Righthanded - lefthanded

[Monique]

Much has been written about Ronnie's ability to play with both hands and what a great asset this is to his game. Ray Raerdon encouraged him to use this ability whenever he felt like it. Ronnie himself however insists that playing lefthanded is a way for him to stay focused and to "keep" his mind happy, a way to find a mental balance in tense moments.
In recent years we have seen more players trying themselves at using their "wrong" hand in specific match situation. I don't know if this trend is supported by coaches or not.

Snooker is not the sole area where using both hands (and hence both hemispheres of the brain) is now seen as beneficial and encouraged. My youngest daughter, 17, just started a universty degree in Arts (graphisme) and she has, naturally, a course in drawing. The teacher started her first lesson by stating that all lefthanded will be requested to use only their right hand and all righthanded their left hand for the whole course of the academic year. She insisted that the purpose of this was to help them develop and take advantage of the full capacity of their brain in line with the last findings in neuroscience. She also insisted that the added difficulty will help them to focus on the task at hand and to deliver a better work in the end.
I must say that Niki has taken it very seriously and does now use her left hand even when drawing for herself. In only a few days, progress have been amazing, including increased concentration.
Already before we had surprising experiences regarding laterality. My elder daughter, who is an artist also, is righthanded. She is suffering from epilepsy and whenever she is in a less "stable" period (that is with increased frequence of seizures) she was unable to draw until she discovered that she could use her left hand and that this one seems uneffected by the situation. So she trained herself at it and has now a "fallback" ...

Our brain will never stop to surprise us ...

[KeithinFrance]

Wow! All I can use my left hand for is: 1. Eating crisps 2. Using a fork 3. Bridge hand

I'd like to be able to use it for other, more complex tasks, but it's as if it belongs to someone else, and that person is a mischievous 3-year-old!

[April madness]

I am still wondering which hand would I use for drawing/writing if my parents didn't notice I am often (not always) switching to left hand when drawing when I was a child. So I'm writing and drawing as a right handed person, but there are many things I do better with my left hand. Including playing snooker (although, if I practiced more often right handed, there probably wouldn't be much difference, since my snooker is not of a great standard).

[noel]

Balance is a goal we all should strive for in our lives in all things.

We know as Monique reminds us...

Snooker is not the sole area where using both hands (and hence both hemispheres of the brain) is now seen as beneficial and encouraged

For example, using all extremities equally well has always been a goal for the martial artist.
Remember in "Karate Kid"... "Wax On... Wax Off"? Like that.
And in training, the years and years of left or right favouritism has to be over-compensated for...
the pedulum has to swing much further towards the "weak" side in order to achieve the balance desired.
To that end, who knows the ratio of L/R practice Ronnie does?

And it is even more brain-training than brawn-training.
Try it.
Some morning, for a laugh, pickup your coffee with the "other" hand.
Brush your hair and teeth with the "other" hand.
Button your shirt with the "other" hand.
For something which feels even more alien, try in barefeet to turn lightswitches on or off or opening and closing the refrigerator door.

There is no doubt in my mind that Ronnie's ambi-dexterity has very little to do with avoiding the "rest"...
it's more about reawakening the mind to perceive what is taken for granted anew.
A fresh shot that might add years of excellence to an already long and distiguished career!



=o)

Noel

PS. Remember though DO NOT USE OPPOSITE HAND TO SHIFT GEARS WHILE DRIVING.

[montoya10]

I agree that Ronnie is trying left-handed shots to reacquire his concentration. May be I should use the same method while solving differential equations in this term

P.S I briefly played basketball and my dribbling was much better with my left hand than it was with my right. When I realized this, I wanted to adopt my left hand as my new dominant hand and started to try writing with it. But it needed such a focus that I wrote very slowly and got into headaches and eventually had to give up.

[The Boss]

PS. Remember though DO NOT USE OPPOSITE HAND TO SHIFT GEARS WHILE DRIVING.

Gear box is on the left hand side in Britain. Right handers use their left hand to change gears. Maybe the wheel is on the left side of the car in Canada?

[Krypton]

that's why he said 'opposite' and not 'left'.

Just do whatever you can with the opposite hand, compared on how you do it normally. except when changing gears

yes, the steering wheel is on the left side in canada. and on the right in the U.K.