All combat sports, that's right-- all, wisely follow the course of humanity as a whole and pick a "lead" or "hand" to be your "good one", that is, your dominant hand. In everyday life we do the same thing, we (or rather nature/biology/God/mysterious force of choice) programs a quirk into our brains and from the time we are old enough to begin interacting with our world we favor one hand, one side of the body, over another.

This right/left bias is there practically from the beginning--infants are not taught right or left handedness, they have a tendency to reach with a favored hand and that hand will go on to become the writing hand, the hand that will reach to shake hands, the hand that will feed you, brush your teeth and various other polite and less than polite tasks that make our individual worlds go round.

It is an odd quirk of nature this choosing of one side to be stronger, favored, more coordinated. When one stops to think that we have a perfectly good and able hand on the other side of our bodies, and then if we were to ponder just how much "better" we would be if that other side were as nimble as the genetic lottery winner.

True ambidexterity, the equally facile use of both hands or sides of the body, is quite rare and practiced attempts to develop ambidexterity can improve sub-dominant facility, but it will never quite match, let alone exceed, what you can do with the side that nature has chosen for you.

Back to combat sports--no matter your lead, right or left-handed, orthodox or southpaw, you will stick with that lead. Boxers pick a side and stick with it, the same with kick-boxers, fencers, marksmen, and, yes, even grapplers have preferred sides to shoot takedowns from, limbs that will snake for submissions first, sides to pass the guard to ,et cetera.

Yes, I know there are some fighters who can and do fight from both leads. When I was young, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, was noted for doing just such a thing, and we have a few talented fighters in MMA today who do the same, but...these ambidextrous fighters are not truly ambidextrous. When they go sub-dominant side forward we see much less power, much less crispness in combinations, and this ambidexterity gambit is abandoned completely once a spot of trouble begins. Sport-trained ambidexterity comes across as more of a feint, or distraction, or a bit of showmanship than an actual tactic of combat utility.

With all of the above in mind it seems to me that "choosing your lead" in accordance with nature is a wise course of action. Please note, that this discussion is emphasizing the natural attributes of your dominant side and not a discussion of power-side forward vs. orthodox forward, we've already had that discussion in a prior article.

Here, we are simply playing house odds with strategy and tactics in a rule-dominated domain.

But...there are times when a little ambidexterity training is of utmost value--as a matter of fact it can spell the difference between life and death.

First, a quote from the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius:

"Practice even at the things which you despair of accomplishing. For even the left hand, which is ineffectual for all other things for want of practice, holds the bridle more vigorously than the right hand; for it has been practiced in this."

Yes, this is somewhat of a reversal as I just preached against the time-sink of lead equality in sport training but with reality training where we don't have the luxury of starting the fight with our best side forward, or using our ring and mat generalship to jockey our good side into position--it's a different story. The nature of street assault will always be an odds against us surprise and an assumption of walking through the world with our good lead forward is naïve and would make for an amusing walk.

In this area of real-world survival response, yes, we should train our "good" side first and foremost to deeply set the coordinated skill of choice and then put it through it's sub-dominant paces for, at the very least, familiarity with what may be required in uncertain scenarios. In sports, quarterbacks never have a dire need to switch hands, in the street, when gritty reality hit's the fan we may have zero choice in the matter.

With that said, when drilling our street work and making allowances for both leads, we must also not fool ourselves thinking that we will get both sides to equal facility, but we will at least be mindful of the work that needs to be done to prepare for an unknown threat that can come from any side, from all angles.