Does handedness correlate to strength, or just coordination?

Question

A friend of mine has an injury on her right (dominant) hand, so, when she hits me these days, it's a feeble swat from her "weak" side, (as oppossed to the bone crushing agonizing blows I used to get when she was uninjured). I attempted to claim that that is not a legitimate answer. "Handedness" (in my opinion) is a trait of dexteritry, training and coordination. Not one of muscle mass. Yes, it seems logical that a person who uses a muscle or muscle group more often than another one, will be slightly stronger on that side, but would it really be exceedingly noticeable?

I guess I'm just under the impression that, "strength wise," we are more symmetrical than "coordination" wise. Yet, a few days of sleuthing and casual discussion has gotten me nowhere as to find correlation or lack of correlation on this matter.

So any info, or any potential source of info, on this topic would be greatly appreciated! Of course, I suppose better question could be, what am I saying to this girl to make her punch me all the time, eh?

Answer 1

Dexterity means right handedness Left handedness is called being sinistre (correct spelling) now called sinister.

His or her brain controls the muscles and while lft/right handed people dont have huge right/left hand muscles the control mechanism is important.

I am left handed and was often punished for it at school in the UK in the 1970s by teachers in their mid 20s amd early 30s

PS left  handed people are statistically more likely to e g*y and die younger.

Answer 2

I agree with you that handedness is a matter of dexterity, training and coordination.  Because people are either right handed or left handed and use one or the other more, the dominant hand is slightly stronger.  But like you predict, I don't think that it is not so noticeable under most circumstances.  

The best information I have to back up this idea is a lab I did in a human physiology lab class.  We were measuring tetanus in muscles (sustained contraction) in the arm and hand muscles.  We had this device that measured strength and endurance.  It was a kind of a handle that the person would squeeze as hard as they can.  It was attached to a computer that recorded the intensity of the squeeze (strength) and how long the squeeze could be held before beginning to decrease in intensity (endurance).  We compared our left hands to our right hands (and males to females as well).  Overall, strength and endurance was greater in our dominant hands.  But, the difference was relatively pretty small.  And it would be impossible to know whether the difference was actually due to strength or if coordination plays a role as well.  (Because maybe squeezing requires some coordination.)  

Overall, I think that even if one hand is dominant, we use both hands so much that they have nearly equal strength.  After all, they are about the same size.  I think you would have to not use one hand at all for a long period of time before it would become weaker.  I sprained my left wrist (I am right handed) once and had to wear a brace on it for about a month.  My doctor gave me some putty to squeeze and do exercises with to gain my strength back after getting rid of the brace, but I never used it because it seemed like my hand was perfectly back to normal.  It just took some getting used to using it again.  So it may be that when your friend recovers from her injury, her injured hand will actually be her "weak" hand for a little while, but I'm sure she will be right back to punching you hard before you know it.