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Comment by dagi3d

8 hours ago

I am right handed but left handed for some very specific things such as playing pool or hockey

Same but i feel many sports are weird in that i’ve never been convinced that there’s a particularly natural right or left handedness to them.

Eg. For pool does the more dextrous hand need to push the cue or does it line up and guide the front of the cue? I can see tradeoffs each way and the front hand is certainly not just limp when playing.

Hockey is similar. The top or the bottom hand being the more dextrous probably has tradeoffs but I don’t see either grip as being more or less natural for handedness. I don’t play hockey but play golf and cricket which have similar grips and am similar there to you too.

  • Golf and baseball batting have obvious handedness - the muscles that pull your towards your centerline and then across your body and significantly stronger than the ones that push your arm back out away from your body, and the right-handed stance in these two sports uses the stronger muscles in the right arm.

    • My dad was a lefty and played golf right-handed. It's a common enough thing.

      In golf, strength is overrated until you get to the pros.

      1 reply →

  • fun fact: vs the US, golf stores in Canada carry more left-handed clubs because a right handed hockey player has their right hand higher on the stick which is the same orientation as the grip for left-handed golfers.

  • Re: pool, definitely the one pushing needs to be the dominant hand.

    It has the most degrees of freedom, and more motion. The one in front has a whole table for stability.

    But that's just like my opinion, man.

Interestingly, playing left-handed in "field" hockey is actually illegal for safety reasons and left-handed sticks don't exist.

Same which makes me very poor at sports. I write right-handed. For anything sports related (riding a board, throwing a ball, golf, batting, bowling, etc) I'm leftie. My dad is left-handed, mother is right-handed. I have wondered if I should've been a left-handed writer and was corrected either explicitly or just by the environment to write right-handed.

Same! I am specifically left handed for pool and cannot figure out how to play it right handed - absolutely zero coordination.

It happens. I can play hockey with either hand as dominant. Too bad that wasn't really a useful talent like being a switch hitter in baseball. I'm generally left handed, but play musical instruments almost exclusively right handed. I had a friend teach me drums. He was right handed and didn't even think to ask me about my handedness, or didn't want to move stuff around (lefties have to adapt to a right handed world...). It didn't feel awkward though. I don't know why I play guitar right handed. The prevailing theory in my family is that I "learned" by mirroring Kurt Cobain on the TV screen...