I used to do some juggling. When learning a trick, the right hand (dominant) part would always come quickly. Getting the left hand part down was always more difficult, but never impossible. I kept hoping that eventually the left hand would reach some sort of parity with the right hand (I practiced much more with the left hand than the right), but it never happened. OTOH I never really devoted the time to it that some others did. If you could learn the ability to be ambidextrous, jugglers would be the ones to do it.
My uncle was like this. He was left handed but forced to write with his right hand when he went to school. He developed a stammer because of it, although it eventually disappeared.
I think he still writes with his right hand, but certainly was still pretty much ambidextrous a few years ago.
I’m righthanded. When I was 12 I broke my right arm and was in a cast for six weeks. To this day I do three things lefthanded: brush my teeth, play table tennis, and play air hockey.
(Which should tell you how I spent the six weeks. It was summer and I couldn’t swim with a cast on, so I spent the time improving my ping-pong and air-hockey talents. My teeth were plenty clean, too.)
Just remembered another: also around age 12, I was watching a baseball game on TV and noticed that Tommy Lasorda (Dodgers’ manager) clapped “lefthanded” – that is, the left hand, palm downward, came down from above to meet the right hand, palm upward, coming up from below. This was opposite to my righthanded way of clapping and it intrigued me so I practiced for a bit, and still clap lefthanded to this day.
Finally: like anyone who took piano lessons, I worked to make my left hand as skillful as my right. Never got the hang of writing with it, though.
That’s pretty much my experience and thoughts here. You could pick one or two somewhat involved skills, and with some work, become adept with your offhand. But if you are wanting to completely be equally strong in both hands in every thing that you do thoughtout the day, you are looking at years and years of practice to even come close.
My parents did this with me. I was born a lefty but my right hand is dominant now due to training at an early age. I write and use my right hand for most things. But for my legs/eyes/ears the left is still dominant and for some motions, doing it the lefty way feels more natural (like aiming a rifle).
I’m not ambidextrous though. And I’m still not sure what motivated my parents to do it. The best explanation I got was “we thought it’d be more convenient for you.” The kicker is that my dad’s a lefty.
yes, it actually is possible… when i was a kid, i was tought to right with my right hand, i was a leftie when i was a kid, so then i became ambidextreous… but now that i know that i am a born leftie, i realized that i constantly used to use my right hand (my natrally non-dominant hand) and so now i have no coordination in my left hand what so ever and i instinctivly use my right hand, and my guess is that is the reason that even though im right handed now, my hand writing sucks, and i can sometimes trip when im playing basketball, and also why i sometimes swear i feel like im unbalanced, or cant walk straight (this happens every once in a while) so im trying to recoordinate myself, because if it happened once, i can do it again.
No, not really. You can gain some degree of proficiency at tasks with either hand, but brain lateralization is more or less hard-wired by the time you’re an adult. There is still some degree of plasticity, but much less than in babies and developing children, and even children can show fairly strong lateralization by age two or three. Because of this, your reaction time and coordination on your off-hand will be measurably inferior to your naturally dominant side. True ambidexterity is probably clinically absent; there will almost always be differences in strength, reaction time, and coordination between the two sides.
Being forced to switch can debatably cause all kinds of psychological problems, probably even if violence is not used in the process.
I’m naturally left-handed, but not strongly so; I show mixed body dominance aside from handedness, which is pretty common. I’ve also done a lot of different activities that tend to balance out strong lateral preferences, like gymnastics, martial arts, juggling, and rock climbing. I practiced writing right-handed for quite a while when I was doing a lot of calligraphy between around ages 10 and 13, and again when I tried doing Japanese calligraphy (shodô) after moving to Japan. It didn’t matter how hard I tried, my control and fluidity were hugely different with my right hand compared to my left, and I was fairly serious about training myself into it.
And this is despite such a degree of general ambidexterity that I’ve gotten weird looks for doing things like switching hands eating, shaving, or brushing my teeth. I reach for things with whatever hand is closest, and catch with either hand, though I have a slight preference for right handed throwing. I’m the most ambidextrous person I’ve ever met, and even I have some obvious strengths on one side or another. I highly doubt that you can do much to override innate lateralization tendencies even if you start at infancy with a training program designed to produce ambidexterity.
I’m mostly right handed. I used both hands to play violin & guitar.
I took business office machines in high school and taught myself ten-key adding machines with my left. I wanted my right hand free to use a pencil. Great skill to have before the computer days.
Then computers come along and put the blasted numeric keypad on the right. :smack:
I rarely total columns of numbers anymore. It’s more accurate to enter into a spreadsheet and use a add function. So I’ve never relearned ten key with my right hand.
I still keep an old ten-key adding machine in my office for the rare times I need a quick numeric total. I can enter numbers faster by ten-key than a calculator. Calculator keypads suck compared to real ten-key machines. Plus you have a printed tape to double check the number entry.
Rafael Nadal, currently the #2 tennis player in the world, was born right-handed. His uncle/coach taught him to play tennis left-handed because of its strategic advantages. So Nadal holds/serves his racquet with his left hand, but signs autographs with his right.
Not realizing this was a zombie thread, I read through to see if anybody had mentioned Jesse Trevino. I had! (So predictable.)
Here’s more of his excellent art…
I know a man who lost his right arm (bone cancer) in his mid-30s. Of course, he learned to write left-handed. He said it took about 6 months.
An earlier post talks of right and left hand clapping. I do it pretty much at random, often changing sides in mid-clap. I have to other ambidextrous traits, so I have to doubt this has much to do with handedness.
I tried to research this for you. I googled ‘Switch Hand Dominance.’
Then I got distracted.
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On a less wiseass note, they used to try to train lefties out of it. Results were mixed, and I’ve been told it can lead to other developmental problems, including stuttering. They still did this in Japan until very recently, but again, that’s just heresy. I don’t have any actual data to back that up, though.
Having scanned through the responses, I didn’t see this kind of answer so I’ll post from my experience…
Empty-handed martial arts like Kung Fu, Karate, and Tai Chi (though I’m finding some limited exceptions in Tai Chi) tend to repeat or mirror actions on each side of the body, thereby fostering an ambidexterity. You learn to punch with the left fist and the right fist so that you can use either one and not have your opponent catch you on your off-side. Feet, knees, elbows, hips, etcetera are trained similarly.
One would assume that, since a weapon is an extension of the hand, ambidextrous training would be logical. That’s true for most of the weapons I’ve learned – except the katana. Drawing the sword is invariably done right-handed – though there’s a considerable amount of training required for the left hand, which is controlling the scabbard and, therefore, the angle and effectiveness of that draw. Thus, while you’re learning to use both hands for the techniques, they don’t mirror each other. The coup-de-grace is typically done with both hands, but there are some neat little techniques which rely more heavily on just the right or just the left hand.
Anecdotal stuff:
When I started fencing in high school, I knew I was a lefty and my instructor taught me some advantageous tricks with the Italian foil. Decades later and in a different town, I convinced my wife to try a fencing class with me. I wanted to be at somewhat of a same skill-level as her so she wouldn’t get too discouraged, so I trained right-handed. Now I fence Italian foil with my left and Belgian foil with my right. That’s right, Ogini Ayotnom, I’m smiling because I’m not really right-handed!
My mother was born a lefty (and passed it on to me). In Japan she was forced to learn everything right-handed. She said she learned to play tennis and ping-pong, but never learned a back-hand return because she would just switch hands and smack the ball fore-handed. When I was taking a Japanese language course in college, she encouraged me to write right-handed because the calligraphy stroke is made for lifting up as you pull to the right, and that’s not possible (or maybe it’s horribly difficult) when writing left-handed. And when I was getting ready to teach English in Japan, my mother taught me to use chop-sticks right-handed in case I was sent to an extremely rural town where it’s still taboo to use the left hand for eating/writing/etcetera. Fortunately, my town was not so tradition-bound.
And I had studied Russian in Jr. College and for a very brief period I could utter basic sentences in English while writing the same thing left-handed in Russian and right-handed in Japanese. I had to do it slowly, and with my eyes closed, otherwise I’d glance down and my left hand would mirror what my right hand was writing.:o
My right-handed brother taught me how to shoot a rifle when I was young. I just mimicked his actions. Then he asked why I was shooting right-handed if I’m a lefty. I explained that I was just mimicking him, but for some reason that didn’t make him happy. So I switched eyes and hands and he was even less happy to see that I was a better shot than him either way.
I learned archery right-handed because the instructor said my right eye is dominant. When my left-handed friend let me try his bow once, I not only missed the target but completely lost the arrow.:eek: We won’t try that one again.
—G!
“Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right…”
–Steelers Wheel
*Stuck in the middle With You*Both my parents were left handed, but after the nuns got through smacking their hands with rulers they learned to use the right, though my dad is ambidextrous (that’ll show those pengui…oh, sorry 
D) Strange, I’m right handed, I guess they smacked them really hard.
I think part of the problem is just that writing left handed, to be an equivalent motor skill, would have to be done backwards. It’s just as hard to write with your right hand, from right to left.
I think I was born a Lefty (like my pop), but am RH in all things. Chopping in the kitchen – knife goes in RH. Except on piano – I need all those fingers in LH, whereas with RH, I could lose a thumb or a pinky or something and get by close enough. I think, over time and experience passing, my LH has become stronger – most of my typing is done using LH (I hunt and peck, but I’m fast 70 wpm – not real fast, like a touchtyper, but pretty fast I would wager). Holding my hands out now, my LH immediately goes to the “claw” shape for a LH piano bass, where the RH is still kind of floppy.
Of course, there’s Rousseau to think of – those kinds of books you need to read with one hand disfavor the dominant hand, which is otherwise occupied.
We had a thread about right / left dominance recently. Quick summation of my contributions:
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“Ambidexterity” doesn’t mean what most people think it does. True ambidexterity is a disorder in which there is no completely dominant side. This causes problems in motor behavior and coordination.
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Forcibly changing the dominant side can cause problems.
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I’m a former professional juggler, and I’ve never met a juggler who was “ambidextrous”. We all had firmly established dominant sides, but had good skills with our non-dominant sides through practice and repetition.
A person can become very skillful with their non-dominant side, but that isn’t true ambidexterity. From what I recall from studying motor learning, people who have to change sides because of injury or other factors can do very well. But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be better off physiologically the way they started out with their originally dominant side.
Mom did it with my brother, although unintentionally. He’s naturally left-handed but had some shoulder and nerve damage due to birth trauma, and the doctors told her he would never be able to use his right hand and arm normally. She wanted him to be as functional as possible, so when he started reaching for things, she would only give him things he reached for with his right hand. She overdid it by rather a lot and made him right-handed. The leftiness started to reassert itself eventually, but for many years he was equally clutzy with both hands.
Lefty here. In 2008 my right wrist was broken and I spent 6 weeks in a lower arm cast. At first I didn’t slow down much (although I was off work) because I figured I am a lefty anyway. I soon learned how important the non dominant hand is. For instance, starting my car and shifting gears was a pain in the butt (thank goodness my car is an automatic and I only had to shift from Park to Drive) and I do all my mousing right handed as well. With scrubbing and carrying and everything, I gave myself tendonitis and also “golfers elbow” in my left arm. My right wrist still isn’t quite right and aches in cold damp weather but my left one gives me ongoing and recurring problems. I now appreciate my right arm as the muscle and gross motor expert of the pair.
I know several people who were forcibly switched in school. All have some degree of speech impediment and several have dyslexia as well. ( I am not saying there is any causative factor at play, just a rather high correlation.) I strongly suspect my Dad was switched because he plays all sports naturally left handed, eats left handed, and brushes his teeth right handed. He also has a stammer. He prints, never writes, using his right hand but also has no memories of school before about grade 3. Knowing my Grandmother, (who according to my parents wanted to “switch” me) he probably was switched.
Only a qualified psysiologist could reliably answer this question.