Bruises sustained while kickboxing: pain level, realistic causes, healing time

[neveryourgirl]

Hi everyone,

MCU fanfic writer here! I need some advice on bruises and non-serious gym injuries/injuries from sparring or the like. Especially people with medical and/or martial arts backgrounds, please weigh in!

Character context: two non-superpowered hero characters (think Hawkeye or Black Widow), both are women, the injured character is in her early to mid-20s and has trained in different martial arts since she was a preteen

Scene context: It's basically a sex scene. Character A and B are long-distance and haven't seen each other in a while. Character A pulls up the other’s shirt and finds a fading bruise on her stomach. Character A asks about it. Character B replies that it’s a gym injury, because she got distracted during a kickboxing class. (The distraction was that she kept remembering a sex dream from the night before.) The moment is supposed to function as a brief interruption. It's basically 'not a big deal,' because they are both used to worse injuries, but it still makes character A pause, because like, Babe, why do you have a bruise I don't know about?

Injury details I've included: I described the bruise as “fading” and a “yellow-green mark.” It “hurt like a bitch” the first few days, but she can barely feel it now.

Timeframe-wise, I’m thinking the injury happened maybe two weeks ago, but I could change that. It’s not actually mentioned on page.

I have a feeling some of my details might be off? I did look up the different visual stages of bruises healing, but I have zero medical background, and all I know about kickboxing I learned from my google research.

So, my questions now are:

1. Does this injury make sense within the martial arts/kickboxing context? Is the bruising and pain level realistic? Or am I over- or underestimating it?

2. Does the timeframe make sense?

3. Would what I imagine as a kick to the stomach leave a bruise like that without causing more serious damage? Like, would the force necessary to leave a bruise also cause other injuries?

If this combo of injury and cause of injury doesn’t work, I’d also love to hear alternative suggestions if you have any!

Of course, this is Marvel, so there’s some major leeway since we repeatedly see characters without superpowers be kicked or fall from questionable heights and get back up again. But I really like to have my medical facts be as accurate as possible. (And if I feel the need to deviate, I at least want to know the factual realities I’m intentionally deviating from.)

Comments

[rmc28]

I haven't done any martial arts in decades but I'm pretty sure I just had random bruises all the time when I did. I definitely do now I play ice hockey: I probably practice 2-3 times a week plus sometimes games at weekends, and even though we're non-checking we're still allowed contact, plus I fall over or stop pucks so yeah, sometimes there are bruises even with padding.

Sometimes you remember how you got them (like the spectacular one I got once on my leg from a blocked shot that landed just where the armour ends on my hockey shorts), sometimes you're just like "huh, wonder where that one came from".

My bruises tend to heal up within a few days, even that epic one mentioned above was gone in a week, so two weeks ago would have been a really hard hit (and I do not have the medical knowledge to know how bad the damage behind it would be).

[neveryourgirl]

Interesting!! Thank you for sharing! I’ve never practiced a contact sport, so this was really helpful! I’m totally gonna use the ‘huh, where did I get this?’ line. And yes, it totally makes sense that the character would have random bruises all the time.

[mific]

Medical background here. One to two weeks sounds about right for a fading bruise as you describe. A hard kick or punch could leave a bad bruise but not injure abdominal organs if it was centrally in the belly, closer to the navel. Up just under the ribs you'd risk damage to the liver or spleen, and too laterally at the sides and you might bruise a kidney, although that's more likely with a blow from the side or back.

[neveryourgirl]

Thanks for sharing and especially for explaining the organ location and where a hard hit might cause more damage! That was super interesting and helpful. I’ll definitely remember that!

[dreamtigress]

The bruising and pain levels seem realistic for a kick. The commenter above address the location and damage possibilities accurately. So long as it was a glancing blow, or through clothing/padding, you can avoid organ damage. Everyone's bruises heal at different rates, and often, it depends on how much initial bruising and where on the body. As someone with a variety of data on healing bruises, I can tell you that two weeks is a fairly long time span for minor bruising to still be evident. It's not out of the realm of possibility, though. You can hand wave the time a bit, by not giving an exact figure, or you could reduce it to a week and a half or so.

[neveryourgirl]

Thank you! I think I’ll hand wave the time element. (But also, a shorter time span might actually work better now that I’m thinking about it.)

The info about the glancing blow or a hit through clothing/padding and healing rates differing from person to person is really interesting! I’ll definitely keep that in mind! Thanks for pointing this out and making me aware of it :)

[lilacsigil]

It makes sense, but also if she's a martial artist in training, she's going to almost always have some bruises somewhere. My nephew certainly does! He can usually say where he got a specific bruise, but it's never a surprise to see him with big bruises. So I think character A mentioning a bruise would be fine, but it would be weird for him to be shocked/surprised that she has a large fading bruise.

[neveryourgirl]

That makes sense! Thanks for your input and real life example! I don’t usually do any bruise-heavy activities. It’s super helpful to hear from people who do (or know people who do).

[lizvogel]

Seconding above comments that a practicing martial artist is frequently going to have bruises in various places, and an established partner shouldn't be shocked in the ordinary course of things. Although I've known couples where "Ooh, where did this one come from?" is normal catching-up conversation and/or foreplay. ;-)

I've had bruises that didn't look like much but hurt like heck for weeks, and bruises that looked horrible that I never even felt. It can really vary all over the place depending on the person and the type and angle of blow. IME, the pain's often worst before there's much to show for it; by the time the exciting purple-and-yellow color comes in, it usually looks a lot worse than it feels.

A stomach bruise without serious internal injury is believable: one thing I learned early in training was how to tighten the stomach muscles to take a blow without getting the wind knocked out (or, presumably, anything worse). For the particular martial arts I practiced, I'm thinking a glancing blow would give the best color/low-damage ratio; if the person half-twisted out of the way but didn't manage it completely, the surface tissues could take quite a shot without anything deeper getting hurt.

[neveryourgirl]

So many good points! Thank you! :) I think I’m going to make the dialogue exchange about the bruise a bit more light-hearted and playful. Maybe add some humour. That actually makes a lot of sense within the context of the story.

The point you make about the optics of the bruise not really being indicative of how much it might hurt is really interesting, too. And I like the idea of the glancing blow!

Thank you so much for your input and sharing your experiences!