The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Great Hands, Great Life!: Why Proper Hand Exercise Must Be Part of Your Life by Dr. Terry Zachary

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

Great Hands, Great Life!: Why Proper Hand Exercise Must Be Part of Your Life by Dr. Terry Zachary https://amzn.to/3turzsK Proper hand muscle training is essential. Therapists, trainers, grip athletes, musicians, workers, esport athletes, computer users, hobbyists & general population: What if we have been training hand muscles & grip wrong for decades? Or always? Could this entire fitness area have been misunderstood for so long? What health & performance costs have resulted? Could the hand muscles be a connection to general health, life vibrancy & life longevity? Could imbalanced hand muscles negatively affect the fingers, thumbs, wrists, carpal tunnels, forearms & elbows? Turns out the answer to ALL of these questions is... YES! Dr. Terry Zachary has been studying & training hand muscles & grip mechanics for over 25 years. He was inspired by witnessing rampant repetitive grip injuries (RGI's) while playing professional golf on mini-tours throughout USA & Canada in the mid-90's. Combine that experience with 10 years of private practise as a sports & family chiropractor & many questions about standard 'squeeze-only' hand exercise were brought to question. Dr. Zachary had especially been 'woken up' to the importance of hand exercise via studying elbow & wrist injuries in professional golfers, a pervasive problem. Most every study and expert pinned the blame on wrist extensor tendonitis as the root cause of tennis elbow. Dr. Zachary disagreed strongly. He studied the principles of grip & developed the term 'kinetic chain of grip' to explain how forearm muscles contract to support wrist position during grip, grasp or finger action & how the finger extensor muscles in turn contract to support finger flexor muscles. In the kinetic chain of grip, the finger extensor muscles are constantly contracting. The main finger extensor muscles attach at the lateral epicondyle & are thus a factor in most, if not all, tennis elbow cases. Dr. Zachary further explored the common presence of imbalanced hand muscles in relation to finger, thumb, wrist, carpal tunnel, forearm & elbow breakdown. He recognized a poor posture parallel of the hand muscles; but the training & rebalancing took too long, was confusing & used too many tools. And each tool did not move the hands naturally through full, 3-dimensional ranges of motion (ROMs). A close friend who was travelling with Dr. Zachary as a professional golfer developed tennis elbow & Dr. Zachary responded by developing what is now Handmaster Plus. Handmaster Plus made complete hand & grip exercise easy & convenient for the masses, coupling multiple exercises into few, eliminating the need for multiple resistance items. The 'HC/HO Exercise,' the 'Figure 8 Exercise' and the 'Finger Tip Grip Exercise' have become common exercises in NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, PGA, ATP circles as well as in amateur grip sports, music, workplace ergonomics, esports, computers & hobby. 'Great Hands, Great Life!' explains general hand muscle layout & function, & illustrates well how imbalanced hand muscles affect the stability of all upper extremity structures from the elbow to finger & thumb tips. He gives exercises that are easy-to-do so that each user's grip is balanced & the kinetic chain of grip is solid & stable. Dr. Zachary reviews dozens of studies in the book that relate hand exercise to numerous disease conditions, even to the extent of multiple famous studies that draw direct correlations between grip strength & life longevity. Dr. Zachary also illustrates how proper hand exercise stimulates maximum circulation that likely affects the whole body. Hand exercise improves lymph flow, in turn stimulating lymphatic duct drainage, a key to removing toxins from the head, neck, body and brain. We have ignored hand exercise for far too long. Dr. Zachary teaches us that we need to rethink the importance of the hands if we expect high performance, low risk of injury, & a long life. 'Great Hands, Great Life!

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

The Chris Voss Show. Come on. The Chris Voss Show. Hey, whoa. Hey, calm down there. Calm down there, Miss Opera Lady. Thanks for tuning into the show. As you may have heard, over the last week, we hired an opera singer to sing in the intro. So that work is being taken over because it was just too much.

It was just too much work for Chris Voss to keep doing that. Anyway, guys, welcome to the big show. The Chris Voss Show family is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as your wife does, because you did not use the proper way to empty the dishwasher yesterday, and she will remember that for the next 20 years. So there you go. And rightly so.

So there's that. As always, please refer the show to your family friends and relatives go to goodreads.com for chest christmas youtube.com for chest christmas linkedin.com for chest christmas and uh what else there christmas one on the tickety-tockety go to itunes give us that five star review we need as much help as we can get boys and girls we're doing four shows a day 20 shows a week a weekday and uh there's just so much content and so much brain power so much what's the brain bleed is what we say in the intro uh for 15 years we've been bringing you all the brightest people the billionaires the ceos the pulitzer prize winners the authors the uh astronauts the white

house advisors and then just me so uh see how that worked out in the end it just kind of fell right off a cliff um today we have an amazing gentleman on the show and he's going to enlighten you brighten you and expand your mind should we put that on a shirt maybe i don't know it sounds cool uh dr terry zachary joins us on the show today. He's a former pro golfer and sports chiropractor. He's a sports chiropractor now, I believe. We'll find out. He's a developer of a cool product that you can utilize called Hand Master Plus.

And we're going to get into it. We're going to learn a lot about movement, health, and all that sort of good stuff. He is the author also of a book called Great Hands, Great Life. He's a former professional golfer and sports chiropractic who saw dozens of repetitive grip injuries to the fingers, thumbs, hands, wrists, carpal tunnels, and elbows of golfers. In response, he developed the Handmaster Plus exercise system, and it's helped over 1 million people train their hands properly

to get a grip on grip in therapy, sports, music, workplace, gaming, computers, and smartphones. Boy, I use all those things. Welcome to the show, Terry. How are you? Hey, Chris. Doing really good. Ready for you.

And thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. We certainly appreciate it. Now, it seems you're a former professional golfer. Are you currently a sports chiropractor? I actually, Chris sold my practice a few years ago. I just wanted to make sure that. Yep.

Got a little too busy with both. And it's a big world out there and a lot of people have hands. So I realized I had a big task. There you go. Yeah. It's a, there's, I have three of them. I don't know what that means, but there's probably a joke there. But if you want to know more, see me on OnlyFans.

So what motivated you to develop this product and what is it? Give us like a 30,000 overview of the Handmaster Plus. Yeah, Chris, I think what motivated me, you know, basically I was in practice and half my practice was sports chiropractic, you know, half was family. I already saw a lot of repetitive grip stuff. I had questioned the way we train grip several years before. And I grew up probably the same as you did. And I was involved in sports and I would always be told, take something and squeeze it, whether it was,

you know, spring loaded or a coiled gripper or, you know, racquetball. I just bought into it. And I, you know, I didn't know any different than that.

And then as I got into, you know, as I got into studying the hand, wrist and forearm and elbow and carpal tunnel, eventually I started to see that this is kind of crazy what we're doing but uh that I didn't really expect it to be in my future I just it was one of the treatments we did in our office we saw a lot of hockey players I'm Canadian so we saw a lot of hockey players a lot of golfers because of my background in golf um and then tennis players etc but we also saw you know office workers

and stuff and we always had this really long protocol where where they patients almost get bored because we use three or four different items to train all 27 grip muscles which that might sound a little bit weird to some of your you know some of your audience but there's 27 muscles of grip and we basically had to break our patient's knowledge of grip it's not just this it's the muscles that open it's the nine muscles that close the nine muscles that open and spread the hand as well as the nine forearm muscles so it got into where when i got into golf i saw it i took some time off because i was a college player and I took some time off of practice to play professional golf.

Chris never made the PGA tour, by the way. Oh, really? No, you don't recognize the face. So that's why. But we were exposed to all these injuries. And then I would see stuff in the elbow and the carpal tunnel and the wrist and the hands and the forearm. And these golfers had no idea what was going on.

And I did. And then started really looking at it more acutely. And I've had, I've seen the various, you know, fitness devices over the years. There's all sorts, you know, there's like the spring thing where you, you know, weightlifting where you, you, you pull the springs. My father had one when I was young and then he had he had some of those hand grippers they were kind of this y spring thing with handles on them and you would grip them uh and i i just always thought you know they were for weightlifting i never really gave any thought to 27 muscles involved in the hand and gripped uh i never really thought about it but you know i've had times where i've had corporal tunnel issues. I know relatives

that have had corporal tunnel surgery, and it's not fun, and it seems to not sometimes fix what they have. There's almost a continuum. We're in this world, like you mentioned, or like I mentioned in the bio, where we're always holding these phones, always typing on these keyboards, ergonomics. People are always trying to get their ergonomics right. But I guess people don't realize that maybe the real core problem is those muscles that are inside of the hand.

It's not maybe so much the wrist. You know, and that's a pretty good read of the situation, Chris, because that's what does happen. And the thing your father had that coiled gripper you know nothing really it's also in two dimensions you don't really do anything with your hands in two dimensions but you know you're going to shorten your flexor muscles when you do that and you will feel some strength for a long time so people think i'm feeling stronger just training these just these nine closing muscles but what

happens over time is the grip mechanics actually come into imbalance eventually and like when you're dealing with professional golfers you can only do that app so long and then the muscles become imbalanced if you don't train the all the other 18 muscles and then they'll end up seeing me in a practice or you know when i was on tour i saw a lot of professional golfers that would come to me but the imbalance eventually your grip if you're just closing you know just squeeze only gripper you'll go up you'll plateau and then eventually the imbalance will make you weaker and you'll run into problems. And that's what we've been doing for 15 plus years is getting that idea out of people's head.

It's the one area of the body we just don't pay any attention to. You know, the carpal tunnel, people only know it for carpal tunnel surgery, carpal tunnel syndrome. But it's very, very easy, Chris, to make your carpal tunnel thrive. The carpal tunnel is a grip structure. And that might sound weird again, because you'll just think, well, why is this thing even here? No, it's a grip structure. But if you don't understand how the muscles come together to stabilize that grip, you're going to bring it into where you collapse the carpal tunnel,

shorten the elbow, shorten the fingers and the thumb, and shorten the wrist, and you're going to run into problems. And that's one of the things we're just trying to almost break it all down and reinvent it and tell people, forget everything you've heard. There's 27 muscles, train them all. You'll see performance go up, you'll see injury go down. And we'll even talk if you want to about life longevity because strength and life longevity has even been brought into the into the focus in the last five years there you go movement and getting the blood flow so most of the people are going to consume uh what we're talking about today are going to do this in audio format so can you describe what the product is or what it looks like to people so that they can pick that up as they're in their car doing whatever they're doing.

Yeah, absolutely. Very simply. It's quite simple to do. You know, visually is great, but I can explain it to your listeners as well. So, Chris, even if people just take their hand and it's just, you know, what we're doing is we're taking the natural structure and anatomy of the hand and we're just taking it through its full range of motion. That's all we're doing so if you take your hand and you put your hand up and you squeeze just squeeze your hand to make a grip to make a fist right and you that's your nine muscles going through their the nine muscles that close your hand going through their full range of motion

now if you do the opposite and open and spread your hand wide, those are the nine muscles that open and spread your hand going through their full natural range of motion. Now, if you take that hand while it's spread, okay, and this is where your viewers or your listeners are going to have to kind of just imagine it a little bit. And at the wrist, I want you to make the widest figure eight you can possibly make with your hand open. So if you do that, you're training all nine muscles that position the wrist in whatever activity you would be doing. Wow, I can really feel that. And because people haven't trained these muscles, that's with no resistance.

We haven't even brought the product in yet. So that's what they'd be doing. They close for a second, open and spread for a second. no resistance we haven't even brought the product in yet so that's what they'd be doing they close for a second open and spread for a second do a figure eight or two with the wrist with the hand open and spread and you're going to feel all 27 muscles right there that exercise Chris when I used to do it in practice before I ran into all these professional golfers and saw all these problems those to train those 27 muscles used to take about 20 minutes to half an hour. And the patients were confused, frustrated stuff lying all over the place.

So nobody did it. So it was really hard for me to push them to do the exercise properly. When we made Handmaster Plus, which is like a three in the morning aha moment, one of those things, we were able to now and all as we do for your listeners, for your viewers, it's pretty easy, but all as we do is we put a ball just like a racquetball would resist the muscles that close. We take a ball and we kind of carve out the middle guts and we put a custom cord through that that hooks onto your thumbs and fingers. And then all you're doing is that same exercise.

For our main figure eight exercise, that's how we train most of our athletes, amateur and professional. Most of our musicians are trained with that same figure eight exercise. But now the ball resists your muscles that are closing. The cord resists the elastic cord that goes through the product,

resists the muscles that are open and spreading. And you take those muscles through their full range of motion. And you're going to train all of those muscles into balance because you're taking them through their full range of motion. Wow. And so it's, it looks like a tennis ball. There's a hole through the middle and you these, these, uh, five, uh, sort of circular things that your fingers go through and so they hold on your fingers one holds on to your thumb that comes out the bottom and uh you really have to see a picture of it to get a format of it but once you do it makes sense because as you open your hand the the fingers the the cords are holding on to the fingers the round like cords if you will and then the thumb.

And imagine there's some stretchiness to that. So you're pulling the stretch as you go, and that gives you resistance. And then when you squeeze back down, you're squeezing the ball in and of itself up against those muscles. This makes sense. And I'm taking a look on Amazon, and I can see that there's several different variations. There's a soft version, a firm version. There's various collections you can buy of a nine-piece set and a six-count set.

What's the difference between people that might need the soft and the firm versions? Yeah, so, Chris, when we started out, it was, you know, the only thing in my mind was to help these athletes. It really was to train properly um there was there came a point not you know not long after we really kind of got it right with how to build this thing um which took you know it was a learning curve for me for sure but once we got it right a little bit we realized okay now wow what if somebody does have a tennis elbow or a really active golfer's elbow or carpal tunnel

syndrome, like we were talking about, or, you know, wrist, finger, thumb, or they've come out of surgery, et cetera. Well, we're going to need something that's not, doesn't have as much resistance as the medium one does. Our medium one was the first thing we come up with. So then, yeah, we built a, we built a soft one. That's basically the exercise that we just took your viewers, your audience through, you know, it's just a little bit more resistance. The soft one that's basically the exercise that we just took your viewers, your audience through. You know, it's just a little bit more resistance. The soft one's just a little bit more resistance than nothing. And then the medium goes into more of a late, you know, a late recovery or a wellness strengthening tool.

And the medium is where most people will stay, to be honest with you, Chris. But then there's a firm version that just makes the cords are a little bit extra stiff, a little stiffer, and the ball is a little stiffer. And just provides a little bit more resistance for those, what I'll almost say is those freaks that are quite a bit stronger than the average person. But I'd say maybe 5%. That might even be high if people move on to the on to the firm but mostly we want people to start with the soft these muscles have never been trained by most people and then move to the medium and that's usually enough for most applications but if you need a firmer one you know that three pack has the firm in it, or they can just, if they're buying a soft, then a medium, then a firm, that's up to them. There you go.

Now, I have, I believe it's a 13-span hand. I have giant hands and feet, like 6'2", but I have freakishly long arms. I can't buy off the rack shirts because I'll have an extra two inches. And so it looks like you're oh did that shirt shrink on you there chris so i have to have stuff tailored but i have these freakishly large hands and i know what their span is because i use them for measuring when i go yeah when i when i'm out of something i went hey will this fit on my desk at home i can be like okay you go 13 13 13 i think it's 11 or 13. I don't remember exactly.

But, uh, so thumb to finger. So I have very large hands. Um, when I hold my girlfriend's hands, I'm like, holy crap, how old are you? I need to check your age. Cause, uh, you know, they're just small. Um, so are there different ball sizes or does it matter with people that have larger or smaller hands?

I mean, it'll make a little bit of a difference what your resistance is, but with each of the packs that come. So, for example, you're going to, generally, I will tell you that most people don't, even yourself, if you're doing work, most people do not need a lot of extra training in the grip stuff. We do stuff with our grip all day. Like we're always doing stuff with our grip. So generally speaking, the nine flexor closing muscles are usually pretty strong in people.

Chris, when we see somebody with large hands like yours, you're going to get more resistance at the very end of the range of motion inflection. But the most important thing thing and i'll explain it a little further i'm glad you asked that question because what happens is your the muscles that open and spread your hand are really the most important muscles we're trying to train as well as those forearm muscles when you do the figure eight now the reason we do that so so in your to to answer your first question chris you're with big hands going to get a lot of resistance through the opening and spreading because you're taking the cords through a wider motion. With each unit, we have a small cord and a large cord.

So you would pop in the large cord. You wouldn't even look at the small cord by the looks of your hand size. Yeah. That's the first question. That's the first question that's the first answer but the second one is maybe i want to answer answer to your audience just so everybody really gets this about why we train 27 muscles is that whenever i grip something let's say i'm i'll take i'll go with musicians now if i'm gripping something for a long time let's say a guitar player because we work with a lot

of guitar players they're gripping something for a long time, their flexor muscles are getting shortened. So you think they're only using their flexor muscles. But anytime I use those nine muscles to grip, those nine muscles that open and spread my hand are contracting as well. Okay, does that make sense? They're contracting, it's a co it's a supportive co contraction. So if I'm playing guitar for, you know, a year, five years, 10 years, God forbid if it's 20 years, because we've seen a lot of the older musicians. Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones.

You're going to develop so many imbalance problems on your extensor muscles because they never go through their full range of motion. So Chris, when we have people using the product and they start going through their full natural range of motion, even when we had you just demo the exercise of putting your hands through a full range of motion, you'll feel tired with those muscles that open and spread your hand. Yeah. And you'll feel tired with the forearm muscles. They're just not worked properly. properly but so anyways once you use that and you're using the cords where you are going to get a good resistance off the cords because the bigger your hands are the more resistance you'll

get you know it's a wider range motion you'll train actually quicker wow so but but again we we've gauged the hand size for an average two large hand size as well as a small hand size there you go and the and the key part is we the main thing we are i'd be more i'm more concerned about the nine muscles that open and spread the hand and the nine forearm muscles and that is a cord resistance thing not a ball resistance thing yeah you i took and did the exercise he's talking people should do this open your hand fully right And then rotate like this. Yeah, just figure eight motion. It's like you're trying to make the biggest figure eight you can with your wrist.

Ow, ow. And you know what's funny is I'm getting pain like right in here where my elbow sits. And I have one of these angled mice that I use. And so my, I kind of rest this wrist part right here on the desk. And I kind of use it because it rotates really well. And it does better than using it like a normal mouse like this. In fact, I find it more comfortable, but man, I got, there's some serious. Tend, tendon pain and stuff going on right there in the wrist. Let me, let me speak on that, Chris, because it brings up a really important issue that we don't always do

on all of our talks. But what happens is, and I always tell people when I'm talking about hand exercise, there's bad news and there's good news. So the bad news is from a practitioner's point of view, if you are, obviously you obviously we know how how much you work on your show so if you're on your mouse a whole bunch there's going to be certain habitual patterns patterns that you do with your wrist and you i saw you grabbing kind of down on your wrist feeling tightness there so there's habitual patterns you're doing a wrist that'll be different chris than a hockey player does every single day it'll be different than a guitar player does every single day it'll be different than an artist or

a gamer does every single day so the bad news is that all the injuries are going to be repetitive injuries specific to your daily activities your daily grip tasks okay so they're very difficult to figure out they're a little more difficult to get a protocol for because you have to do different soft tissue treatments based on what the mechanics of those 27 muscles in repetition do every day. Again, yours is different than a hockey player is different than the guitar player, different than a dental hygienist, let's say say but the exercise that we do to recover the area properly is the exact same so on the on the person that has to do the recovery exercises which would be you if you ever want to get that wrist straightened out it's going to be we do two

exercises the first exercise is you close against the ball you open and spread against the court close against the ball you open and spread against the court, close against the ball, you open and spread against the court. Do you think you could remember that, Chris? Does that pop? Yeah, this is really easy. Okay. So even for me, the next exercise in Chris is to close, open and spread, which would I have you do? And then do the figure eight exercise. You can remember that. So the two corrective exercises we would do is those two exercises, period. I've already told you how to do them. They're easy. So we've taken away all the excuses.

But the complication of the imbalances for the practitioner, that takes a little bit more thought process because you have to think of what are the muscles at closing doing? What are the muscles at opening doing? And what are your forearm and wrist muscles doing that's going to determine the direction of your imbalance there's many imbalances that come from the daily activities there you go i i've heard we've been talking about this more on the show ever since i saw the netflix documentary about blue zones i forget the exact title but i saw it I think about a month or two ago. And it really blew my mind because some of the centurions that they featured in there,

they literally went and found people that were centurions that were still very active and mobile. And almost, you know, they were almost appearing as youthful in their physique and their agility and their energy and, and their lifestyle, you know, they're still highly mobile, highly active and being active was one of the key points. They, they were constantly moving throughout the day. They weren't sedentary in their lifestyle. Um, they, they, you know, like the Japanese, you know, they'll, you'll see them sit on the floor and they sleep on the floor in thin mats. And then they, you know, they're constantly them sit on the floor and they sleep on the floor in thin mats. And then they, you know, they're constantly getting up. There's all just different movement.

Of course, part of that movement is they're burning calories as they're doing all that. But also, it's the stretching. It's the making sure all the body parts are in movement. You know, years ago, my audience has heard this probably ad nauseum. But years ago, I would go to a chiropractor for the stress thing. And what was happening is the stress muscles in my back were, I was running three companies at the same time. I was completely stressed out and probably wasn't eating or drinking well. And I know I wasn't. And it would throw my back out and I would go to the chiropractor and he would say, he would put me in place.

Well, my stress levels got so bad with my ADHD that I would leave. And as I'd be driving down the road to go back to work, my back would start going crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. And I'd be like, and so after two times of going back and going, I don't, can you hit me one more time? Because I'm, as soon as I get in the car, I'm going right back out again. The second time I went in, he goes, he goes, well, I should tell you something, but you'll probably never see me again. And I go, okay. I, and I was just so much pain. I think he just realized what, where I was. And he goes, he goes, look, your problem isn't your spine. It isn't your bones. It's your muscles. And you've got your muscles contracting and throwing your back out.

And he goes, here's what I want you to do. He goes, get a tennis ball. And he goes, what I want you to do is stand up against a wall, and it's a little hard to learn, but you can learn it, and run the tennis ball up and down your back and up and down the muscles in your back. And he goes, when you find one of those pinched muscles, because I would get these pinched nerves that would just be torture. He goes, when you find one of those pinched muscles, because I would get these pinched nerves that would just, you know, be torture. He goes, when you find one of those

pinched nerves, I want you to press up against the wall with the tennis ball and, and, and it's going to hurt. It's going to feel like somebody's stabbing you, especially if it's really bad. He goes, but what happens is your, your muscles tight because the blood can't, you're, you're in pain because the blood can't go through the muscle because the muscle's clenched it. And by pressing the ball against it, it's kind of, you know, like you'd think that would be a bad thing, but actually what it will do is it will push on the muscle so the blood flow goes through and the muscle will break and not break, but the muscle will release and then the blood can go, and then you don't have pain anymore.

And so he was right. I never went to a chiropractor again because I'll use the tennis ball just anywhere in my body, back, glutes, legs. You know, if I have a kneecap that's hurting, give that a rub. I use some red light therapy now. But, you know, this is kind of the same principle of that ball.

Yeah, you know, it's kind of the same principle of that ball. Yeah. You know, it's funny that you would bring that up because it's, you know, there's, when we first looked at the mechanics, when I first looked at the mechanics of grip, it is actually very similar to your posture muscles. And how I say that, Chris, is the example you just gave. So if I'm, if you're sitting all day, standing all day, whatever, if you were a busy person, those extensor muscles are actually contracting all day to support your spine, you know, support your posture,

and then you're doing whatever you're doing in front of yourself. No different than the muscles that are closing your hand or grabbing all day doing what they do, and the muscles on the extensor side are contracting all day in support so it's a co-contraction as you do that all day absolutely you're you're not when i grab something i'm not grabbing it and then opening my hand the other way and doing something behind me with my hand open which would create a pretty good balance by the end of the day you're not doing that you're repetitively gripping you're doing stuff with your hands in front of you all day not only is that a hand muscle imbalance but it would be a pot it becomes a postural imbalance because we never open and

spread our spine like because we've got all the spinal muscles back there so you're kind of treating a little bit of a symptom back there by by it. I would say I would even go further on that evaluation you did. It's interesting because in our company, and again, it's just something I saw in professional golfers, they would have the same thing that you're talking about. They're hitting putts, they're hitting chips, they're hitting bunker shots, they're taking full swings, they're taking half swings, they're hitting balls all day. And if you'll notice, the golf club's in front of them. So they're always working. Those extensor muscles in the back of the spine,

which are postural muscles, are really working the whole day. So what we would have them do, and Chris, if they're a right-hand golfer, the shoulder would be low. Left-handed golfer, so they're building themselves into imbalance. We actually developed, and I know we're talking about Handmaster Plus, but from that experience, we developed a three-minute stretch, which is something that what I tell people is you have to be able to do something at home every day to offset your imbalances.

Then if you're going to see a professional like a chiropractor, a naturopath, massage therapist, whatever, get checked every now and then, I think that's a good strategy. But your daily habits, Chris, every day are your daily habits you have to have some uh sensible method to offset your daily habits every day and we got golfers on this three minute stretch and again three minute stretch is almost exactly like the handmaster because it was something that doesn't take forever everybody's got time for it but they have to learn about the anatomy and learn how to do it and that's another thing is

every single day and i do this three minute stretch every single day i have for about 15 years and i'm at the desk a lot because now i'm working as a business person it's not always a thrill i can tell you that you know when i'm doing stuff or talking on doing videos a lot of times i'm doing my three minute stretch and that's something that you can do to offset those balances those imbalances but chris as you bring it up whatever again it's the same thing we said before whatever your daily habits are that they're in they're in imbalance you either quit your business, quit your show, or you quit professional golf, or you do something to offset those habits.

And Handmaster Plus, that's what we're asking. Train properly, offset the repetitive grip that's going to be natural in what you do. And it's the same with the three-minute stretch. Do something to offset what you're naturally going to bring your body into imbalance and make sure you maintain an imbalance, then you just go get checked out by a professional every now and then. But if you become a dependent on that professional and you don't do anything about your habits in between, it just doesn't work. And it's, it's tough for the patient. It's tough for the profession.

That makes so much sense. I mean, I've become a sea sitter. I'm kind of like going like this all day long, you know, and you're, you're working, you get tired and you slouch and everything else. And I've been investing more in like ergonomic stuff. There's actually cushions in my chair now. And the thing that I sit on that actually tries to force my feet to constantly be forward sitting instead of I'm really tall. And so I have a tendency to just let my feet kind of flop to the side and, and lazy down. And, um, it's really bad for my posture and where my legs are. And I can feel the difference over time, but this is really great. There's five studies that, uh,

you've cite that, uh, have found that grip strength is directly correlated with life longevity. Uh, most people are into that life longevity thing tell us more about that if you can most people should be into i know i'm into but uh it's one of those things you'd never have thought and i'll be honest with you chris when i it's i think it's a it's a bit of an interesting story i never certainly never thought of it to begin with i'd never seen these studies to begin with and these studies have been going on for a long time but they've been a little bit more popularized in the last, let's say, five or six years. What happens is, so they talk about, I'll tell you about my experience.

When we started just simply, you know, doing what, you're just looking at the structure of the grip, seeing that the fingers, thumb, thumb hand wrist carpal tunnel forearm elbow those are all grip structures almost all the time when you use those it's it's for gripping something so all we simply did of course is to exercise those areas through their full range of motion and we figured out a way to give natural resistance that and it works fended that's the handmaster Plus works fantastic. What we only thought of is we're just thinking of the structures. We want our people to perform better. We want to prevent these easily preventable injuries. But what we would inevitably get on a regular basis since I've been doing this was somebody would send us something back that would

say like, hey, you know, my carpal tunnel is feeling great now i don't have problems anymore but i'm sleeping better i'm this better i'm feeling better in general and i thought it's just because we've taken one pain in the arse out of their life right they're feeling better here so it's their life's a little bit more stress-free but we ran into a, I think he's an osteopath that was doing some work in England. His last name was Perrin. I don't have his name off, but he was doing work and he talked about lymphatic drainage. He was working on some really advanced, difficult health challenges in some of his population. And he was working with the lymph drainage working with um actually adjusting certain areas of the body and stimulating lymph drainage i won't get into that it gets a little

tricky because it's nervous system stimulation but what i saw then is like i saw we're bringing blood flow because we had a blood flow a study done in 2017 where it showed uh when you use our product full range of motion resistance compared to repetitive grip the blood flow on thermography was just night and day ours was just it just blew it away but we know that when you stimulate blood flow you're going to stimulate lymph drainage so now we see that, oh my goodness, we're getting blood flow all the way to the extremity. And when you do that, you're bringing more oxygen and nutrients to all those tissues and joints, which we knew, we knew that part, but we never equated it to, we're also going to improve the venous drainage away from the extremities, the upper extremity. And with

venous drainage, you're going to improve the lymphatic drainage and the lymph ducts are actually near i'm terrible in this camera but they're they're actually near your shoulders where the actual lymph drains for good and that's one of the sewage system so we know now that by training your hand your hands, we started to see that's why I think people are getting better. So I know it's a long explanation, Chris, but what we also then saw is we started to see these studies about, wow, when people have grip strength, they're having life longevity. And it is directly correlated. It's not generally, it's directly correlated. It's not generally, it's directly correlated. So it tells you two things, Chris, is once the people with grip strength

are probably going to be quite active in their life, like you were talking about. Motion is the lotion of life type of thing. It keeps everything going. It really does. Your joints, your tissues, your body knows if you're not moving, well, I'll just digest food all day.

I'll, you know, whatever. Your brain knows that. But once you're not moving, well, I'll just digest food all day. I'll, you know, whatever your brain knows that. But once you're moving, it says, boy, Terry's moving or Chris is moving the extremities. Now I've got to stimulate blood flow way out there. I've got to stimulate lymph drainage out there and it adjusts to your environment and you just do better. So we know that if you get blood flow to your extremities we know that is going to increase not only the oxygen and nutrients you get to those tissues to keep them healthy but it's also increase the lymphatic drainage and nowadays you know that so byproducts for muscle contractions etc we need to get those moving and just in general there's toxins in our environment nowadays we want it lymph drainage is a really important thing as we've you know maybe introduced We need to get those moving. And just in general, there's toxins in our environment nowadays.

We want to, lymph drainage is a really important thing as we've, you know, maybe introduced more toxins into our food and our air and our water, et cetera. So we do think that this is now, not by expectation, Chris, this just came up as we're saying, wow, as we make these areas stronger, more physically balanced, quicker, more range of motion, we're also actually increasing wellness by increasing blood flow and lymph drainage, if that all makes sense. It does.

Do you find that people that are up for carpal tunnel syndrome, this is surgery, that this can help them avoid that? Yeah, absolutely. In syndrome, this is a surgery that this could, uh, can help them avoid that. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, it's another one. I'm not bringing you, you're asking good questions. We actually had a study done. Uh, it was a study done, I believe it was out of Turkey and they were using our product, uh, for hand exercise and they were using them on, they were using on dialysis patients that had carpal tunnel syndrome so when they when they did that and they were doing they would do uh the the nerve study and everything to show that to prove that they they actually had carpal tunnel syndrome so

it's a nerve conduction study they would do then they would use our product through just just to close and open you close against the ball you open against the cord they would just do that exercise and they saw that i think a third of the carpal tunnel um the ones with the nerve conduction study a third of them went to absolutely zero so then they said the conclusion was absolutely hand exercise we knew that already because we've been doing it already. And we had, you know, we've had a lot of just reports of carpal tunnel syndrome going away. So it doesn't surprise us, but that's a published study. And I believe it's in the Asian neurosurgery journal. And it's in a 2017. We reference it on our website now. But we've also looked at the study, and they weren't even using the soft.

They were using the medium. So we would say to people in that situation, you know, do the medium, get your full range of motion. Then if needed, move, sorry, do the soft, get your full range of motion, get your tone of your muscles started. Then move to the medium if needed. But this study just went right to the medium. So I don't even think it was the best way to do it and they got great results on carpal tunnel syndrome chris the last thing i'll say about carpal tunnel tunnel syndrome

when we talk to people about carpal tunnel syndrome we explain what the carpal tunnel is and all that and there's there's actually five muscles that attach onto the top of the carpal tunnel and as you're contracting if you're doing nothing to oppose it that's exactly what happens the carpal tunnel shuts down it's not that tricky so it's the problem is we don't understand that you need to strengthen the muscles there's four muscles that actually open and spread the carpal tunnel as well okay so if you're not if you it's one of those things, just like your spine. If you're not keeping your grip muscles in balance, all of these things are breaking down.

Fingers, thumb, carpal tunnel, wrist, forearm is shortening, and your elbow is shortening. It causes problems at that entire kinetic chain that involves grip, which is fingertips, thumb tips, all the way down to your elbow. Wow. That's pretty interesting. I, you know, I'm looking over your website too, and you have videos for, uh, how to train people on, on how to use the device properly, et cetera, et cetera. And you've sold over a million units of this. Yeah, we have sold, we've sold well over a million units now and i

don't even again i don't even think we've touched you know when we go to do even trade shows that are specific to grip most people have never even heard this but you know we're getting to the point chris where we've penetrated we've penetrated the markets especially like therapy quite well but there's still if you look in if you look in music stores, it's a hard thing. You don't see us in very many music stores yet. And that's every single musician, every single workplace that has grip, every single smartphone user, every single gamer or esport athlete. Most of these people have still not understood grip they've never been shown and taught it we're getting to as many people as we can we work hard to do it but it isn't a complicated

situation it's a complicated area but like i say some of the diagnosis of the injuries is a little complicated if you don't know the details of what they're doing but but the recovery and the training process we've made it so super easy there you go well i've ordered one off of amazon one's on the way already i got the firm grip because i get those big hands and i think i have fairly strong hands i guess we're going to find out you know what you'll find out is again we've done like athletic trainer shows forever and we so we've seen some big boys like yourself we've seen some really strong grip people and i will unless you've done the exercise i'll guarantee that once you open and spread you're going oh what's with these

opening and spreading muscles they're hugely important for the stabilization of your grip and the fingers thumb carpal tunnel wrist and elbow so you know you'll feel it i will guarantee it but once you train it you know three four weeks it'll be a piece of cake there you go uh you know i i've been really focusing on this movement thing uh and ever since i saw the blue zones thing and i'm like i gotta move more i gotta stretch more i gotta do more stuff i think this is why people like yoga and find it healthy is because you know stretching the muscles moving them into different ways that you have moved them before is really important to just you make sure and lubricate everything and get the blood flow going and you know a life what i found is the older you get it's about quality of

life yeah and um you know things don't move the way they used to you don't develop as much collagen uh and uh you know you've got a supplement uh what you're doing is you're gearing down you know you know i take like i don't know what is it 150 or 100 freaking pills a day for you know all sorts of supplements and you know, testosterone and all this sort of stuff. So, um, yeah, you, you have to make sure you get that quality of life and try and extend and get the best quality you can out of your life is as your body kind of winds down. That's just the way it works. So Chris, let me, let me, let me just suggest something to yourself and your listeners about, about that is that I want everybody to realize that that your you know your body is

alive like your body is alive and it's always reacting to exactly whatever your environment is if you and i sit like i'm sitting for a long time but but i i'm sitting at i have to answer emails i have to do whatever i have to do uh on in my office i will not let that be my environment because that's why i was talking i stretch every single day i am we're active every single day we take the dog out every single day etc still play hockey uh still you know and as i'm getting older my kids play hockey but i still play but my point is i think sometimes and i love supplementing like i you know you need to have good food you need to have lots of water you need to have lots of water. You need to have a, I think even be of service to others. You're doing a good job with your show. Chris is something that really helps you with, uh, knowing that

you're contributing positively. That's really good. But movement is what your body is going to notice. And, and it, and so you can take all the supplements you want, but if your body's not being told, hey, let's get blood flow out to the extremities. Let's, you know, and you also need fresh air, right? Oxygen. So it's a whole lifestyle thing. I think sometimes, and I'm a fan of supplementing, but I'm not a fan of saying, there, I've taken my pills. That was pretty easy. I remember to do it.

Everything should be good. That's not the way the body works and i think we have to identify and i believe ourselves as leaders in health and fitness have not done a good job historically to say well just for example here's your hand muscles well what have we what have the leaders in fitness and health told us take something and squeeze it well that's completely garbage advice. And if we look at the rest of the body, just I'm glad you brought up the spine because, you know, when I look at that, you say, well, I'm going to go to my chiropractor or my naturopath

or my massage therapist or etc, who are good at what they do. But if you're not doing the stuff every single day, you're bringing a suitcase of a nightmare to those people every single day, and it just doesn't work for either side. Oh, yeah. You have to regularly say, here is my environment. I'm going to put my hands through a ring of motion. I'm going to stretch regularly, which is we did that three-minute stretch to really address that.

I'm going to get to the gym, and I'm going to exercise. It doesn't have to be a lot of weight, but I'm going to exercise the muscles that open and spread my spine. You have to do it all. And once you do that, we have an excuse. It's too easily, ah, you're getting older. You're just getting older. No, you're taking the easy way out.

You're getting lazy. And once you stay active, you would be surprised of how unold you actually are yeah and that's what they show with these centurions centurions uh uh basically you know they found these groups of people that live to 100 and they're active they're busy bodies they're they're going through the day you know a lot of times they're still you know doing farming uh they're still doing like work that i'm just like i'm not doing that uh but you know a lot of times they're still you know doing farming uh they're still doing like work that i'm just like i'm not doing that uh but you know the activity is is the key and one of the reasons they're thin and healthy is they not only eat well so they eat good healthy foods that are

you know like we used to eat from the farms but they're also burning calories all day long you know where you know you and me are sitting in chairs, answering emails and playing video games and, you know, other things. And you're just like, well, I can see why we have issues. Yeah. Hey, you know, another thing they're doing, Chris, from your story, and I haven't seen the blues on, I wrote it down as you're saying, I want to see them. I'm very interested in programs like documentaries like that. But you're also saying if they're farming, for example, you know, they're also, they're contacting nature, but they're adding value.

Like that's another thing. And I think we don't, we don't, I think we underestimate how important that is for our, you know, our health and our fitness is if we're adding value and we're helping others. I think that's a really big deal that we focus on rather than just, well, I'm retired. What am I going to see? What am I going to do?

Just me, me, me, me. There's not a lot of balance to that. And I think we've got to keep in mind when you're adding value and you're participating in your community or your culture, I think that's important too. There you go. I think you're right. Check out the movie.

It's pretty cool. They literally went around, and I encourage my audience to do it too. They literally, this guy went around and he did studies. Okay, so where are all the centurions, the people who live to 100? And then he found where they collected at. And he found that, you know, there's people that are anomalies that just have really good genes. And he found that there were certain segments around the world of geography that had clusters of these centurions you know and he's like let's go study and find out why

there's a whole bunch of them one place you know they're not anomalies there's there's a community of them yeah success leads clues right yeah and why is there a community these guys and but there's not anywhere else and he would find pockets like he even found a pocket in southern california which you know there's a lot of people in southern california but he found a pocket of people in south southern california uh japan uh places in i I think, Italy and France. But he found these people. But one of the, and then he categorized the, you know, the commonalities. And one of the big commonalities was movement. You know, constantly moving, constantly, you know, getting up off the floor, standing up.

This is one of the reasons, we used to sleep on the floor. And so we would have to learn to get up and stretch those muscles and then get back down on the floor and then farming you know you're bending over you're picking up stuff you're doing you know all these different things to to to work your life in the land in the old manual we did that for eons of time you know so our bodies were like hey okay this is the stuff we do and now we're sedentary you know and there's jokes about how um how you know the new the new death sentence is sitting too much and and uh being being too sedentary in our life you know i think you know it's interesting chris because i think we are finally getting back to starting to focus on these real factors of health you know and you talk about movement you talk about there's a lot of like we

will do a lot of we'll do a lot of health and fitness podcasts and we'll talk about this and it'll be like you know why haven't we thought of moving this area of her body or that area of her body and like the hands and 27 muscles that we haven't even understood and we're in 2023 so i think we're starting to get there to be able to say man let's look at this really miraculous entity that is known as our bodies and us and let's start giving it credit and just learning about it and moving the damn thing you know and keeping it we've been you know i've been talking in practice for eons about keeping your body in balance, keeping it strong, balanced, healthy with good blood flow. And, you know, I do, of course, now I super include the hands in that, but also, you know adding value and you're eating well, and you're, there's just a lot of basic categories.

If you check the box, you're going to do really well. But once you start to slow down, your body's ready to slow down. If you, if you say so, it'll adapt to that too. Yeah.

And that's probably not a good thing. That sounds like a downward spiral. That sounds like a total downward spiral. You got to keep moving. I think, I think something inside, you know, as well, if you're done moving, maybe you're done. Yeah, and maybe that's the signal it sends to the brain that says, hey, this person's done, and yeah, let's wrap it up for them. Exactly.

You've served our usefulness. Let's get this over with. Yeah, we don't want that. Keep useful, keep moving. I agree. We don't want that. So this has been super insightful. I mean, when you really do that little exercise you showed me to open up the hand

and then do the figure eight, holy crap, there's a lot of tension and soreness going on. I had no idea. And I'm probably going to find there's other pinpoint. I know there's like chakra points in the hand and feet, and I'm probably going to find there's other pinpoint. I know there's like chakra points in the hand and feet. And I'm probably going to find that too with the ball. So thank you very much for coming on the show and enlighten us. I encourage everybody to go check out your product. I've ordered one off of Amazon.

Give us your final dot coms and thoughts as we go out, Terry, to get people to pick them up. Yeah. Anybody that wants to look at the Handmaster Plus or even that three-minute stretch is up. You can go to doczac.com. It's D-O-C-Z-A-C.com. If anybody has questions, Chris, any of your audience has questions, they all come to me if it has to do with mechanics or health information. And it's at info at doczac.com. And I really do like answering the

emails if there's questions and stuff like that. My last thought is, geez, a lot of what you brought up, Chris, I love to leave the audience with is like, you know, you do have this body that is really miraculous design. Like I've been really one of the things I've learned through getting deeper and deeper and deeper into the hand exercise and grip strength training is that the it's a miraculous design these hands uh to try to learn that and and you mentioned my book earlier it's called great hands great life if somebody wants to really learn that side of it that's a deeper read but generally speaking what i would say is that you you know if you look to understand these areas and that they need to move and they're designed

to uh be strong and healthy and balanced for a long time you just have to cooperate with it do these easy exercises and you'll see that the hand wrist form elbow carpal tunnel stays in in balance but also think about the rest of your body same principles and it's it's the same principles for all of your body learn about them as much as you can or ask the advice of an expert and then just start to work with them start to have it in your daily routine we've got lots of ways of making it easier now and uh keep healthy you know keep being a value for a long time and i think you'll enjoy the you know even as you get older but even when you're younger your performance improves your injury risk goes down and you're going to but you're going to have a longer life why not start as early as you can there you go

well i certainly appreciate having you on uh Zachary. It's been very insightful and I'm thinking more and more about moving. We recently had someone on who is a podiatrist type foot doctor, same sort of principles. We've had, you know, plenty of doctors on and talked about health, but more and more I'm thinking about, you know, maybe I need to take up yoga for the stretching and doing and doing other things and, and, and making sure that things muscle. I, you know, my, one of my problems, I sit way too much and I gain way too much. Uh, and there's a lot of sitting in that. I guess if you do VR, you know, things are better for you because you're moving around as long as you don't hit anything, uh, where you're wearing those VR virtual reality units. Uh, but thank you very much for coming on.

We really appreciate it, sir. It's been great that you had me on. I was looking forward to it, and I really enjoyed it. And also, Chris, you should check out, and the viewers should check out the three-minute stretch, too. Once you learn it, you have it for life. And if you're gaming a lot, we suggest with gaming musicians, office people, that's another thing to look at but thanks for having me i love what you do thank you very much and thanks for tuning in see how much smarter you are and

hopefully healthier we want to make you guys live a long time because we want you to still keep downloading the podcast and we love you guys the chris fosh shows the family loves you but doesn't judge you uh guys uh go support the show if you would, please. We really need as much help and love and stuff because we were very needy and have an endless need for love. So please go to iTunes.

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