Amen chickster! I hate that nonsense. Shake my hand like you mean it. Not like I’m going to break your delicateness :rolleyes:
There is nothing worse than a pitiful handshake. Take yours to a close friend for an opinion. There is usually no excuse for being forty years old and having a dead fish handshake.
Add to that the “slap on the back way too hard” maneuver. Don’t assume every guy you meet is into your macho bullshit.
I had an uncle with HUGE hands. Your hand would disappear when he shook your hand. I was really glad he was not the kind to try and crush you. He really could have done that!
Amen.
I heard this from a short-term karate instructor I had once. He followed it with saying that’s why Asians bow, because the hands of a martial-artist are the weapon, so it doesn’t matter if the person shows you that they’re not carrying anything.
Not sure I ever bought that part of his story, though anamnesis’ point makes sense.
Firm, with eye contact. If somehow I screw up and our hands don’t connect properly, I’ll do my best as I’m leaving to try again, the right way, with a ‘It was nice meeting you’.
Standard handshakes only for me. The space between the thumb and forefinger should meet the other’s and a firm hold is a must. I’m a chick so there’s no bone crushing for me and I detest a limp handshake. I immediately think that the person that I’m greeting is weak…not physical strength but of character and drive. Yeah, I know that paints a broad brush but a dead fish shake gives me the oogies. How did all of these adults get to be grownups without anyone teaching them the fine art of the handshake?
I saw a story recently about a movement to eradicate the handshake from the American culture, in the interest of stopping the spread of germs. If I find the link, I will post it.
I don’t like wimpy handshakes, but overly firm grips make me wonder what someone thinks they’re proving.
A business associate gave me “paw” the other day. I was horrified.
I don’t know about “trite”. I was thinking more along the lines of “creepy”.
I always hated stupid “street” handshakes that you were somehow expected to know the moves for. And yeah, if people do that “grip of iron” thing with me now, I make a point of ever-so-slightly wincing, or looking down at my released hand and wiggling the circulation back into it. Subtly or not so subtly, depending on who they are. Just to let them know “what the fuck was that?”
I usually match strength, except with people who give limp handshakes. Then I go with firmer than the other person but not hard enough to hurt at all. People who like to crush I’ll usually just match, but I don’t try to get into a one-up contest with them.
There are a few positioning tricks you can do to make a normally crushing handshake relatively painless, even if you’ve got a sadist attached to you. Changing the position of your forefinger and second finger to point along his wrist lets the bones in your hand move out of line. Unless he’s seriously got a grip like a vise, that will keep him from grinding the bones together. Don’t let him get a right angle on your hand where he can bring more strength to bear on you and keep your wrist bent to keep you from exerting full force. Instead, try to get your forearm more along the same line as his. This is subtle stuff that you can do without being too obvious.
If you’ve got some asshole that just won’t let go, is actually hurting you, and you need to get away from him NOW, grab your own thumb with your left hand and use it as a lever to dig the second knuckle of your forefinger into the pressure point in the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. Press and rotate in toward the second metacarpal. That should make him loosen up enough that you can use leverage to extricate yourself from his grip. If you want to be more subtle, you can hit the same spot with your thumb while appearing to simply place your other hand on top of his, but it’s more difficult to do unless you’ve got a decent grip or are good at hitting the exact right spot.
FlyingDragonFan, the bowing thing is a story, nothing more. The teacher might honestly believe it, but it almost certainly has no basis in fact. Not everyone in Asia knows martial arts (in fact, I know far more people who do martial arts in the US than I do in Japan); in both China and Japan the people who were allowed to either learn how to fight or carry weapons were limited to the elite and ruling classes; bowing exists in many cultures around the world, including Europe up until fairly recent times; and weapons were always a concern in times past. Basically every seated attack and defense practiced in Aikido or Iaido is postulating a surprise situation in a social or private setting indoors. You don’t sit seiza in the middle of a battlefield.
Cartoon of two cavemen meeting:
First Caveman extends hand. Second caveman takes his hand and shakes.
First caveman: “My name ‘Gronk.’ What your name?”
Second caveman pulls out a club with the other hand and clobbers the first one.
“Lefty.”
I just hawk up a big green one, spit it into my hand then extend for the shake, for some reason nobody ever shakes my hand