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The death grip handshake

It is always a wise idea to instruct protectees to avoid full handshakes with unknown people. It at all possible he/she should only use the extension of the fingers and not a full palm on
palm shake.

What you’re trying to alleviate is that one individual that won’t let go in order to get their point across or the surge of fanaticism that overwhelms a person to the point they don’t want to let go. What do you do? What do you not do?

Let’s deal with the NOT first. You never want to pull abruptly on your client and risk the chance of injury to him or her. There are far too many joints and sockets at potential risk. In a non aggressive death grip scenario, you don’t want to resort to pummeling someone either.

What do you do then. Ease yourself in the open space of the handshake, (if the protecee is shaking with their right hand, you enter the the open space to their left. The opposite holds true for a left handshake) which places you between the unknown and your protectee. You then place your armpit over your protectees right arm, allowing your right forearm to parallel and rest on theirs. With your right hand you cover the unknowns hand, placing your thumb in front of their thumb. Your left hand is placed under the handshake separating their pinky from the grip.

Your verbal command is “sir or ma’am, please let go”. If they refuse your command you push their thumb inward toward toward their wrist at the same time pushing their pinky down and away. As the grip breaks you gain space with your protectee backwards and away.

You should practice this maneuver so that you can do it without looking at the hands and always maintaining alertness.

This is a non aggressive but effective move and goes along with with not bringing on unwanted attention.

Tomorrow I will blog on the necktie grab.

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