Hey Frank, I learned  so much from this one video last year, than any on YouTube! It works Outstanding!!  Thank you so much! : )

Frank from Bama

I use small pruning snips.  After pinching 5 large trees, my finger nail gets sore.  Try pinching over 200 trees with you fingers!  You will see what I mean!  But it does work like a charm.

Pinching is one of the best things I learned on this forum. I started pinching my in ground EBT in the beginning of June, after every 5th or 6th leaf (if already present). This has resulted in earlier ripening of the brebas. Today I harvested my 1st breba of this season, 1 month earlier than the previous years! Other brebas are starting to ripen also on the branches that were pinched first. I hope this pinching will speed up the ripening of the main crop too.

 

The technique of pinching was already practised centuries ago. There is a whole chapter on pruning and pinching figs in this 17th century French monography on figs: https://books.google.be/books?id=L_M6AAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=nl&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false There is a lot of useful information in this old book about figs, maybe I will translate it some day. Next year I will also prune away the apical bud when the tree starts to wake up after dormancy, as is recommended in this book.  

Chuck,

If I may help answer some questions..  There are no solid rules for pinching.  A 'general' method is at least every 5th or 6th leaf.  You can pinch a tip after 3 feet of growth if you wish.  It doesn't matter what the caliber of the branch is.  If you pinch after every 5th leaf, you will get a nicer shaped tree and a better chance of figs pushing out sooner.

I've been having problems not getting any fruit and pinched all my trees for the first time just two days ago. I'm really excited to see what happens over the coming weeks. If you guys have any before and after pictures I really like to see what it did for you. I'll report back to this post with pics if I see any changes in my trees.

just an FYI
this isnt just for figs.
i tip-prune (pinch) the tops of my guava
it makes it develop 2 shoots instead of 1
so, it is forming the shape of the tree, as well as putting some of the energy into fruit instead of new growth
i do this on a regular basis with guava
but, also do it with Jujube, Mango, loquat, barbados cherry etc...

some trees like Barbados Cherry (Acerola / Malpighia emarginata)
 can have long skinny branches which will bend with too much fruit on them.
tipping the branch when young will keep it shorter so the branch will bend less under the weight of the fruit.

it will certainly change the form and shape, so keep that in mind, especially for something like mango.

  you can see the tops, which were much longer, now forcing new side growth on this Acerola / Barbados Cherry

 
and here, forcing fruit on the laft, and flowers on the right.
 

long skinny branches ... normal growth before tip-pruning