When I first started talking about how poorly hand muscles and hand exercise was understood by the masses – both amateurs and professionals… as well as health and fitness professionals – people reacted about the same way as I pictured them reacting when people first heard the earth was round.

The similarities of Handmaster Plus popularity to the ‘World is Round’ story are incredible. Hand exercise for the last 50 years has been flat, in 2 dimensions or one plane, even though the hands move naturally in 3 dimensions through many planes. Hand exercise has been wrong for a long time. I know. I learned it wrong. I didn’t realize my error until I was in college and studied chronic elbow injuries, namely tennis elbow (lateral epicondylitis) and golfer’s elbow (medial epicondylitis). Then I became sure of it after changing people’s grip training in practice with patients, and later while touring playing professional golf. Weeks after starting people on proper grip training, chronic issues would start to clear. I knew the world of grip strength was truly ’round.’

I can understand how Eratosthenes felt when he was persecuted for saying the world is round. It is such a similar comparison. I came out to the public in 1997 saying strongly that proper exercise must be more ‘round’ (i.e. both full opening, spreading and closing), and ‘grip-only’ training must stop. Nearly everyone (at the time) looked at me like I was crazy.

Eratosthenes had convincing proof of a round world (…to very accurate measurements) just as I did, but the eyes of the world still looked out at the horizon and it ‘looked flat.’ Those coiled and spring loaded hand strengtheners still ‘look and feel good.’ They are shiny and technical looking, and hand motion usually ‘looks’ like the hands just continually ‘close.’ Their users have never noticed any reason to think the exercise wasn’t best in class.

But why is it that hand exercise is generally a non-factor in health & performance today when I continue to preach how Handmaster Plus helps the masses? … because ‘grip-only’ doesn’t work well, and has never worked well. Handmaster Plus will put hand exercise on the healthcare and performance map.

We have tested Handmaster Plus with thermography and KNOW that when you train properly through full ROM (ranges of motion), not only do you balance the hand, wrist, and forearm, you also increase circulation and, in turn, lymphatic drainage. When you affect the lymphatic drainage of the upper extremities, you can’t help but improve the efficiency of both the right and left lymphatic ducts which are responsible for removing large molecule waste and toxins from the body.

Hand exercise is about more than just the fingers and thumbs. It’s about more than just the hands, wrists, carpal tunnels, forearms, and elbows. It’s about health, performance, blood flow and lymphatic drainage.

Hand exercise, done properly, can change a person’s life.