technique-no
endurance and just playing the part right gettin it drilled into ur head-yes

I really don't know if it helps at all. I do that when I'm caught in traffic and start to get bored. It helps past the time and at times I am able to work some thing new out in my mind. It's better than waiting until I get out of traffic and get to where I'm going to try it out.

"I'll tap out high hat parts of songs with my left hand on the steering wheel in order to build up my weaker hand, but I don't know if it's really working or not."

I think Bart or 563 posted in another thread about how just using your left hand for normal everyday activities (not drumming at all) will help fortify conciousness between that hand and that side of the brain.

Usually the way I implement it is, instead of surfing the net with mouse in the typical hand, Ill use it in the other hand.  when you cant stand it anymore,  --keep going  

Or brush your teeth with the weak hand

tedius as all hell -but its growing pains.

Their point was that, improving that biological conduit of instructions and feedback, can be very productive.  

So, whether you think it's helping or not, it is.  Technique doesnt have to be a concern since you arent using sticks

My instructor explained it as (and I know Im not going to say this right rofl)  your lead hand is the "do" hand and the weak hand is the "hold" hand.   Think about that for a second.  Like how you cut steak, or hammer a nail; stuff like that.

I think it for sure helps, without a doubt. I am always tapping on something throughout the day, trying to figure out new fills and riffs of any kinds, new percussion techniques also. It seems like everytime i hop onto my kit at the end of the day, i look at was i was trying to figure out, and i turns out i start playing something i either, never played before, or had a hard time playing. So i believe any practice, of anything, will help you out.

well, I practiced paradiddling with moving accents (or whatever you call it) on my knees to learn control and independence. then I added patterns for right, then left foot and when I finally got the feeling for the right moves I could quite easily transfer it to playing with sticks.
so that was quite a good exercise, especially 'cause you don't need to be anywhere near a set ...

yes, totally mental... I felt I had an advantage when I finally bought a drum kit, because I had been studying and practicing drums mentally for years while writing and recording music... The knowledge of drums and how to play them meant that all I had to do was translate that to muscle control, and get some kit time.  Slow process, but great strides are visible.

I remember a special on NOVA or something once where some famous conductor made top notch instrumentalists put their instruments down and SING their parts with their mouths.  He said that they needed to be able to vocalize the music first, before applying it to the instrument.  And to vocalize it out loud, they had to hear it in their mind first.  

These stuffy classically trained musicians hated the exercise at first, but apparently it helped the entire symphony in the end, and they played more intuitively.  I learned to write some songs on guitar that way too, and it works on drums as well.

Zagga-dah-Zagga-dah-tsss, Zagga-dah-zagga-dah-tssss,  bah- doooommm.

(if you know what I mean)

On the topic of doing daily activities with your weak hand...

I try to do this, as well as tapping on the steering wheel as I drive but leading with my left hand. Living in New Jersey helps -- we spend a great amount of our lives in the car, so that ends up giving me quite a bit of extra practice time.  

Whenever my girlfriend sits behind my kit and says that she has no idea how I manage to do four things at once, I explain to her that she needs to picture it as one big sound as opposed to four different things. This was something that I realized when I first started teaching myself how to play: the mental image of the activity and the resulting sound are extremely important. If you can close your eyes while listening to music and see, hear, and feel where every stroke goes, your playing will benefit.

Out of curiosity, how many of you are ambidexterous? As you got better at playing, did you find that your ability to write with your weak hand increased? I started taking notes with my left (weak) hand this past semester and I found that over the course of a month of intense practice, my writing did in fact gradually increase in legibility! I don't think that I really wrote enough for it to have affected my playing; rather, I think it was the other way around, but interesting, none the less.

that's the way (i was told) traditional indian tabla-players learn their instruments: they are not allowed near an instrument until they can sing what they want to play.
dunno if that helps for practicing independence ....

Vocalization is an integral part of training for any musician.  My number-one-son is a classically trained trumpet player and he walks around all day doing tonguing exercises (he also says that helps out his social life, but I don't know what he's talking about!) and vocalizing these sluring exercises (tee-ohh-ahh-eee-tee-ohh-ahh).  In fact, he was telling me, if you listen to a good recording, you can hear the entire orchestra breathing in unison and sometimes catch the conductor mumbling right before he strikes up the band.  I started doing it when playing tympani in college, both for finding the pitch when tuning, and when "laying down some phat tympanic beats."  I still do it and find it helps me to better connect my brain with my hands (but so far it hasn't helped out my social life much...).