I agree that putting a lot of force into a motion, especially if you’re still in the stage of trying to figure out how to actually do it correctly, can often distort the form and also recruit unnecessary muscles, making it harder to know by feel if you’re really doing it right.
The only thing I’d caution is that, at the other end of the spectrum, trying pick super softly can also make it harder to tell if a motion is stringhopping because you no longer feel the tension build up. This can trick you into thinking you’re doing it right when a video clip might clearly show otherwise. We’ve seen many examples of this in Technique Critique here on the forum.
As usual, the test is going fast. Soft picking is ok if you can still do it fast with no bounce or fatigue. If the motion looks bouncy, or you hit a speed limit, or you feel fatigue, then the soft picking wasn’t really encouraging you to make a better motion. It was just disguising the incorrect one.
I don’t know but it may be a moot point for something like stringhopping. If you have a stringhopping problem, the most direct route is to deliberately try to go fast while trying out different joint motions, until you find one that you can do. Most people already have some hand or arm motion they can do that’s fast and efficient. They just have to try them all, hopefully with some decent instructions to get them in the ballpark.
Yeah I don’t love this. Let’s leave the bro talk off the forum if we can. Thanks.