You can practice stropping with the back of a butter/table knife. The basic idea is to get comfortable keeping the spine of the razor (knife) in contact with the strop at all times so you can't roll the edge over and damage it. Use your wrist to turn the razor over at the end of each stroke using a rotary motion not a flipping motion.

A new shaver can damage the edge before they even get a chance to shave with it. This is why some of the Honing Pros send their razors out pre-stropped and ready to go (after cleaning the oil of of it).