Dr. Terry Zachary Shares the Secrets to Hand Health and Performance

Discover the gripping truth behind proper hand exercise as Dr. Terry Zachary, the hand expert, reveals the shocking muscle imbalances caused by traditional methods, his revolutionary Handmaster Plus device, and the battle to get people to prioritize their hand health. Show Notes | Transcript "Just like our posture, we do things in front of us all day. If we don't do something to offset that imbalance, we're going to have problems." - Dr. Terry Zachary Introducing Dr. Terry Zachary - a sports chiropractor with an extraordinary expertise in hand health and performance. Growing up with sports and having observed numerous hand injuries among athletes, he re-evaluated the traditional routines of hand exercises, developing a novel approach that focuses on the equilibrium of hand muscles. His invention, Handmaster Plus, further simplifies this methodology, making it accessible for everyone. His stellar contributions are not only celebrated by athletes but by musicians and professionals who depend heavily on their hands for work. Dr. Zachary’s passion for understanding the body’s design, and his relentless pursuit of improving hand health has truly set a new precedent in the industry. In this episode, you will be able to: Discover the crucial role of frequent hand workouts in maintaining optimal hand functionality and vitality. Uncover the merits of the Handmaster Plus tool in promoting effective hand exercises. Understand the link between a firm grip and a long, healthy life and why it shouldn't be ignored. Explore how improved blood circulation and lymphatic drainage impacts not just hand, but overall body wellbeing. Resources: Connect with Dr. Terry here Email: info (at) doczac.com Join the Soulful Women's Network here Send me a message here ☕ Support the podcast here ❤ Love this episode? Leave us a review and rating here Connect with Gloria: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter TRANSCRIPT Gloria Grace Rand Namaste. Oh, I am so happy to be with you for another one of our wonderful interviews that we're going to have today. And I already know it's going to be wonderful. I'm just telling you right off the bat. I know it. So I want to introduce you to our guest today. His name is Dr. Terry Zachary, and he is the author of Great Hands, Great Life, and he's also an inventor of a product called Handmaster Plus. And he has been a sports chiropractor. And in that capacity, he broke the code on faulty hand exercise that he witnessed in pro golfers. And so he took these lessons to the wider worlds of sports, music, workplaces, gamers, hobbyists, and smartphones. And that was really what intrigued me about when I met him and why I wanted to have him on the show. So, first off, I want to welcome you, Dr. Terry, to live, love, engage. Dr. Terry Zachary Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to speaking to you. Gloria Grace Rand Yeah, well, I'm very curious. We met during a publicity summit a couple of months ago, and hands are something that are very important to me because I've been a musician, I'm a writer. I also, in my youth, well, one of my first jobs was working at McDonald's, and so I was cooking fries and doing all this type of work, but especially even doing I've always been like a typer and working in different jobs. And at one point, I developed carpal tunnel syndrome in my wrists, and so I had to have surgery done on it because for those of you who may not know what that is, it's a condition, and you could probably explain even better. But basically, my hand would go numb, and sometimes it was so bad that it was actually painful, and that was the part that forced me to get surgery. When it's just numbness, you can kind of live with it, but when it starts hurting, that's no fun. I was intrigued to know about what you were up to in the world and how you were helping people, that you noticed the hand exercises and things or how people were using their hands wasn't helpful, shall we say. So I would love for you to explain to our audience a little bit about what got you really interested, because as a chiropractor, normally, people don't necessarily think about hands with chiropractor. They think more about the back and the spine and whatnot. So what got you interested in really being focused in as now a hand expert? Dr. Terry Zachary Well, Gloria, first of all, that's about as good of an intro as possible into what I do, because when I first started it, and again, specifically, I had about half my practice was sports chiropractic, and half my practice was family practice. And what had happened was, you know, we had seen so many and I'm in the Vancouver area is where my practice was. So a lot of what we did was focused on hockey players. And I have a background in golf. I played in college, so a lot of professional hockey players, a lot of professional golfers, as the Canadian Tour would come through town, but also, of course, high level and everyday weekend athletes as well. And because of my background and growing up in sports, I always was told, take this thing and squeeze it. It could be spring loaded, it could be a coiled unit, might just be a tennis ball or a racquet ball. And as I got to really started studying the body, which is my passion, it's one of my base passions in my life is really studying the wonder of the body. And how did this body, how were we designed by our maker, however, designed this tricky pattern, and it's fascinating. So as I started to study it more, I realized, Wait a minute, I saw all these injuries. And this was specifically in sports when we started out, Gloria. We looked at why are these athletes having so many finger and thumb problems and carpal tunnel problems, by the way, that you already mentioned, and a lot of elbow problems. And as we got into looking at them, we would do a history and ask them what type of exercise they did, if it was a repetitive grip situation like a golf or a tennis or a hockey, et cetera, et cetera. A lot of times they would either be doing nothing or they would be taking something and squeezing it, just like traditionally, most of your viewers and myself, when I was early in my path, thought was the right way to do it. But as I started studying, I said, Why do we do things this way? I could clearly see that the muscles that close the hand are getting overpowering on the muscles that open the hand. And we're seeing the mechanics of the fingers and thumb and carpal tunnel and wrist and elbow all change because of that. So that was how it all started. I got very interested in it, and I saw great results. I was doing four or five exercises with the hand, which you can imagine, these athletes have other areas to be exercised, and the last thing they want to be doing is four or five exercises. But we started with that, had great results because we were simply following the pattern of the body and starting to learn how the body moves. And just working with that. It wasn't Terry Zachary saying, well, I think you should do, you know. I think you should put these muscles it's like, wow, the body's designed like this. Why don't we follow those instructions? And I simply exercised these patients’ hand muscles through a full range of motion. Now, I don't want to go on and on about it, but the thing that keeps people away from this, I believe why somebody didn't come up with this process earlier is that the hand muscles are very tricky. And if you follow the paths of the hand muscles, all the origins and insertions, if you talk to a hand surgeon, for example, what they would, they would just talk in circles. It's so intricate, and I think it scares people away. So I would approach it that you have nine muscles that close your hand that are generally located on the front of your fingers and thumbs and hands and wrists and carpal tunnels and elbow. And then you have nine muscles that open the hand, which are on the back of all of those same structures. So it made sense to me to exercise them all in balance. And once we did, the results were just clear as day, and that's what got me interested in it. I realized this is being done wrong. I learned wrong before I was educated. And then, because I work with athletes and I'd always been so interested in sports, I saw it clear as day, and that's what got me interested. Gloria Grace Rand Wow. And you're right, because now that I think back to it, I remember, I think when I was probably first going to a doctor, they would recommend that you get, like, one of these little kind of squishy balls and just squeeze it periodically, and that was supposed to help. So could you just give an example of maybe one exercise that you would do instead of doing that? Do you still recommend that they do that? But if maybe you do some other things in addition to… Dr. Terry Zachary Yeah, excellent question. So the viewers and this is probably a new concept to most that are listening, just to give it some framework, it's very similar to posture. Your hand muscles actually work very similar to posture. So if I saw somebody with , if anybody saw somebody with poor posture, the last thing we would tell them to do is slouch more. Does that make sense? And that's really the concept to go with. So if you were working your example, you're working in McDonald's, you're using your hands, you're gripping, you're also a musician, you're also writing. Everything is an inflection situation. So just like our posture, we do things in front of us all day. If we don't do something to offset that imbalance, we're going to have problems with our spine and our ribs and our breathing and our organs, et cetera. It's the same thing that we want to do. We want to strengthen the muscles that open and spread. So, yeah, there's so many ways to look at this. And we designed the Handmaster Plus so you could do literally, instead of four or five exercises,...