“Making the enemy’s road long and torturous, lure him along it by baiting him with easy gains. Set out after he does, yet arrive before him.” ~ Sun Tzu Like any outwardly pleasant social interaction I find it best to approach the handshake as a battle to the death. Polite greetings are a war and whilst war is supposedly pointless, I still intend to win by any and all means necessary.
We’ve already looked at the shameful de-humanisation of the corporate palm clutch and the matter that its user clearly doesn’t care who you are. With that in mind, strategy will focus primarily on the far more competitive and untrained handshake of people who think squeezing stronger than you will somehow earn them respect.
The first step in any battle plan is to look at the weapons available to us, of which we have two primary tools. One is physical strength. However the second and far more deadly is the insidious threat of slight social discomfort. Sun Tzu correctly ascertained that we must “avoid what is strong and strike at what is weak.” Most people employing the “firm” handshake will have faith in their physical strength but are unlikely to be gripped by any obsessive social paranoia comparable to my own.
In any case, it would be unfair to expect everyone to have the time to train cracking nuts between their fingers and ripping coconuts apart with their bare hands to build muscular strength so instead we shall employ what 17th Century Japanese martial genius Miyamoto Musashi described as “Tai No Sen”; the trap of false vulnerability.
An ideal strategy would be as follows:
1.) Enter gently, calmly. Whilst this may appear to give the opponent an opening to establish strength, they can visibly over commit and concede slight social discomfort.
2.) Allow a steady increase of pressure. There is no hurry. There is a universally accepted time frame for handshaking which is actually the secret weapon leading to:
3.) Peak squeeze, comparable or slightly exceeding their own if provoked. This occurs at the moment when we all sense the shake should end.
If you’re opponent has entered too strong they may have expended their best squeeze already. Regardless, you will have the final physical say and have forced your enemy to gamble social discomfort if they wish to mount a counter attack. Now, even if I feel my hand snap from an aggressive grip-trump I can play it off at the awkwardness of them holding my hand a little too long. The message to even the most mountainous of men? Yes, even if you could break my bones, you will never take back my slight, invisible profit that everyone in the room now thinks that I’m a nicer and more laid back person than you. They’ll never know the truth.