“Should I Train My Off-Hand?”
If you’re asking the question, you already know the answer
If you’re not training both hands, you’re wasting training time.
Be honest with yourself: you’re not a professional whose life and livelihood depends on one specific skill.
I can’t think of a single person in Historical Fencing that shouldn’t be training their off-hand. That includes the few professionals who actually make their living doing it.
In fact, they usually train their off-hand more than most because they need to as comfortable teaching left-handed fencers as they are right-handed fencers.
You need to balance your body. For health, for strength, for coordination, and to decrease the damage of aging.
I’m guilty of this too.
Even when I was training consistently I would focus too much on my dominant sword arm.
I found plenty of excuses. I’m tired. I don’t have enough time to train both arms equally. I’m already good enough with my off-hand to teach left handers the basics. I need to focus on building my skills for my next lesson with an instructor better than me.
Here’s the truth: It feels good to focus on my dominant sword arm because I see my skills return faster after time away, and I see faster ROI when learning new skills.
But that’s just me stroking my ego. And ego is the enemy.
Even when I was ‘focusing’ on my off-hand training, it would be less than 20% of my personal training time.
That’s not going to help much. Yeah, I could teach beginners left-handed as needed, but deep down I knew I wasn’t teaching them as well as I was teaching right-handed fencers.
I avoided thinking about this too closely. Most people probably wouldn’t care, but for me that was living against my values. I wanted to be the type of instructor who knew their craft so well, inside and out, forwards and back, that I could switch hands flawlessly.
I even encouraged new students to train with both arms! Especially in beginner classes with a one-handed weapon, new students’ arms get tired. It was the perfect opportunity to encourage fencing with both hands: just switch when your arm gets tired.
I knew the benefits. I told students about them. It’s good for muscle development, coordination, and for learning the material. Things that are often easier, more intuitive, with our dominant hands take more conscious thought to do with our non-dominant hand. You literally have to focus harder on the task. That’s mindfulness in action.
For those that were skeptical, here was the coup de grace: if you don’t train both arms, you’ll never be able to fight with two swords! ⚔️
Depending on the student, and what kind of motivation I thought would work best for them I’d phrase it like this:
“I will not let you fence your peers until I believe you have control of your weapon. So if you ever want to fight with a sword in each hand, you better start working on that off-hand coordination now.”
Fast-forward to today, February 2025, and I’ve been away from sword training for the better part of nine months. But I’m back.
Now is the time to start training both hands equally. It’s something I’ve wanted to do as a fencer and as an instructor. It’s time to put my money where my mouth is.
Plus, I’m not getting any younger.
Focusing on flexibility, mobility, and body movement has given me the greatest ROI of any training I’ve done in the past 5 years. I’ve spent a lot of the last decade learning how to rehab a body damaged by repetitive strain injuries during my military service. I’ve finally found things that are working for me. The kind of things I wish I had been taught twenty years ago.
It’s part of why I teach youth classes.
Restarting my training now and focusing on my off-hand as much as my dominant hand will also allow my left side to develop at a better pace to match my right.
This time I’ve got a plan.
I’m doing this by making minor adjustments to my solo training time at first.
1. Warmups focus on symmetry and balance in my movements to strengthen joints. Especially shoulders.
2. Drill both hands. I’ll start with my non-dominant hand first to not cut it short when I’m tired.
3. Review video of drills to self-critique. Do not shy away from the clumsiness of my left-handed fencing. That means I need to do more, not less.
4. Do daily tasks with my non-dominant hand. Drinking water, using a fork, brushing my teeth.
This focusing the brain on coordination, creating new neural pathways. This translates to my strength work, so I can focus on the strength part more.
Both my brain and body will age better. I turn thirty-nine this year. According to my kids that’s pretty old. And to be honest, I notice it too. Training takes more effort. Recovery takes more time. And parts of my body that I was able to ignore in my 20s are making their displeasure known when I get out of bed every morning.
I write about life, leadership, and niche business through the lens of Historical Martial Arts.
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