To Support or Not To Support
In 2008 I had a knee operation to deal with a knee plica that was bothering my after a fall two year previously. After the operation I asked the physio if I should be taking any precautions when it came to exercising. I was told to wear a knee support for a short while once I was ready to exercise, so here I am 4 years later still wearing an open patella knee support for exercise. Now, I am not wearing it because I want to, I am wearing it out of fear that if I take it off am I going to injury myself again?
After attempting not to wear it for a few runs I found that my knee needed further support, but I was fed up of wrestling with my current support after every run as it made my other exercises hard to complete. After a bit of research I found a lot of information about using support tape to strap my knee every time, so off to the local sports shop I went. I simply got a $5 roll of support tape as that was all they had, but also I didn't want to spend much more in case I found the tape was no good for me. I watched a video on Runner World on how to apply the tape. Ok, so I must point out that I wasn't using the same tape as these guys, but I knew that if the tape I had worked I might get some of the Kinesio Tex Tape used in the video.
Off out to the gym I went as it was -9 outside today, did a good 5k run at an elevation of 3 and broke my PB for treadmill 5k (27:05) and all with the tape on. 7 hours later I have no pain, and did not feel any pain when exercising so I might look into buying some of the better stuff! NO MORE KNEE SUPPORT!
