Stop for a second and notice something. The bag — which shoulder do you carry it on? The first step of the stairs — which foot goes up? When you push yourself up from a chair, who does the work? The answers come instantly, and that’s exactly the point: for years you’ve always used the same side, and you never decided to.
We call someone «uncoordinated» when they stumble, and «coordinated» when they move well. But most of us are neither: we’re coordinated on one side only. And the side left behind isn’t unable — it’s simply a side we’ve given no work to, for years. Let’s see why, and what can be done.
The definition
What motor coordination is
Motor coordination is the ability to organize and control movement: to bring muscles, senses and nervous system into agreement so the gesture happens at the right moment, in the right measure, in the right direction. It isn’t strength, it isn’t speed: it’s the order that holds the two together. We usually distinguish gross-motor coordination — the big gestures: running, jumping, throwing — from fine, the small ones: fitting a key, bringing a full spoon to the mouth. But in both cases the question is the same: how well the body can direct itself.
Watch. A child learning to ride a bike doesn’t lack strength. They lack order: they pedal, steer and look ahead, but not yet together. When the three gestures fall into agreement, the bike stays up. The muscle hasn’t changed: the direction has.
The capacities
What the coordinative capacities are
Under the word «coordination» there are several distinct capacities: balance, rhythm, spatial orientation, reaction to a stimulus, differentiation — dosing force precisely — and coupling, making different parts of the body work together.
Keep one in mind: coupling. It’s the capacity that coordinates the two sides — the hand that holds the nail while the other strikes, the leg that pushes while the other yields. Most of coordination, in the end, is knowing how to trade the work between one side and the other. And that’s where the problem almost always hides.
How the asymmetry arises
How it develops — and why it becomes asymmetric
Coordination is built in childhood, in play and free movement. Then something natural and silent happens: one side becomes the specialist. From writing, throwing, kicking always with the same one, that side piles up experience; the other piles up less and less.
It’s not a defect: it’s efficiency. The neuroscientist Robert Sainburg calls it complementary dominance — one side specializes in quick, direct gestures, the other in stability and control. The body divides the tasks.
The trouble is that this division, repeated for years, stops looking like a choice and starts looking like nature. But it isn’t: it’s sedimented habit. As we explain in What is ambidexterity, what you call «my good side» isn’t a written destiny: it’s a repetition that won. And what settled through repetition can, through repetition, be dissolved.
The point
The weak side isn’t weak: it’s held back
Here’s the point that turns everything over. The weak foot, the non-dominant hand, the «poor» side: they’re almost never unable. They’re disconnected.
Try bringing a full spoon of water to your mouth with the hand you never use. It trembles, the wrist is unsure, the shoulder lifts. It looks like weakness. But that hand has the same muscles as the other: it doesn’t lack strength, it lacks permission — the habit of being directed. It’s an engine running with the handbrake on.
Feel. Standing, eyes closed, thirty seconds. Correct nothing, just one question: which foot am I on? The answer comes, and it isn’t «half and half». That under-loaded foot isn’t weaker than the other: it’s just a foot you’ve never really asked to work.
The nervous system
The role of the nervous system
Why does one side «not get permission»? Because coordination, before it’s in the muscles, is decided in the brain. An instant before every movement, the hemispheres coordinate through a mechanism of inhibition: one releases the brake to let the gesture start, the other keeps it on. In right-handers this pre-movement «go-ahead» is observed before the dominant hand’s gesture, and far less before the other’s.
Put simply: the weak side is weak because permission, there, comes late or doesn’t come. It’s not a limit of the muscles: it’s an organization of the nervous system — and organizations, unlike destinies, can be re-educated. This is where the work is educational, not therapeutic: we don’t treat a disorder, we train an organization.
How to train it
How to improve motor coordination
From all this the method follows, and it has two levers — one that removes, one that adds. You’ll find them in full in How to become ambidextrous; here’s the substance.
First you remove. Adding work to a braked side produces only more brake. That’s why you begin by releasing the chronic tension that holds the non-dominant side «in grip», until it becomes available again. A locked arm doesn’t learn: first it has to be freed.
Then you build — on the right task. Here’s the most common mistake. Training the weak side with exercises other than the ones that matter is useless: the footballer who juggles a thousand times with the weak foot, then in the match can’t shoot on goal with it. The rule is just one: train the weak side at the same task as the strong one. The weak foot on the shot. The non-dominant hand on the gestures you actually ask of it — fitting and turning a key in a lock, pouring into a narrow glass, carrying that full spoon without spilling.
Listen. «I’ve always done it this way» isn’t the description of a nature: it’s the story of a repetition — and a repetition you can change.
A note, since the misunderstanding is common: learning to write with the other hand is not this work. It’s a circus trick — fascinating and useless. We’re not after two equal hands: we’re after a body that knows how to choose which side to engage.
Try it
How to assess it: two honest tests
You don’t need a lab. Two tests are enough.
- Standing, eyes closed: which foot am I on? If the answer is sharp and immediate, your coordination is more one-sided than you think.
- The full spoon with your non-dominant hand, from plate to mouth. Watch where it trembles: that tremor is the map of your held-back side.
If you want a sharper picture of how you distribute your body, the side test is made for it: eight questions that don’t measure how good you are, but how much you know of what you do.
Where to begin
Coordination isn’t a talent
Motor coordination isn’t a talent you have or don’t. It’s an organization — and organizations can be changed. Not by adding force to the side that already works, but by returning work to the side you’ve left behind. One body, two sides — and the coordination born when they stop alternating badly and begin to trade the work.
From theory to your own gesture
Stop training the side that already knows. Bring the other one back into play.
Understanding why you always use the same side is the first step. The second is feeling it in your own gesture — and for that there’s the method, and, if you like, a session together.