Mastering the Weak Side

by Crazy Ivan

Back in April, I wrote a blog entry about using "Adds" to make your repertoire of tricks more dangerous in a game of MYACH.  The list included variations like moves where you have to keep your foot off the ground or moves where your arm can't go above your head; things that make moves tougher but don't actually change the move that you're doing.

The most common, most effective and most important of these is the "weak side" variation.  It is a commonality in almost all skill toys that what you master on the right side, you must then master on the left.

There are a ton of reasons for this, of course.  The most important is that being able to do moves on both sides open you up to new moves.  If you can do a 720 on the right hand but not on the left hand, you're going to have a lot of trouble hitting a Double Wolverine.  If you can Clipper Delay on your right foot but not your left, good luck mastering the River Dance.

Mastering moves on the weak side is also a great strategy in MYACH.  Something as simple or common as a Mantis might not be worth much in a MYACH game, but if you shift that over to the weakside elbow you may have just earned yourself a letter.  Even people who are pretty good at weakside Mantis probably aren't 100% on it or even as close to 100% as they are on their strongside.

There are other benefits to mastering moves on both sides, of course.  One is the simple fact that it doubles the number of challenges that face you as a fan of Myachi.  We all know how fun it is to master a trick that once seemed out of reach and doubling the number of such potential successes is probably reason enough to justify the effort by itself.

But if that's not enough for you, consider just how physically beneficial it is to have equal use of both sides of your body.  Sure, you might not find a lot of day to day situations that require a left-armed Mantis, but you'll constantly find yourself in situations where it would be nice to be as good at catching with your weak hand as your strong.

If you want to dig a little deeper, we can talk about the mental benefits of ambidexterity as well.  As I'm sure you know, the left half of your brain (essentially) controls the right side of your body and the right side of your brain (essentially) controls the left side of your body.  By doing activities like Myachi, juggling or playing an instrument; activities that require engaging both sides of your body; are vastly superior mental exercises than those that favor or exclusively use only one side of your body.

This might seem inconsequential to you know, but emerging research keeps showing this huge and undeniable association between juggling and having a healthy brain late in life.  It's easy to take your brain for granted when you're young, but the older you get (trust me on this one), the more you start to worry about your hardware going obsolete.  The primary mechanism that juggling uses to keep your brain limber (it is currently believed) is the manner in which the exercise crosses the midline of the brain.

On a less important and more practical note, mastering your weak side will also make it easier to teach Myachi to others.  I find that if I'm teaching a right handed person, they learn much easier if I do all my tricks switch.  It makes sense if you think about it; this way I'm mirroring what they should do.  They don't have to look at my right hand and reverse the image in their minds before trying it.

A good Myachi player should strive to be ambidextrous.  Back when I was earning my living as a juggler I used to spend about 20 minutes a night practicing writing with my left hand.  I kept all my practice sheets so I could see how I improved over time.  To many this seemed like a wasted effort, but I've always been of the mind that learning something new is a benefit all by itself.

So as soon as you finish reading this (and you're close), try this out.  Do a 360 with your strong hand.  Then do a 720 and if you've got it, do a 1080.  Keep going to whatever level you top out at (1440, 1800, etc).  Now do the same thing on your weak hand.  You'll see right away that you've been neglecting it.  Even if you can pull the 1080 on the weakside, it will be clumsy and uncomfortable.

And then get to work fixing that.