“As fatigue accumulates in intense exercises and games, athletes feel discomfort in the muscles, which leads to the result, so primarily focusing on massage to restore athlete’s muscles to their normal state. Then I apply Nitto Kinesiology EX so that the muscles that require intense movement during competition will maintain optimum condition.” (Ms. Enosawa)

The slight difference in body condition that only world-class athletes can recognize. How do they adjust such precise muscles?

This athletic tape is called kinesiology tape, and was developed for practitioners of the kinesio taping method. It is not used to secure joints to limit the movement of the joint. This tape is used to practice kinesiology, lifting skin by sticking tape along the muscles so it can stretch and shrink to the same degree as the muscles, and restore the elasticity of muscles that have stretched too much or contracted completely to their normal state.

Since adhesive tape is being directly applied to the skin, the product requires a high level of adhesive technology that can continue being used even after being applied and removed, as well as less effect on the skin and pain when being removed. Mr. Hamada of the Tohoku plant of Nitto Denko Corporation was involved in the development of this adhesive.

“The development of adhesives with less irritation to the skin than conventional kinesiology tapes was a highly challenging hurdle, but we had an enormous amount of material data at the time we developed YU-KI BAN™ low stimulus tape for medical use. In fact, in the materials we rejected in the development at that time, was the key to the answer about the adhesive we should use for Nitto Kinesiology Tape EX. It took courage to go back along a road already traveled, but without doing so successful development would have been impossible.” (Hamada)

We finally found the answer by repeating experiments on an enormous number of combinations. We were able to develop an adhesive that was gentle on the skin and can be repeatedly applied and removed without losing its adhesive strength thanks to our vast amount of knowledge about adhesives that we had accumulated so far and the tenaciousness of our developers.

The reason for developing the new product Nitto Kinesiology EX came from the voice of consumers. When hearing the points of dissatisfaction on kinesiology tape in a questionnaire, complaints included the fact that “it causes skin rashes” and “it hurts when peeled off”. In order to solve these problems, we looked further into the characteristics of adhesive tapes, and developed a product where skin hardly sticks to the tape, in other words, it causes almost no pain. In commercializing Nitto Kinesiology EX, we carried out testing during a summer camp with the cooperation of a high school rugby team. “The players commented that the tape did not peel off even in intense sports such as rugby, stayed on even when they took a bath, and didn’t hurt when peeling off.”

And the reason we put out colored tape favored by world-class athletes, came from the voices of consumers who said they wanted a bright image because the conventional colors looked like they had injuries. This is how we kept making advances based on the needs of not only professional athletes, but the needs of amateurs and sports enthusiasts as well.