Olympic Countdown - Judo

Does lots of practice make you more left handed? Some people are right-handed, other left-handed, and a few are ambidextrous. Movements of the right hand, for instance, are controlled by the left side of the brain. Rapcsak et al (1993) proposed that long-term motor training (such as an athlete training for their sport) is associated with more involvement of the right side of the brain. Therefore, if you look at more experienced athletes, you should find that they show a relative trend towards left-handedness. For some reason, the sport that several researchers have chosen to study this is judo. Mikheev (2002) looked at expert judo players and controls, and found that although all but one called themselves right-handed, there was an increased involvement of the right-hand side of the brain in the experts. For instance, when experts had to listen and remember words they heard through only one ear, 20% of them did better using the left ear (right half of the brain), whereas all the controls did better with their right ear. The experts were also more likely to do certain tasks, such as using a screwdriver, with their left hand. But there is an alternative explanation, which is that it’s simply more advantageous to be able to throw your opponent to either side. Lee & Quan looked at the throws made by novice and elite judo players in practice matches. 85% of the throws by the non-elite category were right-sided and 15% left-sided. For the elite players, however, 53% were right-sided and 47% left sided. They also looked at how often the players switched sides. They found that non-elite players were 12 times more likely to rely on a single side when throwing. This is a very limited strategy compared to being able to throw in either direction, and is likely to limit one’s progression in the sport to higher levels. So it seems that becoming more ambidextrous is a result of getting an advantage, rather than through lots of practice. This may explain why few darts players switch hands, although I understand that Raymond Van Barnevelt did well using his left hand in a tournament when his right hand was injured. But then he is actually left-handed, so that probably doesn’t count. David Donner