I'm facing the same challenge. I find it quite difficult to do every day activities with my left as mentioned by others.
Yeah, that's exactly why I recommend it. Don't laugh, but I couldn't use my left hand to shave. I had to do my entire face with my right hand (I use an electric shaver). But before I knew it, I could do the right-half of my face with my right hand, and the left-half with my left hand. Granted, I still finish off the last few inches of my left side with my right hand as this is still a work in progress, but still: that was quite difficult, but now it has become much easier. The same thing goes with other activities: where it was once nearly impossible and quite frustrating to perform a task with my left hand, now I can do it almost as well with my right, in some cases. What this DOES is it actually gives me increased left-side awareness. And this is important for me as I believe that I have less than most. But ever since I've been forcing myself to use my left hand more often, I'm literally starting to learn how to use my left hand, and everything I have learned makes figuring out the "how" of the matched grip technique in my left hand much easier.
Thanks to this, I can now play 16th notes (or fast 8th notes) with my left hand as fast as my right. And I should be crying tears of joy because there was a time when I could only WISH my left hand were that fast. But, then I did something about it, and now all that has changed. I hope to have perfectly matched hands on the drumset (as far as speed, power and control) by this time next year. And y'know what? At this rate, it will happen. And it's all thanks to me practicing what I preach.
Now, one thing I've been doing lately that has sped things up a very tiny bit is starting my day off with stretching my left hand very thoroughly. When I'm done, I stretch it down in the other direction. After that, I make a very tight and powerful fist making sure to match the way my right hand does it as far as appearance and feel. Then I open my hand up all the way and, from what I hear, this is also a stretch. I then go back to the fist and repeat.
My goal is to teach my left hand how to do everything my right hand can do by USING my right hand to
teach it. And along the way, I have to do strength exercises like making fists, opening it up all the way, moving the fingers, and doing other hand things that feel very strong in my right.
Unfortunately, doing more daily activities with the left, or weaker hand, can require a great amount of patience. But, there are no shortcuts. So, all I can do is have fun with it, and laugh when I fail.
I find it easier to focus on my left hand when I'm practising:
Open handed playing AKA Billy Cobham / Simon Philips style. Works great when you play along with some easy tunes.
Triple stroke rolls (take a look at vicfirth.com. You can find some great examples in their education section)
The pattern LLLR and any variation
Fulcrum exercises. Controlling the stick between thumb and index finger.
Use heavy stick e.g. 2B or marching sticks.
Rene / NLD
Excellent suggestion, especially with the LLLR. Anything that works the left hand MORE than the right to allow the left hand to "catch up" to the right hand is excellent. I mean, if the right hand is already where you want your left to be, then it doesn't make sense to work the right hand as much as you're working the left, EVEN IF YOU'RE DOING HARDER EXERCISES.
I think of it like a race: I want to slow my right hand down so that my left hand can catch up. But, I don't want to stop the progress of my right hand because that wouldn't be as fun. I mean, when I'm working on the practice pad, I don't have the mental disciplne right now to ignore the right hand (as I would prefer to speed this up). There are times where I'm like "I HAVE TO PLAY!!!", and then I just grab the right stick and go. hehe
So, my goal is to basically obsess over my left hand and say "Sorry, right hand, but you have to sit on the bench until my left can be as good as you. Once my left hand is as good as you, then you can get back in the game. I would prefer that you not continue getting better while I focus on the left hand, otherwise we won't be able to see any improvement. The comparison will remain the same." So, in other words, if I work for the next year on both hands equally, and I work them hard, then there's no doubt going to be a significant improvement in my left hand. Unfortunately, my right hand will also improve and then my left will not have gotten any closer to my right. So, if my right hand is 3 times better than my left, then my right hand may
still be 3 times better than my left in one year.
One final analogy. Let's say that I am making two towers of blocks (like children's blocks) and I want them to be equal in height. But Tower A only has 3 blocks, and Tower B has 9 (I was distracted and focused on Tower B too long). But now I've noticed that Tower A needs 6 more blocks. So, I'm no doubt gonna wanna stop building on Tower B so that I can build up Tower A to match the height of Tower B. Now, once they're equal in height, I can then continue building both equally.
