How to Tape An Ankle for Best Support? (Easy Ways to Follow)

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According to the National Athletic Trainer’s Association, most ankle injuries happen to students engaged in sports like basketball, soccer, and volleyball.

It is therefore essential to take necessary measures to protect the ankle from getting possible injuries.

Although all these students perform preventive ankle strengthening exercises, taping an ankle can be more than beneficial and can help protect their ankle by giving additional support.

Importance of Ankle Taping

Taping of an ankle is a normal practice in most colleges these days and in high schools as well.

The benefits of taping an ankle are many, and some of these are:

Lessen hardness of injury to the ligament
Decrease recurrence of injury by as much as 75%
Provide the most support while limiting backward bending

Ankle taping is done in a manner so it can fight a specific motion to prevent injury.

For this, it is always recommended that you get taped your ankle with the help of a professional.

However, it is essential to learn all the basic ankle taping techniques in case you want to tape your ankle without any professional help.

Sometimes even when the ankle taping is done properly, it may lose support due to the aggressive moves throughout the sports practice.

Besides this, perspiration can also reduce the effectiveness of ankle tape. So, a strong ankle taping job must be done with a knowledgeable person’s help.

Therefore the person who is putting the tape on your ankle must have good experience and knowledge about the stuff.

The quality of the tape is also very important to consider, especially when you buy them for sports like soccer, football, basketball, hockey, gymnastics, dance, wrestling, and rugby.

You should not insist on low-quality ankle tape and risk your ankle health.

Instead, choose the best tape for ankle strapping available in the market.

How to Tape An Ankle for Support?

It has often been seen that different trainers apply the ankle tape in different styles as per their experience and knowledge.

Yet, the basic function of ankle taping is to decrease ankle sprain occurrence during the sport while providing the best support.

Tapping an athletic ankle thus plays a great role in avoiding ankle pain for athletes.

A few important methods that are being used for taping an ankle include:

☑ Basket weave:

This is the first method which involves applying the tape from the inside portion of the lower leg, covering around the bottom of the foot, and finishing on the external portion of the lower leg.

A strip is put from the external part of the foot, above the Achilles tendon, and finished inside the foot.

The process is repeated and slowly begins from the first place 2-3 times. Finally, it will look like a woven basket.

☑ Figure-of-eight:

It begins above the foot and wraps the foot and lower leg to enhance stability to the joint.

This is one of the most popularly used methods for ankle taping. Studies reveal that around 3 figure-of-eight wraps can decrease the occurrence of ankle sprains.

People think ankle braces are made up of more rigid material than ankle tapes, so these are more effective than taping.

But the truth is, braces can also lose support while sporting. Thus using an ankle brace does not prove much beneficial in a few of the cases.

☑ Heel Lock:

This process begins on the top of the foot, covers the bottom and finishes at the side of the leg, and gets back to the top of the foot to lock the heel in place. This can be repeated one or two times.

☑ KT Tape for ankle

This is one of the best ankle tapes for support which trainers trust and use.

You may use it for avoiding ankle injuries and sprain while running. It may work better than ankle braces in a few instances!

Ankle Brace vs. Tape: Which Is Better?

When it comes to choosing between ankle taping vs bracing lots of people get confused!

Although both of them claim to provide better support and protection to the joints while sporting, an ankle brace is much better at avoiding injuries than as compared to ankle taping.

In fact, in a recent study, it has been found that football players, when protected by their ankle by wearing an ankle brace, found it much more effective than taping.

Wearing an ankle brace is also found to be more beneficial than taping due to the following few reasons: