#Punches #Cuts #Boxing #Injuries
Have you ever wondered how punches can create cuts? It’s a fascinating topic that combines biology, physics, and anatomy. In this article, we’ll dive into the science behind how punches can cause cuts and whether they are treated the same as cuts from a knife or other sharp objects.
##How Do Punches Create Cuts?
When someone throws a punch, the impact of the blow can cause the skin to break, resulting in a cut. This can occur in several ways:
1. **Force**: When a punch lands with enough force, it can cause the skin to tear, leading to a cut. Imagine a powerful hook or uppercut hitting the face or body with enough impact to break the skin.
2. **Friction**: The surface of the skin can also be abraded by the glove or the rough surface of the knuckles, leading to cuts or scrapes. This is more common in boxing where the athlete’s skin is exposed to repetitive impact and friction.
3. **Sharp Edges**: Some punches may have sharper edges due to a ring or finger placement, which can also cause cuts upon impact.
##Are Punch Cuts Treated the Same as Cuts from a Knife?
Whether a cut is caused by a punch or a knife, the basic principles of wound care apply. However, there are some differences in the nature of the wounds that can influence treatment:
###Differences in Wound Characteristics:
1. **Depth**: Cuts from punches tend to be more superficial, while cuts from knives can be deeper and more severe.
2. **Size and Shape**: Punch cuts may be irregular and jagged, while knife cuts tend to be more uniform and clean.
### Factors to Consider in Treatment:
1. **Infection Risk**: Both types of cuts pose a risk of infection, but deeper cuts from knives may require more intensive cleaning and possibly stitches.
2. **Damage to Tissues**: Knife cuts can cause more damage to underlying tissues, including tendons, muscles, and nerves, which may require surgical intervention.
###Treatment Approaches:
1. **Pressure and Cleanse**: Both types of cuts require pressure to control bleeding and cleansing to prevent infection.
2. **Closure**: Punch cuts may not always require closure with sutures, while knife cuts often do to promote proper healing and minimize scarring.
It’s important to note that the specific treatment for a cut, regardless of its cause, should be determined by a healthcare professional based on the individual circumstances.
##Do Other Blunt Objects Cause Cuts?
Yes, other blunt objects can cause cuts as well. The basic principle remains the same: if enough force is applied to the skin, it can cause it to break and result in a cut. This can happen with objects like wooden sticks, metal rods, or even a strong blow from a person’s fist. The risk of infection and severity of the wound will depend on the nature of the object, the force applied, and the location of the injury.
In conclusion, punches can indeed create cuts through a combination of force, friction, and sharp edges. While the basic principles of wound care apply to punch cuts and cuts from sharp objects like knives, there are some differences in the nature of the wounds that can influence treatment. Ultimately, any type of cut should be evaluated by a medical professional to determine the most appropriate course of action for proper healing and prevention of complications.
It’s the bone under the skin. Feel your face around your eyes. You’ll notice there is not much between your skin and the orbital socket underneath. Those cuts are from the inside out.
They’re tears. It’s why the cutman puts Vaseline on the cut. Helps them to slide better. The glove pulls or pushes one side of your face from the other. Your face can only take that for so long. Your face has some of the thinner skin in your body. Bags under your eyes and such.
Once you get a mouse, or hematoma, and the blood pools, you can rip the skin open on the bones and burst them. They happen when the skin is being ground against the cheekbones or sockets. Some people are more prone to bruising or being cut.
You have the bone under the muscle under the skin. If you push that soft tissue against the bone hard enough the place that gets stretched thinnest gets torn. If you have a ring or something on that’s going to cut too. You might also get an abrasion from rough surfaces. Boxing gloves can give you rub burn.
If the cut is deep/long enough you might stitch it. It’s not exactly like a knife since knifes are smooth but similar techniques.
Your knuckles are bone and your skull is bone with a quarter inch of face on top. The skin can tear or just be crushed between hard bones
Squeeze a grape hard enough and it splits. Your face is meat, covered by skin, layered over bone. Bone is hard, so when you punch someone in the face hard enough, it squeezes the meat so hard the skin splits, just like a grape.
Others have mentioned tearing, but no one yet has mentioned the power involved here. Boxers don’t punch like you or I. They typically train for years, just punching things, over and over. It is not unusual for professional boxers to punch with a force of over 1000lbs per square inch. Champion boxers can exceed 1500lbs per square inch or more.
Imagine getting hit in the face with a Toyota Corolla over and over again. Sometimes the face tears. It happens.
Boxers still have knuckles. They may be inside of a padded glove but that padded layer compressed into nothing when there’s hundreds of pounds per square inch of energy in the punch.
So yeah that’s basically it. It’s an impact between what are called “bony prominences.” Basically anywhere that you have an angular bone near the skin’s surface. For the face that’s usually the bridge of the nose and the orbital bone which surrounds your eye. In short, the piece of skin that gets cut is between two pointy bones and it slices it. Other objects can called cuts but they rarely cause “lacerations” which are a shallow thin slices. A knife generally causes these or a penetrating injury. An abrasion is caused when you run your skin across a surface.
Make 2 bowls of jello. Cut into one with a knife. Gently press your fist into the other one until you see the surface begin to split. Same mechanism as a punch to the face.
Trauma physician here: the skin around the top of your face is very tight. If you’ve ever had acne in that region, You’ll know it’s more painful than other places. That tight skin is conducive to cuts and bleeding. These aren’t life threatening, but blood in the eyes can lead to a fight stoppage. Can’t fight what you can’t see.
Before fights, you see liberal application of Vaseline at the brow level. This is so sweat and blood wick off and away from the eye.
TLDR: most facial cuts are superficial
You ever use a meat tenderizer mallet and get too aggressive with it and notice the steak or chicken starts to shred? It’s like that.
When your weight is so far forward, it is easy to leave the club face slightly open when done well, creating a cut.
The reason why the big miss with a punch is a low hook is because many amateurs over correct with their hands. At a high level, you’ll see a lot of great players able to hit a trap draw, though.
Get a few squares of a really soft paper kitchen towel or even cloth kitchen towel.
Cut one the others pull apart by hand
With the cut one the damage is more concentrated and well defined, the torn one is more distributed and “flaky”… the damage is quite different.
You need to treat cuts and tears. Cuts can be sown together at the site of the cut and the skin can grow together.
Torn skin has to be treated since there are patches of good and mad skin tissue if you just push it together it will start to bind together all over the place and create a lumps and pumps. torn skin has to bo treated by cleaning and facitilitate healing and formation of new skin between the still good patches
You are a bag of jelly, and if you hit it hard enough, the ripples in the jelly will stretch and tear the bag.
That, plus squeezing the jelly between a hard object (like a bone) and whatever hard surface you’re hitting will tend to squash and stretch the bag to the point where it breaks too.
Here’s a couple videos to illustrate it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjwO9InuFJk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjwO9InuFJk)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMtosS43SLc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMtosS43SLc)
No tearing happening here, but you can see the jelly jiggle and flesh ripple.
In boxing, a lot of cuts actually come from headbutts. Both fighters duck forward at the same time and clash their heads accidentally. Lots of cuts are made this way. If a fighter gets cut from a punch it can also be from an old cut that grew scar tissue. Scar tissue tends to be weaker and can be cut easily. A lot of veteran fighters who have lots of built up scar tissue get cuts in the same places. From my years of watching combat sports, I’d say these are the most common ways I’ve seen fighters get cut.