferential taping fingers

[john]

http://ajsm.highwire.org/cgi/content/full/28/5/674#R8

[dcentral]

Gross Fresh-frozen cadaiver hands.

Interesting study though.

[mitchleblanc]

I can say that taping helps me significantly. For example, when climbing this insanely crimpy thing called "COAT" just the other day.. my tendons in my little finger and ring finger hurt when untaped, but feel (nothing) when taped. I also tape when I have an injury and want to climb on it, and it makes a significant difference. *everyone* tapes.. I find it hard to believe it's purely placebo effect!

I suspect (I've heard about this article before) that this research is flawed.. I wasn't impressed with their report either. How (physically) could it not help? An extra layer of tape must offer some support, no? Perhaps the issue is that tendon breaking strength is so much higher than tape strength? So in an actual failure, the tape has little effect.. but no one ever (rarely) completely ruptures their tendon. Perhaps taping is only effective through less intense loading.

[john]

I think the fact that the cadaver hands lack pain receptors which is what tells live climbers to let go, adjust ther grip etc. has something to do with why people tape. I agree that there is no doubt that taping does reduce pain while crimping, but I think the conclusion of the article was more to the effect that in a purely failure based analysis when considering full rupture, taping has little to no effect on maximum load a finger may withstand. Which, in some ways is irrelevant agreed, for example most climbers as you say do not tape to prevent rupture, since it typically hurts long befoe then and they stop. But considering that theory mabey taping is a bad idea, since if it is concluded that circumferential taping does not in fact aid in overall strength, but does allow us to limit pain, thus crimp harder, thereby increasing the likelyhood of an injury(obviously not a new idea).

Another interesting point is if you look at where they taped the fingers and consider where the stress is maximum on the tendon and pulley, mabey they noted no increase in max load due to taping because of tape location. I would think that the stress would be maximum in the crimped position on either side of the middle knuckle (where typical bowstringing occurs), they tape only below that knuckle in essence only supporting one side of the tendon, perhaps potentially causeing magnified stresses on the unsupported side. Again though if you strictly support the study and fully believe that tape provides no measureable strength increase it shouldn't matter where you tape.

On another note I was sort of suprise by the average rupture load of 56N. Anyone else?

[mitchleblanc]

Good points. 56 N is low..

"No statistically significant difference in mean load to failure was found in the matched pairs between the taped (516 ± 35 N) and untaped (482 ± 33 N) condition (P = 0.53)."

Because it's 516 N

A static load of 53 kg on a single, untrained (not to mention dead!) tendon seems quite a good. I don't know much about statistics... but why is 516+/-35 not more than 482 +/- 33? Please refresh my memory..

Would be interesting to do this experiment more thoroughly.. Not that I could stand the nasty, dissected hands..

[john]

my typo on the 56N I think theres might be a typo on the stats as well

[granite_grrl]

Something that was mentioned on the RC.com board was that these are max loads...till you tore the pully. The forces that strain our fingers are much less than that, which means that the tape doesn't have to withstand as much force either.

It's a fair point....wish I actually knew more about body mechanics to actually be able to argue this well.

Regardless, I'm going to give you all Rebecca's theory of taping. I don't actually have a lot of faith that taping will help support my tendons to any great extent, but I'll tape when ever a finger tendon feels strained. Why? Well, there's the idea that maybe, just maybe it will actually support my tendon a little bit. But the main reason is to remind myself that I have an injured tendon in the first place. I try to tape in such a way that limits the movement of my finger a bit, this adds to the reminder and prevents me from loading it as much as I normally would.

Plus taped fingers must mean that I'm hard core

Rebecca

[mitchleblanc]

Hardcore is right! Sweet..

Funny that you say you tape to limit your motion.. I only do that when I have a *bad* injury, that I honestly shouldn't be climbing on! But when I tape normally, the crux is getting the right tension such that it helps but doesn't hold me back from hard crimping, as too tight a tape job is wont to do..

Agreed though, nothing like taped mangled fingers to bring out the best in us

Also, yeah, I realize this paper has been discussed to death elsewhere .. I'm a bit slow

[granite_grrl]

Mitch - after about an hour after I've taped it has loosened up so I pretty much have full mobility of my finger again.

I have heard that for best taping results that you should change the tape when it streches out like this, but then it comes down to the fact that I'm lazy and I'm not in the mood to try to retape my fingers mid session (when the tape has a problem sticking to my chalky hands).