As I was skating in an empty parking lot I saw two ladies playing badminton without a net. They were fairly close to each other and had a pretty intense volley going. When their volley finished I said “You gals are awesome… but your not because you’re only using your right arm, you should train both arms.”. They though it was funny and then went back to beating the shuttlecock back and forth with their right arms as they’ve probably done for decades and will continue to do for decades as their half-dead left arms just dangled at their side perhaps waiting for the evening when they’d probably be needed to hold a bag of ice or a heating pad over the right shoulder in order to treat the pain that often comes with a chronic repetitive strain injury.

Regardless of whether it’s badminton, footbag, sweeping floors, or wiping windows if you do it on a frequent basis you should use both sides. Left and right sides don’t have to be exactly equal in strength and coordination but you shouldn’t have one good side and one side that’s pretty much useless. Also if you are, have, or see a kid on one of those two wheel ripstiks stop them, tell them how awesome they are for being able to cruise around on it, and then tell them “Now put this foot in the front and that foot in the back.” haha. Not surprisingly I’ve never seen a kid who could do it and it’s disappointing that out of the dozen or so kids I’ve told this to over the years I’ve never seen one that was even willing to take up the challenge and work at it for more than a minute.