OREM — Jim Jenson was just one of the millions of people watching the Olympics who noticed it.
"During the Beijing Olympics, I was just really stunned by the use of two things," he said. One was the tape on the volleyball players, but more surprising was the seemingly endless discussion among the announcers about the tape worn by athletes on their shoulders, backs and knees.
"They hadn't seen this before," said Jenson.
During the Olympics, the words most searched on Google were "Michael Phelps." Second to the swimmer who broke an Olympic record for most medals won in a single Games was "Kinesiology tape."
"It was kind of an amazing thing," said Jenson, one of the founders of KT Tape, a Utah-based company that makes and markets kinesiology tape.
What he found when he searched those terms on the Internet surprised him even more than the fascination sports personalities had with the idea of using tape to support muscles or deal with injuries. The tape used by those athletes, maybe most prominently the beach volleyball players, was supplied by a medical company and was not available for general use.
"It wasn't available to regular people," he said. "How can you have a product this great, but it isn't available to the general public?"
At first, Jenson and his partners approached the company that made the tape they'd seen in Beijing about partnering to market it to amateur athletes — including oft-injured weekend warriors. They weren't interested.
So — working with medical professionals and athletic trainers — they began developing their own kinesiology tape.
"We needed to make sure there was really a need for it," said Jenson. "And that they'd be able to use it properly."
That's because most weekend warriors or recreational athletes wouldn't have access to a trainer to help them decide how to use the tape.
"For example, when we designed the product, we decided it needed to be available in precut strips," he said. "Most of the athletes we're marketing to aren't carrying around scissors."
Jenson, who is now vice president of sales and marketing for KT Tape, said they also approached the very woman who put the tape on center stage during the Olympics — beach volleyball star Kerry Walsh.
Four months after hatching the idea, the crew received its first order of KT Tape from Foot Locker. That was December of 2008.
The Utah-based company, run by a group of BYU graduates like Jenson, has taken off — mostly because many recreational athletes need some pain relief and struggle with overuse injuries. In the past, the afflicted have used braces, regular athletic tape or support sleeves.
None of these allows the kind of movement that KT Tape provides while still supporting the sore, injured or healing muscles and tendons. The difficulty is that in many cases, movement is helpful for sore or hurt muscles, but a person's instinct is to not move it.
"A brace locks a muscle down, immobilizes the area," he said. "With tape, it provides stability and support, but it does it without immobilizing the area. And the result is that area gets stronger."
The fact that the company offers extensive written directions, as well as video online training to consumers, allows anyone to use it without medical help. Jenson said it's very important to them — and their advisory board of medical professionals — that consumers understand how the tape works and use it correctly.
Because while it might not hurt an athlete to use it the wrong way, it won't help or support the muscles that are sore or injured.
The tape is used on everything from shin splits to knee pain to plantar fasciitis. It's used on upper-body injuries and strains as well. Jenson said they are constantly asking users to give them feedback about their instructions, the effectiveness of applications, as well as what injuries they might want to see video or written instructions on. He said many users adapt the tape to their own needs after learning how to use it in specific situations.
"KT tape is a solution from injuries on the severe side, like post-surgery swelling — to minor aches and pains," Jenson said. "And the more you move, like with over-use injuries, the more KT Tape becomes the primary solution."
e-mail: adonaldson@desnews.com