The amusing little test
While sitting at your desk, make clockwise circles with your right
foot (BY MOVING YOUR ANKLE…be sure you’re moving it clockwise). While doing this, draw the number “6” in the air with your right hand. What direction is your foot going in now?
The obvious question
Why?
My foot keeps going in the clockwise direction, probably because I can do more than one thing at a time. (More correctly, send the nerve impulses down to my ankle muscles for clockwise motion, whilst I send the signals needed to trigger my right hand to draw a six.)
Mine’s going clockwise, but I played drums for many years.
Try this trick:
Hold both hands out in front of you, pointing index fingers together. Using your wrists, twirl one finger one way, and the other in the opposite direction.
Once you wrap your mind around it, it is easy from then on.
Wow, you guys impress me (but, then again, I’m easily impressed):D. I was about to call Dr. Mercotan to the courtesy phone. So, you’re saying it’s a question of mental discipline?
When I saw that test, I was immediately reminded of the ‘rub belly and tap on top of head and the reverse the process’. Can they be related in some way? Does the same mental process apply?
Added bonus of the OP: Imagining all viewers gathered in a room and going through the motions… 
I don’t know if I’d call it mental discipline so much as I would training. A big part of playing drums is learning independence, so, for instance, your left foot can keep pumping the high-hat on a steady 2-4 regardless of what the rest of your limbs might be up to.
Ambidextrous (ambidexterity?) is the word that this thread is looking for. That is all.
Ambidexstrous suggests being able to use both one’s left and right hand equally well, or being unusually skilled. I don’t think that being able to keep your foot rotating clockwise is “unusually skillful”. To have independent control of one’s limbs is more accurate, not contingent or influenced by the other’s action. Like Ringo said. I did have to go to dictionary.com to verify though.
multitasking.
Now this is weird. I have also been playing the drums for years, and thought I was pretty independent limbwise, but yup, my foot strated going the other way. (The finger thing is easy, though.)
Even when I really concentrated on rotating my foot, drawing a six with my hand messed it up. I can do it now though, but it still feels awkward.
I think my “drumming” independence doesn’t work with rotational motion of the feet - it’s not really a common movement unless you have a very odd drumkit 
Ask me to play straight crotchets with one foot and triplets with the other and I’d be fine…
Hey, this is weird. It’s a lot tougher than I thought to keep the foot going clockwise. Now I must go experiment on my friends.
RR
Well, I have no dexterity whatsoever, and I can keep the foot going clockwise. I do see what you’re talking about - there is a small urge to change directions - but it’s not hard for me to overcome. Maybe it’s just an individual thing.
Really odd. Sometimes, I can do it. For a couple seconds. Other times, there’s just no way. As for
“Hold both hands out in front of you, pointing index fingers together. Using your wrists, twirl one finger one way, and the other in the opposite direction.”
I won’t even go into that.
I can do the foot thing without problem (although actually rotating my stiff feet is a bit of a challenge).
I can’t do the finger thing very easily, and at any rate it’s really hard to check!
It’s like playing eighth-note triplets against sixteenth notes sort of.
That’s interesting - I played the piano for years, and so I never have a problem with hand* independance games, but I absolutely cannot do this foot thing. Much hilarity did, in fact, ensue. “Look, I did it!” “The clock goes the other way, moron.”
@ Zsofia.
No problem with hand independence. But when it comes to the foot, it’s another ball game, right?
Yep, the hand is on the other boot in this case.
I managed to keep my foot going clockwise while I wrote “666” in the air…
and then,
I heard this voice, which said,
“Ask you doctor about the Purple Pill.”
I can do the hand thing with no problem, but the foot trick is pretty sneaky. If I actually concentrate on what I’m doing though, I can pull it off.