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My name is Dr. Terry Zachary and we are going to talk about how to properly train your hand
muscles for maximum performance and also to maximize injury prevention.
I have dealt with athletes for about the last fifteen (15) years with hand muscle training,
how to maximize grip strength, how to maximize the reduction of injury. And what I find is
that most people have a complete misunderstanding on how this works. Because traditionally,
we look at hand muscle training by taking a coiled... a spring-coiled device, squeezing
it or a racket ball or a tennis ball. And I can tell you -- That is just a complete
misunderstanding.
So let me tell you a couple of things about the basis of the hand muscles. The anatomy,
once you understand the anatomy of hand muscles, the rest will come quite easily. And it is
quite easy:
You have eighteen (18) muscles that act on the hand: nine (9) of those muscles will close
the hand and nine (9) of those muscles will open the hand.
If you just look at your right hand, I'm going to take my opposite hand and just put on the
tips of my fingers and my thumb. I'm going to trace that all the way to the elbow. Okay?
Just by viewing that, you can now trace the path of the tendons of the muscles -- of the
nine (9) muscles that close your hand.
Flip your hand over and you do the same thing on the back side all the way to the elbow
-- you have traced the path of the nine (9) muscles and tendons that are going to open
the hand. Alright? Quite quite simple.
Now when we know this, and we've been studying now the behavior of hand muscles for about
five (5) years through EMG (electromyography). So we get to look to see how the electrical
impulses of the muscles are firing during different activities.
We know that anytime you grip anything that the muscles that open the hand are working
just as hard as the muscles that close the hand. And that might seem a little bit strange.
But imagine if I'm gripping something and my hand-opening muscles weren't very strong
-- my hand will just go drop like that. Okay?
So we know that -- what I'm referring to is mixed... is pairs figure skating. You have
a man supporting a woman. The woman is up there doing the tricks. Okay? But if the person
that supports her is weak, those tricks are hard to be there, right? Same thing that happens
-- that hand muscles, the closing muscles are like the woman who do the trick. Now,
we can see that something is happening there: playing guitar, or golf, or whatever.
But what we don't really recognize is the muscles that open the hand are the muscles
that are supporting any action of the hand muscles. Okay? Just like the man supports
the woman in pairs figure skating. That is just one idea, but it is a very very appropriate
idea.
So always remember that when you are strengthening the hand muscles, you want to get maximum
performance and especially maximum injury prevention as well: strengthen the muscles
that close the hand, strengthen the muscles that open the hand. We will move over that
in the second here.
The second thing I wanted to talk about is hand muscle balance. If I do take a coiled
resistance device, or a ball, or if I take a racket ball for example -- and I just squeeze
that. You are going to see them slowly -- it's a poor exercise -- and slowly building imbalance.
Okay? The more I squeeze that, the more these muscles become shortened and these muscles
aren't going through their full range of motion and not become as strong as they can be, and
they develop imbalance.
Now what it is like in the, come out, look like? Well, it could be finger problem, thumb
problem -- it could be hand problem; it could be a carpal tunnel problem if you use skill
a lot. And imbalance -- it could be a forearm problem; it could be an elbow problem. Okay?
We have to strengthen the muscles that close equally with the muscles that open. Once I
do that and I have equalized tone on both sides, I am going to have the best chance
at maximum performance and again, injury prevention. Okay?
The third thing about paying attention to strengthen the muscles that close and open
is that I'm going to stimulate maximum blood flow through all the tissues. Okay? Think
again. If I'm going to take something -- squeeze a ball, or a coiled unit. Also when I have
is a little bit blood flow on the areas that I have used. But once I take my hand through
its full natural range of motion, I'm going to have maximum blood flow to all the tendons
so I'm going to have less tendonitis -- to all the muscles. I'm also going to have maximum
blood flow through the joint's surfaces.
And blood flow basically just means you're bringing all the nutrients to that area. So
blood flow does: gets your oxygen and nutrients to the area, keeps you healthy. Okay? So,
if I'm only doing this small range of motion, I'm not going to get maximum blood flow. I'll
take the hand through a full range of motion, now I am -- all the joints and surfaces getting
healthy and all the tissues stay healthy and it's very difficult to injure yourself. Okay?
So I'm going to show you what we use. We have developed a product called Handmaster Plus.
All you do is very... simply slip the loop on the base of the thumb and you just flip
the finger loops, mid-knuckle. Once you have it put on -- and all the instructions are
in the package -- you are just going to keep your elbows supporting against your body,
keep your wrist straight, squeeze against the ball for a count of one, open and spread
for a count of one, squeeze for a count of one, open and spread for a count of one.
Just continue to do that until you feel uncomfortable fatigue, and you are all done. It should take
about thirty (30) seconds. Okay? After you start and do it, the volume might be on to
go for a minute or so. Okay? But you can see it very simple. When I squeeze, I strengthen
the nine (9) muscles that close the hand. When I open and spread, I strengthen those
nine muscles that open the hand. Okay?
It's not a whole bunch of exercises anymore before we used to use two or three products.
Now, we squeeze, open, spread, squeeze-open-spread -- very convenient for the athlete, the musician,
at the workplace, if you are a craft person -- very easy to do anywhere. Okay?
We coupled all the exercises into one. Okay? So to end, that is Handmaster Plus. The best
place to look up information of how to get a whole new product through one of our distributors,
or one of our brand partners is www.doczac.com -- that's d-o-c-z-a-c .com. Very simple exercise.
Once you understand the anatomy now, you will understand how to maximize your performance
and prevent those injuries.