What really helped me was watching Lynn briefly strop up in his shaving video that's on the home page. At first I was confused because of the way it looked like he had a lot pressure one it. But after he said that there wasn't much pressure on the blade I figured it was on the spine and that he just had the strop held loose enough to let the spine flatten it out before the actually blade passed over it. I try to mimic this as close as I can, but never really putting much if any actual pressure on the cutting edge. So far my razor has passed the arm and htt test every time, so I don't think I am damaging the cutting edge.