Weakside is Out: Flipside is In!

So you want to lose your weakside and even out your game, becoming more ambidextrous. The short, simple answer is obvious: practice both sides evenly. However, the practicality of this is another matter entirely. Hence, I offer the following suggestions:

1. Start with your vocabulary. Nix the weakside, bring in the flipside. It was, again, Eli (Ellis, Elliot, Intergalactic, Zohar – he is a man of many names) Piltz that coined the term “flipside”. As I understand it, his basic reasoning was that when you consider the subtleties of language and you always call your “less skilled side” your “weakside” you are unconsciously reinforcing the thought patterns of that side being weaker. Thought is energy, and it has the power to manifest reality (depending, of course, on the level at which you have said thoughts).
2. Always start with your flipside! Weather it’s a pass taken with a kick, or starting out a trick string, start it out on the flipside first. I particularly like the idea of doing both-sided drills that start and end on the flipside. A very simple example would be leg-over (or switch) three times (flip, strong, flip). This skools the flipside twice, and enforces linking in and out of the trick.
3. Dedicate sessions to working only your flipside. These can be frustrating, but will pay high dividends.
4. Use your flipside exclusively in a new circle. Approaching a new circle is wisely approached as a delicate endeavor, and you don’t want to be immediately branded as a “hack hog”.
5. Another great time for honing the flipside is coming back after an extended break from the sport. I consider myself in this category, having kicked barely once a week for most of the end of 2009. In slowly getting myself back into shape, I find that since both sides are struggling, I may as well focus on working them both evenly. Lately I’ve even pushing my flipside even more. The end result will be that by the time I get back into shape I’ll be significantly more even-sided).
6. Of course, if you’re just a beginning hacker, or just now getting into serious freestyle, there is no better time than now to make a commitment to ambidextrousness… The further you get down the one sided path, the harder it is to even out. I highly recommend working both sides as evenly as possible. Though rare, serious one-sidedness could potentially lead to a form of spinal curvature called scoliosis.