1My topic is handedness -
2whether in different sports it is better to be left or right-sided
3or whether a more balanced approach is more successful.
4I'm left-handed myself
5and I actually didn't see any relevance to my own life
6when I happened to start reading an article by a sports psychologist called Peter Matthews.
7He spent the first part of the article talking about handedness in music instead of sport,
8which I have to say almost put me off from reading further.
9But what I soon became struck by
10was the sheer volume of both observation and investigation he had done in many different sports
11and I felt persuaded that what he had to say would be of real interest.
12I think Matthews' findings will be beneficial,
13not so much in helping sportspeople to work on their weaker side,
14but more that they can help them identify the most suitable strategies to use in a given game.
15Although most trainers know how important handedness is,
16at present they are rather reluctant to make use of the insights scientists like Matthews can give,
17which I think is rather short-sighted
18because focusing on individual flexibility is only part of the story.
19Anyway, back to the article.
20Matthews found a German study which looked at what he called 'mixed-handedness',
21that is, the capacity to use both left and right hands equally.
22It looked at mixed-handedness in 40 musicians on a variety of instruments.
23Researchers examined a number of variables,
24for example, type of instrument played,
25regularity of practice undertaken
26and length of time playing instrument...
27and found the following:
28keyboard players had high levels of mixed-handedness,
29whereas string players like cellists and violinists strongly favoured one hand.
30Also, those who started younger were more mixed-handed.
31Matthews also reports studies of handedness in apes.
32Apes get a large proportion of their food by 'fishing' ants from ant hills.
33The studies show that apes, like humans, show handedness -
34though, for them right and left-handedness is about equal,
35whereas about 85% of humans are right-handed.
36Studies showed that apes consistently using the same hand
37fished out 30% more ants than those varying between the two.
38Matthews started researching several different sports
39and found different types of handedness in each.
40By the way, he uses 'handedness'.
41to refer to the dominant side for feet and eyes as well as hands.
42Anyway, his team measured the hand, feet and eyes of 2,611 players
43and found that there were really three main types of laterality:
44mixed - you work equally well on both sides - both hand and eye;
45single - you tend to favour one side but both hand and eye favour the same side;
46and cross-laterality - a player's hands and eyes favour only one side
47but they are opposite sides.
48Let's start with hockey.
49Matthews found that it was best to be mixed-handed -
50this is because a hockey stick must be deployed in two directions -
51it would be a drawback to have hand or eye favouring one side.
52An interesting finding is that mixed-handed hockey players were significantly more confident than their single-handed counterparts.
53Things are slightly different in racket sports like tennis.
54Here the important thing is to have the dominant hand and eye on the one side.
55This means that there is a bigger area of vision on the side where most of the action occurs.
56If a player is cross lateral,
57the racket is invisible from the dominant eye for much of the swing.
58It means that they can only make corrections much later...
59and often the damage has been done by then.
60And moving to a rather different type of sport which involves large but precise movements - gymnastics.
61It's been found that cross hand-eye favouring is best.
62The predominant reason for this is because it aids balance,
63which is of course absolutely central to performance in this sport.