The Psychology Of A Strong Handshake

[darkdan]

Long time no see, I know, I slack off on visiting the board.

Ever since I started training my grip, I noticed something, I run into the wet noodle handshake a lot less often now. As a matter of fact, I can't remember the last time someone gave me a dead palm except women (no offense). When I began training my grip and shaking hands, I wanted to avoid being that guy. You know the one, he thinks every handshake is a perfect time to show he's an alpha male and try to crush everyone's hands when he first meets someone. Goes out of his way to demonstrate he has a strong grip (or thinks he has a strong grip).

While studying the brain, I came across the section on the cerebellum. The cerebellum is responsible for coordination, motor control, and a lot of sensory input. The cerebellum does something else interesting. The cerebellum receives the signals to tell the body to move, it then uses those to send inhibitory signals to other regions in the brain to ignore the feeling of the movement. This way you ignore a lot of sensation of things like air movement on your arm hairs, the feeling of your clothes moving. Those sorts of things. It removes much of the expected sensory data so we don't drive ourselves nuts paying attention to everything. This is also why most people can't tickle themselves with their hands.

Daniel Wolpert and his colleagues at University College, London, did an interesting experiment. When two people are given the same instructions to push on the other persons hand with the same amount of force the other person used (match force) the force would escalate. Every time it was their turn, they'd push harder. Now since they didn't know the other person's instructions, when asked, they thought the other person was told to always double the force. Back and forth every time the pushing got harder!

Really what happens is the cerebellum removes the expected force feeling for your effort. So to get a "feeling" that matches what they did, you have to push harder than the real amount of force required for them to feel it.

I believe, I run into the same problem when shaking people's hands. Even though I make a conscious effort to only shake their hand as hard as they're shaking mine and not try to crush their bones into a thick white paste, my cerebellum inhibits the expected feeling, and I end up shaking their hand really hard! That's why it feels like they're trying to prove something to me. Without knowing, I'm actually putting a lot of force into my hand shakes.

Keep in mind, I'm not overly strong, before I got out of it I could "almost" close the #2. I can still easily destroy my filed SA.

So, if you run into a lot of people that you think are trying to impress you....it may be because you're accidentally hurting them and being "that guy" without knowing it.

[BigTone]

We have a consultant that has been here a few times, and each time I've shaken his hand its been the dead fish grip. I'm not sure, I think it might also have some cultural aspects to it, I've noticed at least with the people I've come across.

[Grippster]

What I do when shaking hands to avoid a weak shake or seem like a jerk is I actually don't squeeze much at all. I apply minimal force, but I take advantage of the muscles I've built up in there to make my hand rigid. That way I feel solid without hurting the other person. And it protects me from a guy who IS a jerk and tries to crush my hand, which has NEVER happened since I started using grippers.

[darkdan]

What I do when shaking hands to avoid a weak shake or seem like a jerk is I actually don't squeeze much at all.

I think we'd have to practice with a friend until we get a feel for it.

Edited January 8, 2009 by darkdan

[Grippster]

What do you mean? My theory is that with a rigid hand, the other guy can squeeze as hard as he wants and you still feel strong to him. Unless of course, he's one of the few who does closes with a Bone Crusher 500 lol

[darkdan]

I mean you'd have to spend time with a friend honestly evaluating how your handshake feels to make sure you're in the range you want to be in. Then try to always repeat that.

Of course, watch out for the previously mentioned force escalation.

My hypothesis is that over the years I've ran into so many people trying to act like they have a strong grip because I am unknowingly gripping their hand hard.

[Pancake Sprawl]

i've always given a weak dead fish handshake. not really feminine like with a lame wrist, but i just don't squeeze at all. i try to be as amicable as possible, the way i look usually is what intimidates people already, without me physically touching people.

[andyfreeland]

Long time no see, I know, I slack off on visiting the board.

Ever since I started training my grip, I noticed something, I run into the wet noodle handshake a lot less often now. As a matter of fact, I can't remember the last time someone gave me a dead palm except women (no offense). When I began training my grip and shaking hands, I wanted to avoid being that guy. You know the one, he thinks every handshake is a perfect time to show he's an alpha male and try to crush everyone's hands when he first meets someone. Goes out of his way to demonstrate he has a strong grip (or thinks he has a strong grip).

While studying the brain, I came across the section on the cerebellum. The cerebellum is responsible for coordination, motor control, and a lot of sensory input. The cerebellum does something else interesting. The cerebellum receives the signals to tell the body to move, it then uses those to send inhibitory signals to other regions in the brain to ignore the feeling of the movement. This way you ignore a lot of sensation of things like air movement on your arm hairs, the feeling of your clothes moving. Those sorts of things. It removes much of the expected sensory data so we don't drive ourselves nuts paying attention to everything. This is also why most people can't tickle themselves with their hands.

Daniel Wolpert and his colleagues at University College, London, did an interesting experiment. When two people are given the same instructions to push on the other persons hand with the same amount of force the other person used (match force) the force would escalate. Every time it was their turn, they'd push harder. Now since they didn't know the other person's instructions, when asked, they thought the other person was told to always double the force. Back and forth every time the pushing got harder!

Really what happens is the cerebellum removes the expected force feeling for your effort. So to get a "feeling" that matches what they did, you have to push harder than the real amount of force required for them to feel it.

I believe, I run into the same problem when shaking people's hands. Even though I make a conscious effort to only shake their hand as hard as they're shaking mine and not try to crush their bones into a thick white paste, my cerebellum inhibits the expected feeling, and I end up shaking their hand really hard! That's why it feels like they're trying to prove something to me. Without knowing, I'm actually putting a lot of force into my hand shakes.

Keep in mind, I'm not overly strong, before I got out of it I could "almost" close the #2. I can still easily destroy my filed SA.

So, if you run into a lot of people that you think are trying to impress you....it may be because you're accidentally hurting them and being "that guy" without knowing it.

Handshake is something that is important to me. A handshake is a greeting, between males. One thing I know is that if your hand feels like a dead trout, then you are not someone I have to worry about physically.

Just my two cents.

[andyfreeland]

Long time no see, I know, I slack off on visiting the board.

Ever since I started training my grip, I noticed something, I run into the wet noodle handshake a lot less often now. As a matter of fact, I can't remember the last time someone gave me a dead palm except women (no offense). When I began training my grip and shaking hands, I wanted to avoid being that guy. You know the one, he thinks every handshake is a perfect time to show he's an alpha male and try to crush everyone's hands when he first meets someone. Goes out of his way to demonstrate he has a strong grip (or thinks he has a strong grip).

While studying the brain, I came across the section on the cerebellum. The cerebellum is responsible for coordination, motor control, and a lot of sensory input. The cerebellum does something else interesting. The cerebellum receives the signals to tell the body to move, it then uses those to send inhibitory signals to other regions in the brain to ignore the feeling of the movement. This way you ignore a lot of sensation of things like air movement on your arm hairs, the feeling of your clothes moving. Those sorts of things. It removes much of the expected sensory data so we don't drive ourselves nuts paying attention to everything. This is also why most people can't tickle themselves with their hands.

Daniel Wolpert and his colleagues at University College, London, did an interesting experiment. When two people are given the same instructions to push on the other persons hand with the same amount of force the other person used (match force) the force would escalate. Every time it was their turn, they'd push harder. Now since they didn't know the other person's instructions, when asked, they thought the other person was told to always double the force. Back and forth every time the pushing got harder!

Really what happens is the cerebellum removes the expected force feeling for your effort. So to get a "feeling" that matches what they did, you have to push harder than the real amount of force required for them to feel it.

I believe, I run into the same problem when shaking people's hands. Even though I make a conscious effort to only shake their hand as hard as they're shaking mine and not try to crush their bones into a thick white paste, my cerebellum inhibits the expected feeling, and I end up shaking their hand really hard! That's why it feels like they're trying to prove something to me. Without knowing, I'm actually putting a lot of force into my hand shakes.

Keep in mind, I'm not overly strong, before I got out of it I could "almost" close the #2. I can still easily destroy my filed SA.

So, if you run into a lot of people that you think are trying to impress you....it may be because you're accidentally hurting them and being "that guy" without knowing it.

Handshake is something that is important to me. A handshake is a greeting, between males. One thing I know is that if your hand feels like a dead trout, then you are not someone I have to worry about physica-lly.

Just my two cents.

And I don't care to "crush" anyones hand, just don't want sushi in my hand....unless I got soy sauce and wasabi, and saki and Japanese girls.

[mobsterone]

While I am all for a firm manly handshake there's no need to go over board. I read many years ago that some of the strongest toughest men around could have surprisingly gentle shakes purely because they have nothing to prove. The idea of some form of escalation to the point where there's a push 'n' pull thing going on seems bizarre to me.

The only times I've gone for it was 1) when asked and the person complained for 3 days that I'd hurt them (then don't ask d'uh) and 2) when a buddy and I who trained as well used to make a big show and competition of it. Because he had a good grip it was all squeezing with fingertips and the like but because we squeezed equally as hard no real pain.

[Jacobs86]

Long time no see, I know, I slack off on visiting the board.

Ever since I started training my grip, I noticed something, I run into the wet noodle handshake a lot less often now. As a matter of fact, I can't remember the last time someone gave me a dead palm except women (no offense). When I began training my grip and shaking hands, I wanted to avoid being that guy. You know the one, he thinks every handshake is a perfect time to show he's an alpha male and try to crush everyone's hands when he first meets someone. Goes out of his way to demonstrate he has a strong grip (or thinks he has a strong grip).

While studying the brain, I came across the section on the cerebellum. The cerebellum is responsible for coordination, motor control, and a lot of sensory input. The cerebellum does something else interesting. The cerebellum receives the signals to tell the body to move, it then uses those to send inhibitory signals to other regions in the brain to ignore the feeling of the movement. This way you ignore a lot of sensation of things like air movement on your arm hairs, the feeling of your clothes moving. Those sorts of things. It removes much of the expected sensory data so we don't drive ourselves nuts paying attention to everything. This is also why most people can't tickle themselves with their hands.

Daniel Wolpert and his colleagues at University College, London, did an interesting experiment. When two people are given the same instructions to push on the other persons hand with the same amount of force the other person used (match force) the force would escalate. Every time it was their turn, they'd push harder. Now since they didn't know the other person's instructions, when asked, they thought the other person was told to always double the force. Back and forth every time the pushing got harder!

Really what happens is the cerebellum removes the expected force feeling for your effort. So to get a "feeling" that matches what they did, you have to push harder than the real amount of force required for them to feel it.

I believe, I run into the same problem when shaking people's hands. Even though I make a conscious effort to only shake their hand as hard as they're shaking mine and not try to crush their bones into a thick white paste, my cerebellum inhibits the expected feeling, and I end up shaking their hand really hard! That's why it feels like they're trying to prove something to me. Without knowing, I'm actually putting a lot of force into my hand shakes.

Keep in mind, I'm not overly strong, before I got out of it I could "almost" close the #2. I can still easily destroy my filed SA.

So, if you run into a lot of people that you think are trying to impress you....it may be because you're accidentally hurting them and being "that guy" without knowing it.

Handshake is something that is important to me. A handshake is a greeting, between males. One thing I know is that if your hand feels like a dead trout, then you are not someone I have to worry about physica-lly.

Just my two cents.

And I don't care to "crush" anyones hand, just don't want sushi in my hand....unless I got soy sauce and wasabi, and saki and Japanese girls.

I am all for sake and japanese babes!

I always try to give a "rigid" handshake, as Grippster advocates. And I can vouch for strong dudes with gentle handshakes too. That's some interesting research though.

[Pancake Sprawl]

Long time no see, I know, I slack off on visiting the board.

Ever since I started training my grip, I noticed something, I run into the wet noodle handshake a lot less often now. As a matter of fact, I can't remember the last time someone gave me a dead palm except women (no offense). When I began training my grip and shaking hands, I wanted to avoid being that guy. You know the one, he thinks every handshake is a perfect time to show he's an alpha male and try to crush everyone's hands when he first meets someone. Goes out of his way to demonstrate he has a strong grip (or thinks he has a strong grip).

While studying the brain, I came across the section on the cerebellum. The cerebellum is responsible for coordination, motor control, and a lot of sensory input. The cerebellum does something else interesting. The cerebellum receives the signals to tell the body to move, it then uses those to send inhibitory signals to other regions in the brain to ignore the feeling of the movement. This way you ignore a lot of sensation of things like air movement on your arm hairs, the feeling of your clothes moving. Those sorts of things. It removes much of the expected sensory data so we don't drive ourselves nuts paying attention to everything. This is also why most people can't tickle themselves with their hands.

Daniel Wolpert and his colleagues at University College, London, did an interesting experiment. When two people are given the same instructions to push on the other persons hand with the same amount of force the other person used (match force) the force would escalate. Every time it was their turn, they'd push harder. Now since they didn't know the other person's instructions, when asked, they thought the other person was told to always double the force. Back and forth every time the pushing got harder!

Really what happens is the cerebellum removes the expected force feeling for your effort. So to get a "feeling" that matches what they did, you have to push harder than the real amount of force required for them to feel it.

I believe, I run into the same problem when shaking people's hands. Even though I make a conscious effort to only shake their hand as hard as they're shaking mine and not try to crush their bones into a thick white paste, my cerebellum inhibits the expected feeling, and I end up shaking their hand really hard! That's why it feels like they're trying to prove something to me. Without knowing, I'm actually putting a lot of force into my hand shakes.

Keep in mind, I'm not overly strong, before I got out of it I could "almost" close the #2. I can still easily destroy my filed SA.

So, if you run into a lot of people that you think are trying to impress you....it may be because you're accidentally hurting them and being "that guy" without knowing it.

Handshake is something that is important to me. A handshake is a greeting, between males. One thing I know is that if your hand feels like a dead trout, then you are not someone I have to worry about physically.

Just my two cents.

i don't shake hands with people i think i'm going to have to get physical with in the first place. but i don't see how a handshake could prove this. i'm a fairly large man, and i give what you'd all probably call a weak hand shake ...but i've also trained in boxing, kick boxing, and wrestling and have fought and won in MMA and kickboxing multiple times in amateur divisions. i think i'd kick a lot of guy's butts that give me bone crusher handshakes lol

[twig]

This thread's getting a bit... macho. Just give a good, firm, handshake and expect to receive the same, everything else is the other guy's problem.

[Pancake Sprawl]

i'm sorry if it was me, a lot of times i just say what i think without really realizing if it's appropriate, but that's how i feel.

[twig]

i'm sorry if it was me,

Nope!

[andyfreeland]

This thread's getting a bit... macho. Just give a good, firm, handshake and expect to receive the same, everything else is the other guy's problem.

Agreed, but still craving sushi and Japanese chicks...

[climber511]

I guess I don't think about how to shake hands - I shake and get on with more important things. I once saw a woman knee some smart a.. who squeezed her hand to hard - dropped him to his knees - now that's psychology for you!

[Pancake Sprawl]

I guess I don't think about how to shake hands - I shake and get on with more important things. I once saw a woman knee some smart a.. who squeezed her hand to hard - dropped him to his knees - now that's psychology for you!

lmao, yeah ...that's the reason i don't do it. i don't exactly know how strong i squeeze so i don't want to squeeze too hard and if you aren't paying attention, even if you just give a firm handshake to someone, if they're wearing a ring it will amplify the power on that one point and will be very painful, i know it's happened to me lol

[chris mason]

Speaking of the psychology of the whole thing, here is something else that happens:

Because I am more muscular than the norm, many men feel the need to shake my hand and hard as they can muster in order to demonstrate their own male prowess.

I alwasy find that amusing.

[Pancake Sprawl]

Speaking of the psychology of the whole thing, here is something else that happens:

Because I am more muscular than the norm, many men feel the need to shake my hand and hard as they can muster in order to demonstrate their own male prowess.

I alwasy find that amusing.

hahaha that's what i mean! they do it to me, but not because i'm overly muscular but because i'm usually a lot bigger or taller then they are.

i also find it amusing.

[twig]

This thread's getting a bit... macho. Just give a good, firm, handshake and expect to receive the same, everything else is the other guy's problem.

Agreed, but still craving sushi and Japanese chicks...

Never had sushi, but Japanese chicks? YUM!

[Chris Mathison]

What do you mean? My theory is that with a rigid hand, the other guy can squeeze as hard as he wants and you still feel strong to him. Unless of course, he's one of the few who does closes with a Bone Crusher 500 lol

Thats what I do.. I tighten up my hand musculature but dont squeeze.

[abagh89]

I learned in Business etiquette in some cultures a firm hand shake is considered rude. Just remeber you cant please everybody, just do whats comfortable for you. With the same handshake you will find people who think you squeeze their hand way to hard and some people who think your squeezing their hand like a girl.