Me say "baaaaa"

Sometimes I think that I'm such a trusting baby sheep when it comes to fitness trends. I trust every shepherd (competent or not) to herd me to green grasses and better fitness. Witness my obsession with compression (ha ha, that rhymed..), the total gym that sat in my basement for years, my collection of workout DVDs (hello, P90X that's almost never been used), among many many other examples. Well, this week it's all about the K-tape.

About four or five weeks ago I started experiencing some pain in my left hip whenever I ran. I started seeing a chiropractor (Dr. Frank) who has been helping me with stretching, exercises, e-stim, the whole deal. This week he suggested we try K-tape (also known as kinesio tape)to help with the healing process. If you want to know more about it, check out www.kinesiotaping.com. Though there are a lot of claimed benefits, none of them have been substantiated by what some people call "evidence". Regardless, I'm desperate and anything that could possibly help will be accepted by me.

Okay - let's get real. I've secretly thought it would be cool to try it since I saw Kerry Walsh sporting it in Beijing. Nobody had to twist my arm

Today Dr. Frank taped me up and it wasn't pretty...

Besides the overall hideousness, you will probably notice that my tape is a boring nude color. No fun blue or pink or bad-ass black tape. Nope, just blend-in-with-your-cellulite skin colored stuff. The Russian took some other pictures and they were even less flattering than this one, though it may be hard to imagine without photographic evidence (of which there will not be any). Here he is making me laugh by telling me what I looked like in the other pictures.  Did I say the tape blends in to your cellulite? Strike that and replace with highlight.

While a bright color might have been fun, the function is the important thing here. Truthfully, I was really hoping the tape would somehow help with healing the hip in time for Pumpkinman. I had my fingers and toes crossed for a miracle, but listen this isn't 34th street and we're not even in Manhatten.

To test the tape out, I went for a ten minute run at a slow pace on the treadmill. If I'm being truthful, I didn't feel like the tape was doing anything. I still was feeling pain, fatigue and all manner of weird sensations around my hip area that I have had on and off for the last month.  I don't think I'm buying the hype at this point, but I'm willing to give it a little more time. The tape is supposed to last for a few days (through showers) so I'll see if there is any improvement on my Saturday run.

On another note - someone who looks bad-ass without the black K-tape...

We were sitting on our stoop and the Noggin just got down on the ground and started doing elevated push-ups. Something I'm pretty sure I cannot do. No, I am not yelling at him to give me ten, even though the Russian says that's what it looks like I'm doing.