From: terry@nambe.santafe.edu (Terry Jones)
Subject: learning left and right
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 92 06:39:34 GMT
Organization: Santa Fe Institute
Distribution: rec


whilst in bloomington, serving under the watchful eye of jugglemeister
steven ragatz, one of the most important things he drilled into me -
and anyone else fortunate enough to be the recipient of his opinions -
was the extreme importance of learning everything with both hands. i
don't question this, but i often wonder about the best way to do it.

there are plenty of choices that you can make. at one extreme, you
learn the trick with one hand and then with the other. at the other
end of the spectrum lies practicing both at the same time. if you do
both at the same time, should you give each hand equal time or try to
ensure that each hand develops at the same rate?

i used to aim for equal development. my right hand is far better than
my left at practically everything. it tends to learn things perhaps 5
times as quickly. for me it's very boring to practice left handed 5
times as much as i do right handed. i get bored if i don't progress
rapidly, or at least visibly over a short period.

the practice of learning with the right and then trying to learn with
the left is satisfying if nothing else. until recently i would always
feel a bit guilty about doing this, but now i feel there is often
justification for it.

some tricks have a very distinctive feel or rhythm or pattern. or they
take a lot of experimenting before you try the right combination of
actions, frame of mind, posture etc and they begin to click. it takes
time to do this - especially if you are working on something difficult
alone. i think there is a reasonable argument to be made in favour of
learning some tricks with one hand and then working on the other. once
you have it one way, with the good hand, you can learn the bad hand
and have it learn the correct technique from scratch. it seems
important to pay close attention to what it actually is that you have
learnt and that you begin to conciously apply that knowledge to your
bad hand as soon as you begin to get comfortable with your good one.

to me it seems like there is a double win here. for one, the time
spent finding the right way to do the trick is reduced, as you are
exploring with your more able hand, and secondly, your bad hand is
taught (presumably) good habits, and thus learns faster than it would
if it was part of the exploratory phase too.

of course the degree of separation is a personal thing. i never learn
something completely with my right and then, once i have it, start on
the left. i always at least make the occasional attempt with the left
along the way.

two examples from the life of me. in learning 4 clubs (standard
fountain), it took me a while to adopt to angling the clubs slightly
outwards when throwing them. i had been told very early on to do this
but it took a while before i was doing it reasonably unconciously. at
some point between the time when i catch the club and when i release
it, i move the handle of the club so that the knob moves away from my
thumb. it's a very slight adjustment and it has a very definite feel -
both as something i do while the club is in my hand and also in the
release. this is also accompanied by a distinctive outside-inside
flowing movement of the hand.

i found that these feelings, which it took me some time to attend to,
were something i was able to transfer to my left hand relatively
easily. so much so that my left hand has probably been better trained
for the particular task. once i thought a little about making my left
hand feel like my right and learn the lessons of the right, i found i
could suddenly regularly do 4 clubs for hundreds of throws. 

a second example is from unicycling. riding one footed has a very
distinctive feel to it - there is a definite rhythm, there is a good
time to adjust the other foot (which i put on the frame), there is a
very definite way to get into it (whether from idling or from riding)
and so on. there are many lessons that can be learnt in the process of
learning this trick. i learnt this with my right foot, and it took
quite a while - several months before i could ride around comfortably,
start and stop one one foot, turn sharply in both directions etc.
occasionally i would try with my left foot, and never got a single
revolution (that first one is probably the hardest). then one night i
decided that i could probably do it left footed if i put my mind to
it. i tried to exactly replicate the things i had learnt with the
other foot, and suddenly i was riding left footed. it was shaky, but i
was actually riding.

progress with the right foot had taken months. reaching the point
where i could go, say, five revolutions had taken weeks. but in one
night all that experience allowed the left foot to go from almost
nothing to almost everything.

of course nothing can ever be proved about which method is better,
(faster, results in better technique) or for what tricks or for who.
but it might be interesting to hear what others have to say and have
experienced and do.

of course i am not advocating letting the bad hand/leg/etc fall far
behind the good. in fact, i am not advocating anything at all. the
question is, how best to learn things with both when you are stuck
with one that is significantly worse than the other.

terry jones.
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