Help! How do you know if your knuckle is broken or fractured?

I'm just starting off and I was doing my heavy bag work a few days ago and I injured my left hand's middle knuckle. There isn't any swelling, but the knuckle is a red color and the middle knuckle hurts a lot when I move my finger up and down. Is this an indication of a fractured knuckle? Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

Nah I doubt it, when I first started out all of my knuckles were hurting and super red because of wrong technique on the heavy bag. As long as you get your technique correct after a while they just toughen up. check some of these videos at the top of the forum for the technique, just the basics, like punching with a horizontal fist,being loose and not all tensed up, etc. etc. I guess you could still check it out just to be on the safe side, better safe than sorry. ;D

when i broke my knuckles, I had intense pain, the hand swelled up, and I had a huge, dark bruise on my hand. Not very fun. It'll go away though.

Also...are you using wraps or gloves when you hit the bag? If not, itll hurt just about every time, regardless.

You damaged it- any help on the correct term?- and will probably do the right pretty soon. That seems to be the usual starting point. You'll notice that, when you lay your hand flat and look across the back of the hand, that your knuckles seem to have migrated a bit towards the wrist.

F;;;king Brilliant Greys cc

get and exray

Sounds like you just bruised it is all. Be careful though in the future. :)

i've broken my index knuckle twice by doing stupid things in the past... its now a good 1/3 larger than all the other knuckles and it took a good few weeks to stop hurting and being able to push on it.

bruising knuckles are nothing until you've bruised your big toe and all 4 little toes by rolling/stepping on them while barefoot ;D :'( That took alot of time to heal

my advice is to take care of your hands, its 'closing the door after the horse has bolted' i know but if you screw up your knuckles now, you will hinder your boxing future as they heal softer, not stronger. Wrap your hands and ensure your punching correctly

if you are seeing brusing and but no local area swelling then you just have soft tissue damage or a brusied bone, nothing major, it all heals within a few weeks.

if you broke it you'd know about it, trust me!

yeah i doubt you broke it but you're probably going to want to get back before your hand is 100% so when you do make sure you ice it after each time you work out. submerge it in a bowl or bucket of ice water. it'll help it heal quicker and keep it from becoming a biger problem. at least that's what i would do. I'm ice's No.1 fan :)