Just to make it clear, I should say that I certainly don't take this contralateral training effect, even if it does hold up, to absolve us of the need to train both sides. Rereading what I've written makes me suspect that my OP could have been taken that way. I don't think you can get out of training both sides, even if strong-side training carries over to the weak side. My conclusions from this research are more along the lines of (i) whoa, this might have some very interesting impact on our understanding of how it is that our cognitive mechanisms model preset sequences of physical movements and (ii) this effect might have certain practical implications for how to
sequence strong and weak side training.
In the kenpo lineages tracing back to Ed Parker, this is an often argued point... Some proponents suggest that one side is all that is necessary, as the techs are designed around the idea that most people are right handed, so the attack can be reasonably expected to be right handed, and the best defense would also be right handed. However, this idea seems to be different from what you are suggesting.... It's an interesting idea, but I suspect the fastest way to develop the other side is to practice it on the other side.
... At any rate, I am a big supporter of the idea that it's good to work things on both sides, develop physical strength evenly, as well as finer motor skills on both sides.
No argument here. What I've been contemplating is something a bit different: whether it might not make sense to favor strong-side over weak-side training (not exclusively, but in terms of the lion's share of training time) up to the point where that essential `click'—the kinæsthetic breakthrough—occurs, and then, having established the internal body sense of the technique, to switch emphasis to the weaks side, using the now-established internal model of the technique to guide the weak-side training. Basically, once you know how doing whatever it is correctly should feel, you can now use that as a training target on the weak side, aiming for the same body-sense you've already locked in on the strong side. If the contralateral effect is real, it implies that we have ways to make a single `internal picture' of the tech available to both sides, and it might be more efficient to wait till that internal picture is obtained and confirmed, so to speak, by strong-side experimentation, before committing the weak side to the effort in full earnest.
I have to say that knowing what certain kick-training tasks feel like when they're done right on the strong side has make it, apparently, much easier for me to do them on the weak side; I'm not at all sure I'd have been as successful simply attempting to do them on the weak side from the outset. They still need to be trained intensely on the weak side, of course, because the weak side is just that—
weak, at least relatively so, certainly in terms of strength and, concommitantly, balance, flexibility, dexterity... these all need to be developed by the usual means, aka imposing non-negotiable demands on those limbs. But it might be that this phase is better deferred till the right `key' has been discovered by initially focusing more on strong-side training...
Something I noted many years ago when training new movements or actions I would first work my weak side first and found my strong side seemed to be jumped started. This is something I have continued with my students. We work the left side first and then the right. I have found by doing it this way mentally they make a much quicker connection. The weak side is usually harder to do and is often more frustrating. Then when switching to the strong side the mental connection is there (for most) and they feel much better because it seems easier to perform. If you want to be good on both sides I believe you have got to work both sides. However, I do agree there is contralateral growth happening.
Danny
Interesting switch on what I was just speculating about... do the harder bit first and then the stronger side will pick it up more easily... I just wonder if it might not take a good deal longer going after the training goal on the weak side... but still, it's all an open question at this point... definitely food for thought...
Oh,yeah... this is why I set up my left handed mouse with reverse buttons, so my 'trigger finger' is always my index finger, because the 'mirror muscle memory' works out really well for some reason....
However in my limited MA experience, I've gravitated toward an approach of "learn it well on one side and then pick it up on the other side' because I cannot actually play bass left handed : ) and there are strength differences between my sides that do have an impact on the technique that go beyond muscle memory
Yes, and those strength differences probably make a big difference in rate of progress. That's a good deal of the reason why the strong-side-first gambit has seemed to me to be the default, at least for experimental purposes.
TKD is pretty bilateral, so I'm not sure I can really answer this... I have noticed, in TKD and out of it, that skills I have learned on one side are less difficult (not easy) to learn on the other - especially gross motor skills; having learned a technique or a sequence of techniques on one side, I find it transfers to the other side with less difficulty... but fine motor skills, such as writing, are more difficult to transfer than gross motor skills, such as kicking, hand attacks or blocks, and tul sequences.
Hmmm, that adds another important dimension to the discussion—how gross vs. fine motor skills compare. I agree: I am a reasonably decent pen-spinner with my right hand but I don't think that would give me any advantage whatever if, for some masochistic reason, I decided I had to learn to spin a pen around my
left thumb—whereas freezing a side kick at full extension on my left side became materially easier after I started being able to do it with my right leg. (And again, yes, the skills need to be learned bilaterally... my speculations are just about whether a contralateral effect might be relevant to how one might best go about sequencing training for the weak side....)
It's almost as though gross and fine motor skills are vested in two different processing routines in the brain, or correspond to two different neural zones, so that what holds for one doesn't necessarily hold for the other...