Course Review: Rocktape's Fascial Movement Taping 1 and 2

the FMT 2 crew from Ancaster, ON

I had the opportunity to attend Rocktape's Fascial Movement Taping 1 and 2 over the weekend at the Inaugural launch of Rocktape Canada. It was only a short drive to the Hamilton area from Buffalo. With a tagline of taping movement, not muscles, I cautiously hoped for somewhat updated theory and mechanisms.

My one sentence review: Even if you left the course with no intention of ever using any form of kinesiotaping, these courses are worth it because they are current with modern mechanisms of manual therapy and rehab.

Here are some of my take home points

we make changes in the brain through taping
neuroscience is always changing
it's just "tape on skin"

which leads to sensory-motor stimulation on skin

the different receptors of superficial tissues

Merkel discs
Meisner and Pacinian corpuscles
root hair plexus - don't fully shave
Rufini endings

skin drag effects the nervous system
reviewed the tensegrity concept and mechanotransduction
tape is not a compressive force, it creates a lifting effect

diagnostic US was shown in quadriceps during knee flexion/extension with an without tape
the taped region had increased space between the superficial layers of fascia during the sliding motion

over time, the tape creates "ripples" under the skin, useful for sending more information to the brain
he then referenced Moseley!

the tape may send information to the brain to decrease the perceived threat
education + movement = increased physical capacity

there is a reflexive activation

if we can position the body appropriately, the CNS will make adjustments

one of my favorite concepts

taping is simple, direction does not matter!

taping also acts like preload (eccentric phase prior to movement) - pretension
studies have been showing little to no effects of KTape

they changed the parameters
for postural sway, they fatigued the particpants first
the taping group had significantly improved postural sway than the non taped group
fatigue was the key for the tape to make the neurophysiologic changes

Kinesthetic guidance can be 30 times faster for pattern retraining
Key to neuroplasticity is low threshold repeated stimulus

tape can provide this with the correct movement/education to the patient to keep the transient effects of our treatments between visits

“The skin is the skin of the superficial fascia”
An example for patients using a submarine

The helmsman in our brain example
tape can be like sonar to figure out where sub/the body is in space
the brain needs input to help movement

FMT is not protocol based
You can tape along

taped along the median line, HOLY CRAP it's painful to take off the tape after having it on for hours along the pec, thankfully, Steve's italian mother had the solution in olive oil, I practically bathed in it

anatomical based lines/patterns
neural lines (sciatic, femoral, radial, median - my second favorite)
smaller patches of 1-3" tape "tweak taping" does this just as well or better than taping along long patterns or lines - my favorite

think of it as Mulligan taping with small manual corrections with a test-retest then a small patch of tape to continue feeding that info to the brain

All in all, I cannot recommend both FMT 1 and 2 highly enough! I went in thinking that the line of taping movement not muscles was merely a slogan to differentiate themselves from other taping methods. I love to be proven incorrect! You learn everything from the neurophysiologic effects of taping (which they also apply to all manual therapy), pain science, test-retest models, as well as different movement screens; Dr. Steven Capobianco put it best when he said the course was "open source." There were several other experts from different fields in the course and we learned some postural screening from Brad Norris of powertekfitness.com, a little DNS from Kate Hood, some different taping applications from Darryl Yardley and Connor Collins, and a little IASTM and modern STM theory from yours truly!

Steven Capobianco is an all around dynamic speaker, well read and researched and very open to many different forms of assessment and treatment. We've only been speaking via facebook and email for a few short weeks, but we could tell early on that our approach was extremely similar. I can't say enough good things about Steve.. my only mild disappointment was that I thought I'd have another American in the class, but it turns out he was excited to launch Rocktape Canada because he is originally Canadian! And here I thought I would be able to introduce him to Tim Hortons! He only lives/practices in California, but it's been long enough that he called hockey, "ice hockey." You've been away too long buddy!

I will definitely be integrating Rocktape into many of my treatments and you'll be updated on future Cases of the Week and with vids on omptchannel.com on my tweak taping experiments! If FMT 1/2 is in your area and you've been curious about kinesiotaping as an adjunct, I can't recommend it enough. It really has been one of the best courses I've taken in years!

Here are some pics

Here I am with Dr. Ranil Sonnadara, PhD from McMaster University. I saw him taping a fencer, and I said, my wife used to fence. He said, "I'm a fencing coach." I said she fenced for Mac, and it turns out he was her former coach! She told me as a student prior to being a physio, she didn't listen to him, didn't cross train and ended up with a right quad that was so hypertrophied, it no longer fit in her pants.