There is a never-ending barrage of rehab tools in the musculoskeletal market place, with seemingly a new one invented every week.  The latest offering in this trend is ROCKFLOSS, a sticky compression bandage which the company have created to help mobilise joints and soft tissues and reduce pain.

Here’s the spiel from their website;

“RockFloss is a new, reusable mobility tool that can help you move better and with less pain. RockFloss is a simple, latex, elastic band that fits easily in your gym bag or backpack. It’s easy, convenient and reusable.

• Unglue sticky and stiff muscles
• Reduce muscle and joint pain
• Improve flexibility

RockFloss uses the science of compression and fascial shearing to help ‘unstick’ muscles and joints so they move better and with less pain.”

So, how does it work?

There’s no real information on that. The best we can do is apply some logic from the rehabilitation science we already know.

It’s a compression bandage of sorts, so the idea is probably to create pressure changes within soft tissues, to aid blood supply and drainage. You’re instructed to apply the tape by wrapping it up your limbs, towards your heart, so that would support this theory.

There may be some sort of “false origin” effect, which is used in manual medicine a lot – where you put pressure on the belly of a muscle, and then stretch either end away. Most of the instructional videos seem to support this idea – working from mid-muscle and up over the next most proximal joint.

But does it work?

The jury’s still out. Like with lots of manual medicine, this isn’t “sexy science”. Drug companies just won’t fund research into things like this because it doesn’t serve them commercially (fair enough)

ROCKTAPE, I’m sure have invested in good research as a very reputable manual therapy brand, trusted by practitioners – but no hard figures or claims are made in the marketing materials for the product.

When it comes to stretching aids, I like my patients to know as much as they can, and feel comfortable and confident with using them. The lay-person instructions with this one are far superior to most, I think when used correctly it’s a safe product, and you’d be very unlikely to make any complaint worse.

I’ve tried ROCKFLOSS out on myself for the purpose of this blog, and here are my top tips;

• Don’t buy two thinking you can multitask with this one – you can’t!
• Spend time getting the application right, or the stretch just won’t work.
• Don’t feel you have to apply the tape really tightly, as it actually feels less effective in the stretch.
• Have fun with the stretches you do once the tape is on – this is a great opportunity for a bit of creativity!