@mightstone2k
KB lifting is stressful on the hands in general, so hot spot and tears can occur even with the best technique. But there are definitely a lot of subtle ways to mitigate the stress and make hand tears a rare(er) occurrence.
Al Ciampa once posted the following:
To some degree, your hands will just have to toughen up. I usually advise newcomers to the bell, to follow their hands, allowing them to adapt. The more blue collar you were before KB practice, the less time it will take...
The skin on your hands, your grip strength, your tension development, your technical skill... it is all connected. You can't master one without the others. Don't feel that you have to train today, simply because it is scheduled, if your hands are saying "no", regardless of how recovered your body feels. If you tear your hands, you will lose far more training time than if you just rest another day when they feel, "hot".
You have a lifetime to practice...
There's a lot of wisdom there that only comes from experience and that a lot of readers might not understand without going through similar experience.
Some points that especially resonated with me:
The long term nature of adaptation. Years is no joke. Patience.
The point that skin toughness, grip stength and skill/technique are all connected. Yes, your form/grip may look okay, but if you don't have the strength or get fatigued, you will start over squeezing and have a problem. There's a lot of subtle interaction between your contact with the KB and your overall form -- the ways force is transmitted and absorbed back and forth between you and the KB. A lot of this is not obvious from the outside, even to an expert eye, and must be tuned through trial and error.
Here are a few observations about factors that can have a great effect on hand tears:
Skin adaptation:
Skin becomes conditioned through frequent and consistent practice so that the skin is tougher and less prone to tearing. It isn't just developing calluses, which can cause problems if they get too thick, but a general overall toughness, even where the skin is not obviously thick or rough.
Grip strength:
KB-specific grip strength also takes a long time to develop. It progresses a lot more slowly than hip power and endurance, so your overall strength tends to put a lot of pressure (pun intended) on the weak link of grip strength. The stronger your grip, the more you can maintain a good hook grip without oversqueezing the handle, even when fatigued.
Discretion:
"Follow your hands" is a great phrase. I haven't had a hand tear in literally years, and a big reason is that I have learned to follow my hands and listen to what they are telling me. If they are telling me to call it a day, or switch to a different drill, then I do. How did I learn this? By paying the price for not learning it for an embarrassingly long time.
Technique:
One key is to keep the handle hooked in the fingers, and avoid gripping tightly when the handle is rotating. You also get a feel for when you need to grip more tightly and when you can relax. This not only reduces stress on the skin, but also minimizes fatigue so you can maintain good technique longer. By the way, I get calluses along the base of the fingers and at the top of the middle segment of the fingers near the distal joint. The segment where the OP got the tear is relatively soft and doesn't take much stress. I'm not saying my pattern of calluses and grip stress is more "correct," just making an observation.
There are a lot of subtleties to technique that can effect the grip. Small variations in timing, balance, and grip dynamics can have a big impact on grip stress.
For instance, in the swing, you want to minimize or eliminate rotation of the handle in the hand. Especially with a heavier bell or overspeed eccentric, even subtle rotation can put a lot of extra stress on the skin. You want a straight line of pull throughout the range of motion so the force on the hand compresses the tissue without pulling on it laterally. One way to do this is to be patient with the float and in the hole. If you are yanking the bell down into the downswing while it is still floating up, the handle is going to rotate and pull on the skin. If you start the hip drive too early before the backswing fully completes, you get a head on collision between the hips moving forward while the bell is still moving back. That wastes power, causes the bell to want to rotate and pull on the skin, and puts an abrupt tug on grip that increases stress on the skin as well.
You can also smooth out the force of the bell over the range of motion. If you let the bell fall loosely on the downswing and have to absorb all the force of the drop at the bottom, it's going to put more stress on the grip and skin. If you subtly absorb some of the force of the drop as bell falls, less will hit all at once at the bottom. A couple of cues I use for this are thinking of "counterbalancing" the bell or "playing tug o'war with the bell" on the way down. I also imagine a giant spring or rubber band going from the top of my head to the ceiling and imagine the force of the spring or the band resisting the hip hinge. But the force has to be absorbed through the line of the straight arm in a radial direction, not pulling up like an eccentric front raise.
As mentioned above, being patient out of the hole will will reduce stress on the grip and skin. And smoothly ramping up the force of the hip drive helps as well. If you try to blast the bell out of the hole with all your power at once, it create a very abrupt yank on the grip and also tends to inhibit the power of the hip drive as well (when your nervous system senses that your grip isn't totally secure, it will inhibit the force you exert on the bell). Instead of thinking about starting your hip drive strongly, think about finishing it strong with a smooth ramp of force. In my experience, this actually makes for a more powerful and objectively faster or higher swing, even though it is smoother and might subjectively feel slower.
Hope this helps.
