I’ve been experimenting with this a little bit lately as an integration exercise. It’s really simple, can be done anywhere with no equipment and can form the basis of many other coordination techniques.
From a sitting position: Palms resting lightly on thighs, feet flat on floor. Tap your left hand, tap your left foot. Tap your right foot, tap your right hand. Go back to the beginning and repeat. Try to keep the pattern consistent, maintaining that sequence of percussion, varying speed and then switching directions.
Report your findings below and I will share mine.
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5 Comments
This for me has been really similar to the throwing a ball from one hand to the other with your eyes closed exercise described here:
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2008/11/22/best-dexterity-exercise-ever/
Much more difficult than it seemed at first like it would be. Found that my hands kept trying to jump out of sequence and I had to *really* focus to get the pattern to stick. Will keep experimenting with this and would love any other ideas for similar exercises people might have come up with or seen!
The foot really wants to lift with the hand, although not visa versa interestingly enough, and reversing the pattern doesn’t change that.
Occasionally also both feet want to go up together.
Interesting how the feet seem a lot harder to control than the hands which pretty much do what they’re told.
It seems to be dependent on what I am think the sequence is.
If I can go across the bottom (foot -> foot), then back across the top (hand -> hand), it works fine. Works fine in the reverse direction as well.
But if I go hand -> foot -> foot -> hand, I lose it pretty quick. A hand/foot will jump too soon, before the one prior to it.
It seems that in the first case, I’m really only holding two elements of a pattern in my head, whereas in the second case, I have to separate the process into four distinct elements and so it becomes more difficult.
Weird.
Yeah, I’m finding the same thing. It all depends on how you cluster it, how you chunk or break it apart and how you accent it.
Such arbitrary groupings of information should not affect the performance of what is essentially the same task…
Heh.