Ambidexterity

[Devaryn]

As time has taken its toll more and more noticably on my right shoulder, wrist, and hand, I've begun considering the viability of learning to fight left-handed.

I have researched a few things that talk about teaching yourself to learn to write left-handed, but I was wondering if anyone here has ever switched to fighting lefty, due to necessity or choice. How successful was it? And, were there any specific exercises or training that were especially beneficial?

Is it even possible for a right-handed person to truly become ambidextrous?

[Crynolyn]

Shadow is the only fighter I know who was successful at that. The athritis in his right wrist caused him to start using his left.

[Slagar]

Squire Melannen is going through this right now, since he has been repeatedly injuring his right hand. More to the point though, Sir Elindiel is a *very* accompished lefty, who did not start that way. He had to switch due to injury, but that was before I was even fighting. If you get in touch with him, he may be able to offer some advice. Best of luck, and keep us posted with how it goes. Another lefty on the field is never a bad thing!

[Lokin]

The best thing you can do for yourself is to start doing things with your left hand. Open doors, eat with it... and of course most importantly fight with it.


Study your body mechanics... I refer you to Clalibus's Body Mechanics video in the sticky above.

[Brennon EH]

It is a common story among good florentine fighters in Amtgard that they developed their off hand through injury to their primary.

Drills (blocks strike especially), pell work, repetition, and strength training will go a long way towards making your off-hand competent.

[Roland Demox]

Slagar kinda stole my thunder on that one. Melannen has gotten very good at using his left hand. He had a heater I know that he rigged to be used with either arm. As far as I know he is quite successful at both fighting lefty and his florentine has gotten better

Other than that the only person that I know that I have seen do this is Peter the Quick. Tho im not sure how involved he is or how successful he is lefty considering I rarely see or fight him

[p_quick]

i'm pretty confident in my left hand these days, the big thing is really block strike drilling and using your left hand for everything. i brush my teeth, write, scratch my *, beat off, brush my hair, eat and pick my nose with it.

And another thing you can do which spyn taught me to do is fight flo with a dagger in your right hand, forcing left hand dominance. I also fight almost strickly left hand when i fight here in carbondale, i also got a small round punch to force my left hand to act in a natural efficient manor.

[Sir_Mel]

Things I've done that seem to work:

Eat lefthanded
Use left hand as first option for daily tasks (brusth teeth, etc)
Fight lefthanded (yes you will suck, but it works)
Slow pell work with a heavy sword
Wrist rollers (stronger muscles allow for better control)

I would also suggest learning drums or piano/organ. And pretty much anything that will force you to either use both hands in the same frequency or your off hand more so.

[bo1]

i am a lefty that learned to fight righty, does that count.

i eat, write, brush teath, play tennis, all lefty, pick up sword with right hand. fox broke my left thumb 2 times in one day, i never looked back.

i can still switch back, it just feels wierd.

[xiao]

practice practice practice

i play drums, shoot pool, bowl, and eat left handed yet write with my right hand (and i have **** handwriting), so the ambi fighting came somewhat naturally for me. its' the repitition that gets you ahead.

just remember not to hurt yourself. i see people straining their joints all the time trying to do more than their bodies are able.

warm up, stretch, start light! the dumb side of the body will follow suit

[Soo Ma Tai]

I am a lefty who fights righty as well. The easiest way to learn the body mechanics of shot throwing with the off hand is to throw the shot using both hands at the same time, mirror images of the other. It's really easy for the off hand to copy the dominant if the motions are happening at the same time. Take the time to understand the feel of the motion on shots from your off side, then begin to practice them independently.

Learn a Martial Art, most force you to use the off side just as much as the dominant.

[Devaryn]

Great replies everyone, thank you for the advice!

I already play several instruments that require both hands, practice martial arts, and I've been brushing my teeth and eating with my left hand for as long as I can remember. So I guess I've gotten a good start already on this.

Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon. Evidently the Greeks would train themselves to be ambidextrous by learning to do mirror image writing with both hands. I explored some other sites, and most of them say that learning how to write with your left is one of the bigger keys to becoming ambidextrous.

For those of you who have already achieved this, does it ever FEEL natural with your off-hand, or does your mind always automatically default to the main-hand and you have to consciously change over?

[p_quick]

i feel pretty natural with my left. but my motions i fear will always feel faster and more efficient with my right. even thou they probably aren't

[Arrakis]

http://traevoli.com/ambidex.php Not a whole lot of new stuff there, but relatively well said.

I want to get better with my off hand, at everything.

[Loptr]

As time has taken its toll more and more noticably on my right shoulder, wrist, and hand,

Clalibus in Amtgard teaches a Body Mechanics class at SKBC. When I saw him a coule World Banner Wars ago. I pulled him aside due to my elbow being all f'd up.
He talked with me for a few minutes and watched my shot delivery. Then he gave me a very simple modification to my shot delivery.
Upon getting home and spending time on my pell goind slow and using proper form to relearn my shot throwing. I now throw the proper shot and dont aggrevate my elbow, with very rare exception.

Anyways, In addition to the bonus of leanring to use your left. Consider you body mechanics and also consider viewing Clal's SKBC classes. If possible go this spring to St. Louis for SKBC 09 I am certain he will be teaching it again. (I have his 07 class on dvd I am fighting with video conversion of).

Loptr

[MagnusofDregoth]

I am pretty sure SKBC is in Ohio (Lancaster, specifically) and not St Louis.

[GvK]

Dev, you could also try fighting with a two-handed weapon, perhaps that would help? Back in late 2004 I developed so ridiculously bad elbow tendonitis in my right (sword) arm. Rather than get physical therapy (one of the stupidiest moves in my life; I actually scorned it!), I started doing everything with my left arm/hand. 3-4 months later, when it was only a little better, I went in for PT and started to use essentially a giant rubberband to work my outer arm muscles and rehab the arm. My first time, I was shocked to discover that my arm had the strength of a 10-year old girl. I had hardly used it in months, pain will do that.

Good luck Dev.

[p_quick]

yea SKBC is in lancaster ohio like M-man said. and all you guys should go. its gunna be awesome!

[MagnusofDregoth]

Dev, what about using a spear? I know we have several in our unit (though only mine has the magical hook of doom!) and I have found spear to be less physically demanding, generally, than sword and shield. Also you get more kills.

[Devaryn]

Great info about the body mechanics, Loptr. I'm pretty certain that several of the shots I throw are horrible for my body.

I basically fight like a speedy wannabe-ninja trapped in the body of an overweight linebacker. I push myself to do moves that no guy my size has any business throwing, and when the day is over my body makes me regret the decision. Problem is, in order to hang with the speedsters, like Magnus here, I've found that I NEED to push myself that hard just to keep pace with guys who use significantly less effort to get the same results.

Guntar, I definitely know what you mean with the physical therapy stuff. After my shoulder surgery last February, I spent a LOT of time rehabbing with those bands, and it was downright depressing how much my strength had just disappeared. Now, a year later, it's pretty obvious that despite the rehab, it'll never be where it was before.

I have been considering getting into using a red or a spear more, especially after Magnus' stories about racking up kills with the green, but I think I'll always be a boarder first and foremost. I've spent so much time and effort becoming good at that one style I'm not sure my ego could handle starting over. Then again, learning to fight lefty will be even worse as far as initial sucktitude...

I REALLY do wanna go to SKBC, but I'm really not sure how my vacation schedule is going to work out this year, let alone the job situation as a whole.

[Slagar]

If this discussion is going to shift over to other ways of dealing with your body taking too much wear, I'm going to chime in again. If you want to hang with guys like Magnus, you need to be in the shape they're in. The difference between good and great in our game often (not always, there are exceptions) falls to being in good shape. At the last Okfest, the top three guys (at least) in the SB tourney all work out (a lot). I specifically do several exercises on top of the rest of my workout to work on my deltoids, traps, and forearms. If you build these muscles up, and trim the rest of yourself down (as I did, believe me) you'll find that your body takes much less abuse in throwing the same shots and moving the same way. Look at any tournament, and ask the winner if he works out for Belegarth, or if this is his exercise. Guaruntee it's the first.

[Dane]

You don't even need to hit weights. Pushups, pullups, crunches, and jumping rope train several muscle groups and involve repeating small, explosive motions that will pay dividends on the fighting field, and since they're not excessively rough on the body, you can do sets of them with very little downtime to get a good cardiovascular workout, too.

[Devaryn]

I absolutely agree with you guys, and have begun doing exactly that. This would become something more of a topic for the Fighter Fitness subgroup, but with as bad as my knees are as well, I realized that less weight would just make things easier overall.

I talked with Tinman about this topic at Octfest. He lost a ton of weight and has noticed how much better his endurance has become. He and I have always joked about how similar our styles are, so if he's had improvement then of course that's something I want to emulate as well.

Endurance seems like a big part of this, as well as strength and flexibility, because injuries seem to happen much more after you push yourself past exhaustion. I often compare us fighters to baseball pitchers in how we abuse our arms. A professional pitcher is expected to whip his arm around his body about 100 times every 4 days, and even then injuries occur. If you look at how many times a fighter swings over the course of a week-long event, fighting for 5 hours a day, I'd say it's closer to 1000+...it sure seems like we abuse our arms worse than pitchers doesn't it?

But, back to the whole lefty thing...what would you guys recommend about training your footwork to go along with your left-hand? I already noticed the few times I've tried to fight lefty that it's not just a matter of hand coordination, but also switching your stance as well.

[Sir_Mel]

I can't attest to how well this works since I've never tried it, but doing agility ladders with you sword and shield held like a lefty seems like it'd be a good for your body to get used to moving with the equipment in the opposite orientation. It's definitely gonna be hella awkward at first but I think this could do wonders for gettin you body to feel "natural" faster.

[Devaryn]

Cool tip, thanks!

Update: I've tried practicing some left-handed writing, and it's ridiculous. This is going to take a while...

[MagnusofDregoth]

Dev, are you going to be fighting this weekend?

You can always borrow my spear, for at least part of the battle. Or use your own.

[p_quick]

Cool tip, thanks!

Update: I've tried practicing some left-handed writing, and it's ridiculous. This is going to take a while...

It will take a long while, but no great things happen easily

*edit* except for google

[Devaryn]

Yeah Magnus I'll definitely be fighting this weekend at the Maethodoron invasion, but probably with a wrist brace on. It's crazy that it's still not fully healed yet, and it got injured in NOVEMBER. *.

And yeah that spear idea sounds fun, I want to bring mine too but I'm not sure how we're going to fit that considering there will be six of us in Nova's truck (I think). I also plan to use that new red/green mini-halberd I made lately, which I don't think you've seen yet.

[Sir_Mel]

Cool tip, thanks!

Update: I've tried practicing some left-handed writing, and it's ridiculous. This is going to take a while...

If you think about, you've been spending how many years using your right hand to do everything while your left just kinda sat there. It's gonna take quite a while (more than a few months) to be somewhat competent with your left.