It was handy the University of Otago researcher is an expert in psychological and neural processes, which have helped her switch from playing with her right hand to her left.
In 2019, Prof Franz fell into a river, leaving her with internal injuries and a broken right arm that looked like a "hook".
The first question Prof Franz had for her doctor was whether she would be able to use her right hand to play table tennis again.
"The medical team looked at me surprised because that wasn’t really what their main concern was at the time," she said.
When she found out her right arm was going to be in a cast for six weeks, it did not take her long to make a decision.
"I couldn’t even fathom waiting six weeks to have the cast off.
"I very quickly decided to train with the left hand."
Prof Franz said she had done more than 20 years of research into helping other people with brain-hand co-ordination and rehabilitation after injury.
"We’ve studied people that have had an impairment that occurs primarily to one side of the body and not so much another, like a lack of sensory information coming in."
For Prof Franz, the question was how people acquired skills and learnt to reorganise their brains to compensate for injuries they had.
Her experience gave her a first-hand understanding of how to answer that question.
"I really understand that perception, essentially."
Prof Franz said every left-handed movement felt unusual, but she had gradually overcome the sensation.
"If someone gives you a new shot that you’ve never experienced, you don’t really know what to do.
"You haven’t felt the motor and sensory information of actually doing the action in the correct way."
Prof Franz said the trick was to do the action over and over again, with focused attention, until it felt "normal".
"It was about four months ago that I finally felt the basic shot almost the way it ought to be, but I still need a lot of improvement.
"One thing that people don’t realise is that there’s likely to be lots of brain changes taking place.
"It’s encouraging in some sort of ways because it’s not as though our brains only change when we’re children.
"Every time we learn something, there is a brain change associated with it and we can continue to learn something at any age.
"I think that gives us all hope."
