Here are my theories on the left handed shooters: The left arm shares many nerves with the heart. Shooting requires relaxation and concentration. if a left hand shooter has a strong connection with their left arm, then maybe the connection with the heart is stronger as well. We must remember the heart has its own nervous system and there’s only one, meaning this proliferation of nerves is not matched on the right side, or found on the way to the right arm/hand. Maybe firing the left hand provides a stronger and more direct nerve pathway by proxy of its relationship to the heart eliminating potential error from nerves having to travel further. Also, could this stronger relatinship with the heart mean they are able to better calm themselves? Could it mean they are more easily able to make sure they shoot when the heart is not creating vibrations or use the hearts vibrations to improve their timing? Does the brain and nervous system have a more direct connection to the left hand/arm?
Maye left handed people are able to reach deeper states of relaxation due to thaving used their right brain more, the part of the brain associated with relaxation and the parasypathetic nervous system vs the logical and thinkingn left brain, with thinking many times being the predecessor to stress and overthinking aka fear being a barrier to optimal performance. Could a stronger right brain due to being left handed result in being more resilient to stress? Also, the right brain is associated with spatial awareness, so if the right brain is stronger in left handed people due to their use and training of their left side, then maybe they have improved spatial awareness as well, which would help with shooting.
being left handed in a society built for right handers means lefties are forced to do many things right handed despite the left being their dominant hand. Does this lead to a greater amount of ambidexterity in left handed people? Do lefties have better physical and/or mental balance than right handers because of being forced to use their non dominant hand? Meanwhile, right handed people could have an imblaanced, extreme right hand dominance encouraged by and reinforced by the societal environment. We must remember that hands have a great amount of nerve endings in them, taking up much space in our brain, and our brain will no doubt be affected mentally and physically by the use of our hands over time, or the sending of blood to and from the nerves and cells in those areas, with nerve connections being strengthened or weakened over time, not only locally in the hand, but in the brain as well.
Objects we see in our left visual field map to our right brain, which is associated with spatial awareness. Left handed shooters are more likely to line stuff up with left hip, left foot, and left shoulder, placing objects on the left side of their spine and in their left visual field. Does this give natural advantages in tasks like shooting, where the right brain’s spatial awareness is so important?
These are so interesting! I also wonder if perhaps handedness is associated with some aspect of spatial ability. And, to your point about righties, I do recall when I used to read about handedness that the typical righty is more strongly right-handed than the typical lefty is left-handed. In fact, some of the papers I used to read would refer to right-handedness and non-right-handedness, because lefties were more flexible. I don't know the source of that flexibility, but found it really interesting.
Also, if a right handed person trains in the same activity left handed, no matter how good they are, will they reap performance benefits when they perform right handed afterwards?
Into my journey into being human, I've read a lot about kinesiology and psychology just to realize they simplify to the same thing, the nervous system
.
Learning about how the body and mind can't be separated because of the nervous system got me thinking a lot of questions. If blood is the source of nutrition for nerves and they are strengthened in body parts, such as the hand, then parts of the brain are also strengthened by proxy of those nerve pathways receiving blood repeatedly. They become habitual and unconscious. Is society's right hand dominance, something completely unnatural when you think of the environment the human nervous system evolved in, are humans creating physical and cognitive deficits? And I'm fascinated by the brains hemispheres and their different functions. If the right brain controls the left side and our level of calm and creativity, generally speaking, what does it mean to encourage imbalanced right hand dominance? Does that mean encouraging less creative thought?
I've ran some of my own experiments with myself and it's fascinating really. Like for example, when I meditate and calm my nervous system before playing basketball, a sport where I'm very right hand dominant, all of a sudden I find myself using my left hand, being less afraid and more creative and balanced... With better rhythm.
I do wonder the wide spread implications of unnaturally reinforcing some neural pathways and diminishing others in regards to the brain and body's development during childhood and adulthood
Thanks Fred! It does make sense to me that you might want to shoot from the same side as your dominant eye. I don't know if that's true in practice, but it makes sense to me in theory...so I guess then the question I should investigate is the proportion of left-eye dominance.
Fred is right. Eye dominance is importance in the shooting sports. You want to aim/point with your dominant eye. Most right handed people are right eye dominant and most left handed people are left eye dominant. Some people are cross dominant, such as right handed, but left eye dominant. If you are left eye dominant, you will want to shoot shotgun by pointing with your left eye which means shooting left handed. If you’re new to shooting, it’s “easy” to learn to shoot left handed even if you’re right handed otherwise. As for the high proportion of left handed shooters at the highest level in this Olympics, perhaps someone needs to study that. Can left handers go into the alpha state easier and longer than right handers? Is it something about their muscles, reaction time, breathing, or what? Penn State University did sports psychology/medicine studies on similar topics in the 1970’s. Perhaps it’s time for an update.
This is exactly the kind of stuff I was hoping to learn about in the comments! Thank you Denny. Quick question: I believe the targets are released in essentially random directions, but do you think it would be easier for a shooter to track a target that starts moving on their dominant-eye side?
Interesting stats. That a gymnast can have such longevity seems bonkers and cool. And Ledecky unbeaten for 14 years in an event? Superbonkers. Those heart rate monitors on the parents are like a train wreck. It feels perverse to see that info and yet also fascinating.
I wonder if left-handed people are either born or forced to see the world differently and that’s their advantage. I’m a comedian and fan of comedy, and I’m always struck by how many successful comedians are left handed. I’ve not counted or done a study, but of the famous ones you can see in specials or on podcasts (you can tell by which wrist they put their watch on more than how they hold the mic) too many are lefties. Including famously Jerry Seinfeld :), king of seeing the world differently, and whose very first joke was about being left handed.
Left-handed shotguns are a thing. Perhaps as people get into shotgun-based sport, the lefties have to buy their own gun and gear, whereas the righties just borrow stuff or get hand-me-downs from others. This might push lefties to be more committed earlier in the process.
Lefties may have a lack of role models or coaches who understand their perspective, so they have to forge their own way. This may allow them to avoid buying into conventional ideas and invent new ways of approaching their tasks.
Justin, I love this idea — a sort of psychological negative frequency-dependent advantage. I think "having to learn a different way" may be one reason that, in some sports, athletes who are relatively young in the birth cohort are overrepresented at top levels. (They are underrepresented at lower levels, because coaches mistake biological maturation for talent; but perhaps those who make it have to find a way around being undersized at earlier ages.)
I've heard of the relative age effect (maybe from you?) but I thought it was more linear, with older children in a cohort having a clear advantage that resulted in professional hockey players being 40% from the first three months, 30% the next three, 20% the next, and 10% from the last three months. Your point that the relatively young are overrepresented, and therefore the relative age effect is more curvilinear, is new to me - are there studies/resources you can share?
Sorry, I should've explained in more detail. You're right, older kids are overrepresented in youth teams, often to a large degree. The patterns of this effect are usually pretty clear at very young ages, but often more nuanced at older ages, and at the highest levels sometimes you even see an "RAE reversal": https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0182827
It brought to mind how in a non-sporting (but similarly visuospatial and tactile) field– surgery– the opposite has been true, with left-handedness historically being perceived as a disadvantage, and leaving surgical trainees with less effective mentorship and coaching on surgical skill development, which can be a big rate-limiter.
This has me wondering how much, if at all, this is influenced by sport-specific aspects of skill (equipment requirements, dependence on coaching, accessibility of figuring it out on one's own.) Are there some sports where it's easier to innovate and invent new ideas, whereas others may leave developing athletes more dependent on other factors?
I think about golf (where I think lefties are quite underrepresented, though I may be wrong) and the potentially low availability of left-handed clubs, low availability of coaches who can work with those athletes, etc.
Man I love when I learn something I wouldn't even have known to ask about in these comments. Jack, that's fascinating about surgery. Regarding golf, I just did an extremely cursory search, and several articles claim that the PGA has about half the rate of lefties as the general population.
Hey, David. One your friend Bill Mallon may have mentioned to you: Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 2023, is the mother of Susan Francia, two-time Olympic gold medalist in rowing. Other fun links between Olympians and other *very* accomplished people can be found here: https://www.olympedia.org/lists/239/manual
Absolutely! In fact, the impetus for me asking was when I was prepping a post should Karikó win the Nobel. Had no idea Niels Bohr's brother was a medalist!
In martial arts I trained lefthanded on my own in addition to the required righthanded training. Although I am not good at sportly, physical activities, it still meant I was constantly training double capabilities.
My lefthanded brother was taught in cooking school to cut righthanded only. I suspect when these women were first taught to shoot, they also had to use righthanded equipment.
Also, being lefthanded in a world built for righties, you gain skills like the ability to read upside down or backwards. Every lefthanded person I’ve asked can do this, while I’ve only run across a few righties who can.
Here are my theories on the left handed shooters: The left arm shares many nerves with the heart. Shooting requires relaxation and concentration. if a left hand shooter has a strong connection with their left arm, then maybe the connection with the heart is stronger as well. We must remember the heart has its own nervous system and there’s only one, meaning this proliferation of nerves is not matched on the right side, or found on the way to the right arm/hand. Maybe firing the left hand provides a stronger and more direct nerve pathway by proxy of its relationship to the heart eliminating potential error from nerves having to travel further. Also, could this stronger relatinship with the heart mean they are able to better calm themselves? Could it mean they are more easily able to make sure they shoot when the heart is not creating vibrations or use the hearts vibrations to improve their timing? Does the brain and nervous system have a more direct connection to the left hand/arm?
Maye left handed people are able to reach deeper states of relaxation due to thaving used their right brain more, the part of the brain associated with relaxation and the parasypathetic nervous system vs the logical and thinkingn left brain, with thinking many times being the predecessor to stress and overthinking aka fear being a barrier to optimal performance. Could a stronger right brain due to being left handed result in being more resilient to stress? Also, the right brain is associated with spatial awareness, so if the right brain is stronger in left handed people due to their use and training of their left side, then maybe they have improved spatial awareness as well, which would help with shooting.
being left handed in a society built for right handers means lefties are forced to do many things right handed despite the left being their dominant hand. Does this lead to a greater amount of ambidexterity in left handed people? Do lefties have better physical and/or mental balance than right handers because of being forced to use their non dominant hand? Meanwhile, right handed people could have an imblaanced, extreme right hand dominance encouraged by and reinforced by the societal environment. We must remember that hands have a great amount of nerve endings in them, taking up much space in our brain, and our brain will no doubt be affected mentally and physically by the use of our hands over time, or the sending of blood to and from the nerves and cells in those areas, with nerve connections being strengthened or weakened over time, not only locally in the hand, but in the brain as well.
Objects we see in our left visual field map to our right brain, which is associated with spatial awareness. Left handed shooters are more likely to line stuff up with left hip, left foot, and left shoulder, placing objects on the left side of their spine and in their left visual field. Does this give natural advantages in tasks like shooting, where the right brain’s spatial awareness is so important?
These are so interesting! I also wonder if perhaps handedness is associated with some aspect of spatial ability. And, to your point about righties, I do recall when I used to read about handedness that the typical righty is more strongly right-handed than the typical lefty is left-handed. In fact, some of the papers I used to read would refer to right-handedness and non-right-handedness, because lefties were more flexible. I don't know the source of that flexibility, but found it really interesting.
Also, if a right handed person trains in the same activity left handed, no matter how good they are, will they reap performance benefits when they perform right handed afterwards?
Into my journey into being human, I've read a lot about kinesiology and psychology just to realize they simplify to the same thing, the nervous system
.
Learning about how the body and mind can't be separated because of the nervous system got me thinking a lot of questions. If blood is the source of nutrition for nerves and they are strengthened in body parts, such as the hand, then parts of the brain are also strengthened by proxy of those nerve pathways receiving blood repeatedly. They become habitual and unconscious. Is society's right hand dominance, something completely unnatural when you think of the environment the human nervous system evolved in, are humans creating physical and cognitive deficits? And I'm fascinated by the brains hemispheres and their different functions. If the right brain controls the left side and our level of calm and creativity, generally speaking, what does it mean to encourage imbalanced right hand dominance? Does that mean encouraging less creative thought?
I've ran some of my own experiments with myself and it's fascinating really. Like for example, when I meditate and calm my nervous system before playing basketball, a sport where I'm very right hand dominant, all of a sudden I find myself using my left hand, being less afraid and more creative and balanced... With better rhythm.
I do wonder the wide spread implications of unnaturally reinforcing some neural pathways and diminishing others in regards to the brain and body's development during childhood and adulthood
I shoot left handed. My left eye is the dominant eye.
Thanks Fred! It does make sense to me that you might want to shoot from the same side as your dominant eye. I don't know if that's true in practice, but it makes sense to me in theory...so I guess then the question I should investigate is the proportion of left-eye dominance.
Fred is right. Eye dominance is importance in the shooting sports. You want to aim/point with your dominant eye. Most right handed people are right eye dominant and most left handed people are left eye dominant. Some people are cross dominant, such as right handed, but left eye dominant. If you are left eye dominant, you will want to shoot shotgun by pointing with your left eye which means shooting left handed. If you’re new to shooting, it’s “easy” to learn to shoot left handed even if you’re right handed otherwise. As for the high proportion of left handed shooters at the highest level in this Olympics, perhaps someone needs to study that. Can left handers go into the alpha state easier and longer than right handers? Is it something about their muscles, reaction time, breathing, or what? Penn State University did sports psychology/medicine studies on similar topics in the 1970’s. Perhaps it’s time for an update.
This is exactly the kind of stuff I was hoping to learn about in the comments! Thank you Denny. Quick question: I believe the targets are released in essentially random directions, but do you think it would be easier for a shooter to track a target that starts moving on their dominant-eye side?
I don’t know. As that to the list of things to be studied.
Here is an article about a 61 year old participant at these Olympics: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/31/auntie-ni-xia-lian-61-bows-out-olympics-table-tennis
Srinivas, fantastic! I hadn't seen this. Her sixth Olympics!!
Interesting stats. That a gymnast can have such longevity seems bonkers and cool. And Ledecky unbeaten for 14 years in an event? Superbonkers. Those heart rate monitors on the parents are like a train wreck. It feels perverse to see that info and yet also fascinating.
Superbonkers is precisely the adjective I should've used;)
I wonder if left-handed people are either born or forced to see the world differently and that’s their advantage. I’m a comedian and fan of comedy, and I’m always struck by how many successful comedians are left handed. I’ve not counted or done a study, but of the famous ones you can see in specials or on podcasts (you can tell by which wrist they put their watch on more than how they hold the mic) too many are lefties. Including famously Jerry Seinfeld :), king of seeing the world differently, and whose very first joke was about being left handed.
Peace,
Lemmy
Also could just be availability bias 😂
haha...in this particular case, I think that's my leading hypothesis;) But I appreciate your much more interesting idea!
Left-handed shotguns are a thing. Perhaps as people get into shotgun-based sport, the lefties have to buy their own gun and gear, whereas the righties just borrow stuff or get hand-me-downs from others. This might push lefties to be more committed earlier in the process.
David, really interesting hypothesis. I definitely would never have considered this.
Lefties may have a lack of role models or coaches who understand their perspective, so they have to forge their own way. This may allow them to avoid buying into conventional ideas and invent new ways of approaching their tasks.
Justin, I love this idea — a sort of psychological negative frequency-dependent advantage. I think "having to learn a different way" may be one reason that, in some sports, athletes who are relatively young in the birth cohort are overrepresented at top levels. (They are underrepresented at lower levels, because coaches mistake biological maturation for talent; but perhaps those who make it have to find a way around being undersized at earlier ages.)
I've heard of the relative age effect (maybe from you?) but I thought it was more linear, with older children in a cohort having a clear advantage that resulted in professional hockey players being 40% from the first three months, 30% the next three, 20% the next, and 10% from the last three months. Your point that the relatively young are overrepresented, and therefore the relative age effect is more curvilinear, is new to me - are there studies/resources you can share?
Sorry, I should've explained in more detail. You're right, older kids are overrepresented in youth teams, often to a large degree. The patterns of this effect are usually pretty clear at very young ages, but often more nuanced at older ages, and at the highest levels sometimes you even see an "RAE reversal": https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0182827
This is a great perspective, Justin!
It brought to mind how in a non-sporting (but similarly visuospatial and tactile) field– surgery– the opposite has been true, with left-handedness historically being perceived as a disadvantage, and leaving surgical trainees with less effective mentorship and coaching on surgical skill development, which can be a big rate-limiter.
This has me wondering how much, if at all, this is influenced by sport-specific aspects of skill (equipment requirements, dependence on coaching, accessibility of figuring it out on one's own.) Are there some sports where it's easier to innovate and invent new ideas, whereas others may leave developing athletes more dependent on other factors?
I think about golf (where I think lefties are quite underrepresented, though I may be wrong) and the potentially low availability of left-handed clubs, low availability of coaches who can work with those athletes, etc.
Man I love when I learn something I wouldn't even have known to ask about in these comments. Jack, that's fascinating about surgery. Regarding golf, I just did an extremely cursory search, and several articles claim that the PGA has about half the rate of lefties as the general population.
Hey, David. One your friend Bill Mallon may have mentioned to you: Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 2023, is the mother of Susan Francia, two-time Olympic gold medalist in rowing. Other fun links between Olympians and other *very* accomplished people can be found here: https://www.olympedia.org/lists/239/manual
Absolutely! In fact, the impetus for me asking was when I was prepping a post should Karikó win the Nobel. Had no idea Niels Bohr's brother was a medalist!
In martial arts I trained lefthanded on my own in addition to the required righthanded training. Although I am not good at sportly, physical activities, it still meant I was constantly training double capabilities.
My lefthanded brother was taught in cooking school to cut righthanded only. I suspect when these women were first taught to shoot, they also had to use righthanded equipment.
Also, being lefthanded in a world built for righties, you gain skills like the ability to read upside down or backwards. Every lefthanded person I’ve asked can do this, while I’ve only run across a few righties who can.