Evidence review · Respiratory taping
Can a strip of tape help you breathe better?
A 2026 systematic review pooled every decent study on kinesiology tape and breathing. The honest answer turns out to be different for the marathon runner than for the person living with COPD.
18 studies 684 participants 2 cohorts: athletes · COPD Evidence certainty: very low
Based on the open-access systematic review by du Plessis, De Beer-Brandon, Mothabeng & Human, Canadian Journal of Respiratory Therapy, 2026;62:53–63.
Kinesiology tape is everywhere and in every Physio's kit bag.
What's largely unknown is whether sticking it over the muscles you use to breathe does anything remotely useful. The idea is appealing: tape the diaphragm or the accessory breathing muscles and maybe you stimulate them to work better, improve posture, body awareness, encourage a deeper breath, or lift more air in and out. It's cheap, quick, and easy to apply — which is exactly why clinicians in busy and lower-resource settings have reported positive benefits.
The trouble is that the studies have pointed in different directions for years. This review gathered them in one place, and separated healthy adults from adults with respiratory conditions (mostly COPD), and ran the numbers. Before we get to the verdicts, a quick refresher on the muscles involved.
Diaphragm
The primary breathing muscle. This dome under the lungs flattens as it contracts, pulling air in. It's the main target of most "respiratory" taping.
Intercostals
The short muscles between the ribs. They expand and lower the rib cage, fine-tuning how much the chest opens with each breath.
Accessory muscles
The scalenes and sternocleidomastoid in the neck. Mostly quiet at rest; recruited hard when breathing becomes a struggle.
Abdominals
The engine of forceful exhalation and coughing. Active expiratory muscles — relevant when air needs pushing out, not just letting out.
AWhere the tape actually goes
The applications, at a glance
Across the reviewed studies, the tape was placed in a few recurring patterns. Applications meant to facilitate inspiration run along the diaphragm's costal margin and up the accessory neck muscles. Applications meant to support expiration sit over the abdominals. A third common approach lays strips along the thoracic spine and rib cage to support the mechanics of the chest wall. As a rule, accessory-muscle taping is applied with only light tension — about 20–30%.
Common respiratory taping placements Schematic
Front — diaphragm · neck · abdomen
Back — thoracic / rib cage
Facilitating inspiration (diaphragm, accessory neck, rib cage) Supporting expiration (abdominals)
1Focus · The athlete
For athletes: a marginal edge, not a magic strip
Healthy lungs and trained breathing muscles already work close to their ceiling — so there's simply less room for a piece of tape to make a measurable difference.
That logic plays out in the data. The most-cited athletic study taped the thorax and tested people during heavy exercise. With the tape on, participants moved a little more air out per minute (a greater expiratory tidal volume) and showed a small but statistically significant improvement in mechanical efficiency. Crucially, breathing rate and heart rate didn't budge, and most people said the tape felt comfortable while they worked. A genuine, if modest, signal.
Other studies in fit and active adults pointed the same way: compared with sham tape or no tape, kinesiology tape produced small but consistent improvements in lung-flow measures (FEV₁ and the FEV₁/FVC ratio) and in peak expiratory flow — the last effect was strongest when the tape was applied over the abdominals, which makes sense given the abdominals power a forceful breath out. A few studies even reported better aerobic capacity, shuttle-run distance and breathing efficiency.
So why isn't this a slam dunk?
Because the wins don't hold up once you stack the studies together or add a real training stimulus. When tape was bolted onto a course of inspiratory muscle training, it added nothing over the training alone. Several studies found no change in heart rate, breathing rate or VO₂max, and a couple found no effect on breathlessness, cycling or walking tests. And when the review pooled the healthy-adult data formally, the effect on FEV₁ was essentially zero — with the studies agreeing closely on that null result.
Watch the skin Tape is low-risk, but not no-risk. Among healthy participants, the review noted a recreational runner who developed dermatitis after repeated use over four weeks. Reactions are usually minor, but skin checks matter with prolonged or repeated wear.
The verdict for athletes
Don't expect tape alone to lift performance. The effects are small, inconsistent, and most visible when paired with genuine effort or training. Treat respiratory taping as a possible proprioceptive cue for breathing pattern and posture — cheap, comfortable and worth a try for an individual who likes it — but never as a substitute for the breathing and conditioning work that actually drives adaptation.
2Focus · Living with COPD
For people with COPD: a low-cost helper, used in the right moments
In COPD the breathing system is already disadvantaged — which paradoxically gives a simple intervention more room to help than it ever has in a healthy athlete.
Here's the mechanical problem. In COPD, air gets trapped and the lungs over-inflate (hyperinflation). That pushes the diaphragm down into a flattened, stretched position where it pulls far less efficiently. To compensate, people lean ever harder on the accessory neck muscles, and the chest wall itself grows stiffer with time. Breathing becomes effortful and inefficient. The theory behind taping is that it might support posture and rib-cage movement, cue the diaphragm, and — with thoracic application — help the chest recoil on the way out, nudging trapped air out and easing hyperinflation.
Does it deliver? Sometimes, and conditionally:
Lung volumes improved — but only in combination. One trial saw meaningful gains in FVC, FEV₁ and the FEV₁/FVC ratio when tape was added to deep breathing exercises. Tape on its own, or against standard care, physiotherapy, incentive spirometry or no tape, generally showed no advantage.
During a flare-up, signals appear. In a couple of studies of COPD exacerbations, tape plus physiotherapy improved oxygen saturation and breathing-muscle strength — though some of that gain likely reflects natural recovery from the flare. In stable COPD, those benefits didn't show up.
Modest functional and mood gains. Combined with physiotherapy or incentive spirometry, taping nudged up six-minute walk distance and added around a minute of exercise tolerance, and reduced breathlessness in several studies. In moderate-to-severe COPD, it even improved depression scores — plausibly because breathing felt a little easier.
Duration and repetition seem to matter. Benefits looked larger in people who'd had COPD for more than five years and when tape was reapplied over time, rather than used once.
And the sober counterweight: when the review pooled five COPD studies, the overall effect on FEV₁ was not statistically significant — even though three of those studies individually favoured tape, one of them strongly. The benefits that do appear tend to be short- to medium-term, and the overall certainty of the evidence is very low.
Watch the skin · respect the care plan One COPD patient reported itching after a week of daily application. More importantly: taping is an adjunct. It must sit alongside — never in place of — medical management, inhaled therapy and pulmonary rehabilitation.
The verdict for COPD
A reasonable low-cost, low-risk add-on for selected patients. It's most likely to help when layered on top of breathing exercises or pulmonary rehab, during exacerbations, or in longer-standing disease — and it may ease breathlessness and lift mood in the short term. Try it, set realistic expectations, track each person's response and skin, and keep it firmly as a complement to proven care.
BSide by side
Two audiences, two takeaways
The athlete
Marginal & inconsistent
Small, real-but-fragile gains in flow and efficiency in individual studies
No added benefit on top of inspiratory muscle training
No change in heart rate, breathing rate or VO₂max
Pooled effect on FEV₁: essentially zero
Best framed as a comfort/proprioception cue, not a performance tool
Living with COPD
Conditional & short-term
Volume gains mainly when combined with breathing exercises
Oxygen & muscle-strength signals during exacerbations
Modest walk-distance, dyspnoea and mood improvements
Little to no benefit in stable disease or one-off use
A genuine — if unproven — adjunct to standard care
★The honest bottom line
What the review really concluded
Across 18 studies and 684 people, the pooled analysis found no statistically significant effect of kinesiology tape on the headline respiratory measures — lung volumes, flows, or breathing-muscle strength — in either healthy adults or people with respiratory conditions. Most studies were small and carried a high risk of bias, so the overall certainty of evidence is very low.
And yet the individual studies — especially in COPD — keep hinting that some people do benefit. That combination is the whole story. So in practice:
It's cheap, quick and low-risk, so it's reasonable to trial as an adjunct — particularly alongside breathing exercises or rehab.
Manage expectations honestly. The evidence does not support tape as a stand-alone treatment or a guaranteed performance boost.
Watch the individual. Track each person's response and check their skin, and stop if there's no benefit or any irritation.
du Plessis C, De Beer-Brandon R, Mothabeng DJ, Human A. The effect of kinesiology tape on respiratory function in adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Canadian Journal of Respiratory Therapy. 2026;62:53–63. doi:10.29390/001c.156353. (PMCID: PMC12967087.) Open access under CC BY-NC 4.0.
Key primary studies cited above
1
Aboaloyoun L, Obaya HE, Nassef NL, Bahgat MD. Effect of kinesiotaping on vital capacity in COPD. Med J Cairo Univ. 2022;90(9):1479–1493. (tape + deep breathing exercises)
2
Tomruk M, Keleş E, Özalevli S, Alpaydin AÖ. Thoracic kinesio taping in COPD: a randomized controlled trial. Explore (NY). 2020;16(5):332–338. (short- to medium-term benefit only)
3
Baxi G, Singh P, Basu S, Khan M, Palekar T. Immediate effects of kinesio taping on lung functions, chest expansion and dyspnea in COPD. Indian J Physiother Occup Ther. 2020;14(1). (application photograph)
4
Malehorn K, Hiniker J, Mackey T, Heumann KJ, Murray SR, Pettitt RW. Kinesio Tape applied to the thorax… Int J Exerc Sci. 2013;6(2):157–163.
5
Daitx RB, et al. Limited utility of Kinesio Taping in COPD exacerbation. Physiother Theory Pract. 2018;34(10):741–746.
6
Lee M, Kim M, Ahn C. Concurrent inspiratory muscle training and tape. J Korean Soc Integr Med. 2014;2(3):65–73. (no added benefit over training)