No your not doing something wrong, it is the way the players are designed. Whenever you put your hand on the platter, the platter has control over the player (just like putting your hands on a piece of vinyl while playing on a TT). So once you put your hand on the platter, any motion you make the platter do, the player will follow along with until both you are not touching the platter any more, and secondly the platter comes to a complete stop. Without that feature, you couldn't pull off things like backspins.