Left-handed, Canadian, or just BS-ing?

Factual Questions
21

You guys lost me a while ago. I play or have played a lot of sports. I am a natural right-hander, no question about this .I write with my right hand.

In baseball, I wear a right-hander’s glove and throw with the right hand (in fact, if I were going to throw anything, it’d be with the right hand). I bat right-handed.

In hockey, when I was a kid, my left hand was on top of the stick and my right hand was the fulcrum. I’m convinced that the power in a wrist shot comes from the fulcrum hand, though I’m not a physicist, so I can’t prove this. I believe, though, that this is the difference between a wrist shot and a slap shot.

Here’s where it gets weird. I’m clearly left-footed. In soccer, I shoot and pass much better with tle left foot than with the right one, which is why I was always either the left winger or the left defenseman. When I ran track in high school, I pushed off with the left foot. I am a lousy basketball player, but I play basketball left-footed–and therefore left-handed. I can’t dribble well with my right hand, and I shoot left.handed. By the way, I’m a typical white guy point guard in pickup basketball–the guy who can make the pass and hit the set shot but not move to the basket.

Sorry, I doubt this was interesting to anybody, but some of us are ambidestrous in a weird way. Just thought I’d fill you in.

American, not Canadian. Question–do Canadian hockey coaches train their young players to shoot from the left in the same way that American Little League coaches train their players to switch-hit?

22

No hockey coaches don’t train players to shoot left because it doesn’t matter which way you shoot.

23

Ok, hold everything. Let’s sort this out.

Truly right-handed players in hockey, baseball, golf and tennis all use the same hand for the same thing. Their right hand is the hand farthest down the shaft of whichever implement they are using.

When they are “shooting,” (in a forehand posture for hockey and tennis) they always present the left side of their body toward their target.

It’s just the opposite for true lefties.

Now I don’t know how you can make it any simpler than that.

In the days before tennis players started using two-handed grips, a right handed player did not use his left hand when confronted with a shot to his right (forehand) side. That’s silly. He used his right, and only his right hand for both control and power. When presented with a shot to his left (backhand) side, he did not switch hands, he presented the right side of his body toward the net and used his right hand in a backhand swing. (Unless, of course, he was one of those people (like me) who would do anything to run around a backhand and make it into a forehand).

Now comes the two-handed grip. Why have that other powerful arm just flapping out there in the breeze? The right-handed player did not bother to add the left hand to his forehand, but look what happened on the backhand. UH-OH! The left hand now becomes the hand farthest from the body, the hand that provides the power and control! Well I’ll be dipped.

Is that what this guy was talking about? Hockey players are taught to make what is essentially a forehand shot with their non-dominant hand? NOW we are getting somewhere. A guy that could do that would have no “backhand” shot at all, no matter which side of the net he approached from. They simply switch hands. Now it makes sense.

Geezis, the amount of time I spent wading through tennis sites looking at pictures and reading captions like “Two-handed backhand with the dominant hand in the half eastern continental and non-dominant hand in the full western continental forehand back grip.”
Then try figuring out if they guy in the picture is right-handed or not, cause they don’t say. I HATE tennis sites!

24

You guys are still arguing?I can only agree with Lawrence:

me too

25

Wait, now I don’t agree anymore. We’ll have to take this outside on the ice, that’s the only wway.

26

I’m wondering if this is an example of mixed dominance (of the hemispheres of the brain, each of which control the contralateral part of the body). I used to identify myself as ambidextrous, and although there are some tasks I can do equally well with each hand (I’m a switch hitter, for the baseball example), in most activities I tend to favour one side or the other. I write with my right, I turn keys with my left, etc. So I’m wondering if hemispheric dominance could be on a scale (the same way sexuality is), with right-handedness on one side, left-handedness on the other, and ambidexterity in the middle. And inbetween each absolute would be mixed dominance, favouring one side or the other on particular activities. Does that make any sense to anyone?

27

Sunbear and Lawrence: I think you are misplacing the fulcrum in your wrist shot.
The fulcrum is the point upon which a lever rotates. In the case of a right-handed hockey player shooting right-handed with his right hand well down on the stick, the fulcrum is in the area of the left hand. The arc of the stick (lever) follows the right hand, it does not rotate about it.

28

Whoops. Dammit. Now you have me standing around playing air guitar with a hockey stick. That last thing I said ain’t right, either. I guess in a wrist shot, there are two fulcrums (and two different motions) involved. There is the motion of the right hand as I described, yet the left hand also pulls backward on the stick making the right hand into a fulcrum as well. Right?

Gee, I’m beginning to make a career out of this thread! Cripes. Someone shoot me.

29

I don’t know how this got so complicated, talking about fulcrums and changing hands and left and right brains. A player can’t change hands because the blade of his stick is curved he always shoots the same way except on backhands but they are always weak shots for that very reason. A player therefor always has the same hand on the top of the stick. When skating the player usually has only one hand on the stick, the top hand, so for most right handed players it is more comfortable and easier to control the puck if your right hand is the one on the stick. I don’t really know if we just learn to shoot that way as a result, or if we actually can shoot better with the right hand on top but it seems from this discussion that some things are done better one way and others the other way, but since you can’t change the side you shoot from during play it’s a trade off. Since more time is spent skating and handling the puck than shooting it is common to play this way . I would also point out that in spite of the fact that most hockey players are left handed shots very few Canadians golf left handed, this would seem to support the view that playing hockey left handed is a control thing and not for shooting.

30

Golly gee Vlad. I just checked my handy dandy NHL guide and you’re right, there are a heck of a lot of left handed players out there.

31

THERE ARE NOT! NOOOOOooooooo ack gurgle /

32

I had no idea this thread would cause this much anguish, especially for our moderator. Here’s what I gathered from this thread:

Either the best way to play hockey is to have your right hand on the butt end of the stick (for control) or closer to the blade (for power) Despite NickRZs denial of it, it is a fact that most NHLers are lefties, though not by much. The split is very close to 50/50, though with a 10/90 lefty/righty split in the “real world” it would definately indicate a large proportion of righties-playing-lefty to make up this difference.

My original question boiled down to this: If you had never played any other sport before that required the handling of a stick/bat/cudgel/whatever before, and someone handed you a hockey stick, would you handle it with your dominant hand on the butt-end or in the middle. My indications from Canadians (most of whom play hockey as their first sport) was that many played with the dominant hand on the butt end, while Americans (for which baseball was the first sport) put the dominant hand in the middle. It might be as simple as this: In pee-wee hockey, some kid got stuck playing left wing/left defense as a righty. Their coach encouraged them to play using the other-handed stick. As this was the first exposure to hockey for them, they got to feeling natural playing this way, and thus, caused my conundrum. As there is no shortage of righties, we don’t find many left-handers playing backwards to play right wing (or do we??? would change the nature of the issue) but we DO find a lot of righties playing lefty to play left wing.

33

Canadians are so weird.
Nickrz: 2 minutes for high-sticking.

34

i dont no butt if i use mi left handto jerkoff its like sumddy else iz dooin it

35

ewwww, somebody just peed in the pool!

hey shit4brains, try punching yourself in the face with the left hand and see how that feels!

to the rest of you…
Canadians need to be able to do stuff with their left hands so they can hold the beer in the right :slight_smile:

“give me ambiguity…or give me something else…”

36

OK, I was never actually “taught” how to play hockey, but when I played it seemed obvious for whatever reason to put my right hand at the top of the stick (I bat, throw, write, eat, etc. righty). However, when I skateboarded, for some reason it felt more natural to do so goofy foot(right foot on the board, left foot pushing). And it confused me that I played hockey lefty also.

I decided that it was a balance and power thing thing. When shooting a slap shot it feels (to me) like I have better balance and more power planting on my right foot, same with riding a skateboard. And when I hit a baseball or throw any ball, the power comes from planting my good/right foot and stepping onto my left/weak foot. That’s what it comes down to for most people, I think. It’s just that shooting a hockey puck is such a weird action that people can go either way easily and feel comfortable.

37

I have never heard of a player being encouraged by a coach to change the way he shoots in order to play left wing. It really doesn’t matter a lot left wingers are right handed shots and right wingers lefties.

38

Maybe it might help some Americans to look at it this way. Suppose you played a game like field hockey, but with baseball bats. You would go running around poking at some ball, often with just your right hand (if you were right-handed), while you used your left elbow to knock the opponent’s teeth out or whatever. Occasionally you would have to take a fairly sudden whack at the ball with both hands. A lot of righties would swing left-handed, no?

In hockey, it makes even more sense, because with the curved stick you can only really shoot one way.

BTW, to confuse the issue, I am right-handed and I shoot right. But I am also not very good.