Hi mate,

For generations, we’ve constantly strived to be better, higher and greater. This desire to push reveals itself through a variety of sports, particularly combative ones. Indeed, what better way to avoid confrontation or have a higher chance of coming triumphant from one, whether it’s a minor brawl or a full-fledged war? Furthermore, it is also to be more beneficial to the group, or to have a higher status within the group. As a result, men would always distinguish themselves physically, not only in terms of their physique (height, strength, abilities, muscle mass, etc. ) but also with their facial features.

Many traits can be linked to both attractiveness and pure function, such as the thickness and width of the orbital and zygomatic bones -the thicker and wider, the better- both in terms of aesthetics and safety, as they will better cover the eyes. Others, with scars, cauliflower ears, or a broken and reshaped nose, somehow represent a more intimidating/serious threat.

But there’s one feature that always seems to capture it perfectly: the jawline.

As a decisive factor of the whole aspect of your face, a nice and wide muscular jaw is always found in every superhero and most attractive ranked celebrities, regardless if they are from comic books or actors playing said heroes: He-Man, Superman, Batman, and their actors, Dolph Lundgren, Christopher Reeves, Henry Cavill, Christian Bale, Robert Pattinson…

It’s the same for women, who are deemed more attractive with good facial projection, as shown in feminine superheroes: Wonder Woman, Xena, Black Widow, and their respective actresses: Lynda Carter, Lucy Lawless, Scarlett Johansson, Adrianne Palicki…

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What am I trying to say with all of this? What if I told you that you could actually train your jaw?

Let’s get started.

What Are The Benefits of Jaw Training?

1. Jaw Training Will Help You Get A More Attractive/Masculine Jawline

The jawline is the cornerstone of the lower third part of the face, and it can either break or make the overall flow of your face. The broader and lower the angle, the more appealing your face is to most people. If you look at any of the top 20 sexiest celebs, men or women, you’ll see that they all possess high and wide cheekbones, a projected maxilla and a good jawline structure.

Your genetics, as well as your overall body composition and jaw muscle size, influence this to a great extent. Check out my work on the subject if you want a short tutorial on how to enhance the look of your face.

2. A Stronger Jaw Will Contribute To Becoming More Resilient To Collisions And Impacts

We’ve already seen that neck training can make you look more attractive while also making you a better, more resilient and less injury-prone athlete, as the stronger it gets, the lower the risk of cervical and head injuries. As for t he jaw muscles, they aid with stabilizing and supporting of the sole skull joint: the temporomandibular joints (TMJ).

By holding it even firmer, the overall area’s tightness will improve dramatically, reducing the chances of KO’s, which occur mainly when the mandible or foramen (around the chin) is hit, which is the farthest point from the jaw joint and thus where the most moment arm and acceleration can happen.

Try it for yourself by rotating your head left and right. Do it again, clenching your jaw as hard as you can. See how much more constrained you are? Do it again, this time compressing your neck muscles as well, and imagine everything becoming thicker and stronger.

From rugby to MMA, wrestling to football, the muscles literally become cushions, shock absorbers and shields that will help prevent the risk of injury in any contact or combat sport athlete.

It’s no coincidence that the finest athletes in these sports have a big, thick neck AND a strong jawline.

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Squeezing your jaws hard also improves your overall gym performance by allowing you to generate more nerve impulses and take advantage of the irradiation principle, which states that the more muscles you squeeze, the stronger you get.

Multiple studies have found that when athletes clenched as tight as they could on a mouth guard, their strength increased by 5 to 15% on bench press, leg extension, or leg press. Check this out.

3. A Stronger Jaw Improves Mouth Posture And Digestion

What is mouth posture, anyway? How can it help with digestion?

Let’s start with the first one: mouth posture refers to how your jaw is positioned at rest, as well as how and where your tongue sits. It’s supposed to rest on the roof of your mouth, behind the incisor teeth, with the jaw locked with the least amount of tension possible. It’s the start of an exercise called “Mewing” that helps you get into a healthier position and benefit from a better breathing pattern (through the nose) while avoiding the negative effects of mouth breathing.

The digestive process is simple: it starts in the mouth with salivation and mastication. The stronger your jaw is, the easier it will be to chew food and break it down into a pulp or soup, which will be easier to digest. The mastication process will also signal to the brain that digestion has begun, allowing you to control stomach and bowel function while also regulating appetite (the longer you chew, the faster you will feel full; a good tip to promote fat loss).

4. A Stronger Jaw Is A Deadly Weapon

Let’s not forget that the jaw is the most primitive and useful weapon. A human bite is actually one of the most powerful among the great apes’ species, ranking just below gorillas and chimps, and being the most efficient pound for pound only behind a gibbon’s bite. Take a look at it here.

According to one study , it can reach 121kg per 2,5cm squares (the average is 78kg) under the first molars, or 1300 Newtons, which is more than enough to bite off fingers, noses, ears or flesh. That’s something to keep in mind the next time you’re in a street fight or need to defend yourself.

How to Train the Jaw

1. Jaw Muscles Anatomy

So, how do we train and strengthen the jaw? First, let’s go through the muscles we’re talking about and what they do. The primary function of the TMJ joint is to chew by flexion and extension. The second function, as previously said, is to stabilize the joint. That’s pretty much it. An anatomy diagram can be found below:

We’ll focus on the masseter muscle because it’s the one with the most visible impact and is also the easiest to strengthen. The temporal is a mastication auxiliary muscle, and the little lateral pterygoid muscles are a bit deeper, with just a minor visual impact and strength.

2. Train Your Jaw By Chewing Hard Food And Gum

Chewing is the most obvious technique to train your jaw. Simply eat harder foods and chew them more thoroughly. As said before, try to mix a soup by chewing a lot of solid ingredients. Instead of picking chopped vegetables, choose raw veggies like carrots or hard-to-chew meat pieces. Actually, bread, especially baguette and traditional types, can be a good jaw workout.

The one clear disadvantage is that you can’t just eat more and more and chew food all day.

Chewing gum is an obvious addition to this, as it simply increases the masseter’s “training volume.” However, having enough resistance can be challenging. I did it for months, and after around 15-20 minutes of chewing, I needed to chew a full pack of gum to have somewhat of a fatigue build up. You won’t be able to use it again, and you’ll be at risk of digestive discomfort and aerophagia.

Even though it’s the go-to method for most, it’s not efficient at all.

3. Jaw Training With A Towel/Band In Mouth

You may have seen it here and there, and you may have even seen me doing it if you follow me on Youtube and Instagram. I enjoy neck training, having a big neck, and, most importantly, neck exercises with bands, sometimes in my mouth. It actually helps to strengthen the jaw because you’ll have to keep your jaw clenched while moving your head against resistance.

As a combat or contact sports athlete, this is exactly what you could experiment. This will engage and strengthen your neck muscles, such as the extensors, flexors and the scalenes, while also conditioning your masseter to remain still.

However, it is basically isometric work, and we know that its hypertrophy potential as a stand-alone exercise is very limited. There’s also the discomfort of holding something with your teeth that could pull on them too much and/or put too much strain on your gums. It’s beneficial to do it, but not as a stand-alone work, and definitely not in high volumes or on a regular basis.

4. Jaw Training With Chios Mastic Gum

What if I told you there was a way to get the same benefits as chewing hard gum, indefinitely reusable, natural, and could support a very small Greek island that is the only one that provides the actual thing? Sounds pretty good, right?

Chios Mastic Gum is really something I’d like to introduce to you. It’s derived from the raw sap of a particular tree species found exclusively on the Greek island of Chios (pronounced with a silent c). For generations, the inhabitants have been collecting the sap from Lentisk Pistachio trees, in different “tears” sizes, and letting it dry and solidify for about two weeks. It is basically the ancestor of the chewing-gum.

Along with providing a great jaw workout by mixing it with water, chewing it, and then letting it solidify again, it also has a number of health benefits, including anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant effects on the mouth and digestive system because it can be consumed in the form of alcohol, juice and pasta. Many scientists and naturopaths value it because it has been certified in the Greek AOP labeling since 2014.

It’s even been used to make soap! If you’re interested in buying any, I recommend purchasing it here from the official Chios Mastiha Growers Association. This will be the purest form, the greatest quality and, as previously stated, the original product made by century-old providers. Below is the go-to product you should try:

This is, however, more of a healthy chewing gum product than a jaw-focused one.

Now: here come the big guns:

5. Jawliner: The Ultimate Jaw Training Equipment

JawLiner is a German company that has designed the best mouthpieces for jaw training. Period. They aren’t like many other dropshipping websites I’ve encountered, and their original product isn’t available in any Chinese factory stores.

Their product is designed to be as resilient, comfortable, and long-lasting as possible to ensure adequate jaw training. How? It’s as simple as that: deutsch qualitat, with a legendary reputation for quality and reliability.

The JawLiner are mint flavored, BPA and PVC free gums that you place right under the molars, where you can clench and squeeze as hard and comfortable as you want. No gums or teeth irritations, no tearing or breaking toxic plastics right in your mouth. You just need to start chewing and squeezing a few seconds as you clench and in a few minutes your whole face will be on fire.

Jawliner conceptors recommend a 15mn workout every other days for beginner and I stand by it, it will be brutal if you aren’t used to, or have a really weak jaw. I tried it myself like that and trust me, it hurts (and is funny cause at the same time your face is pumped up and you look like a hamster). After months of use, I can now do it for an hour or so.

But after a few days or weeks of the initial gums you will be way stronger, what then?

Simple, they thought of everything and have multiple models ranked by difficulties; begginer, medium and expert, so you can just go on harder and harder gums. Actually it has been a few months now that I have been using the Jawliners, and myself like a few of my friends complained that it wasn’t very hard after a while and also was getting torn into pieces. Guess what? They listened.

They keep improving the gums durability and hardeness. Their last update was just August 2021 and now propose an official 1 year warranty on their gums.

I am actually sponsored by Jawliner and for good reasons: it works and makes jaw training simple and practical; you can just carry them around in their tiny box and chew 10-20mn when you want. Rince them, and put them back in. Again, deutsch qualitat (I love that slogan he he).

They even created a vegan-friendly, 100% natural, mint flavored, hard chewing-gum to complement the classic gum use. No excuse now for a good mouthbreath and a chiseled jaw !

If you want to support my work, get them here for an included 10% discount.

Is Jaw Training Safe?

Just like with anything, training will mostly be good, but like always, risks are present. Jaw training doesn’t escape this rule so let’s see together what could go wrong, and how to prevent it.

Temporo-Mandibular Joint Disorder (TMJD)

TMJD (or Temporo-Mandibular Joint Disorder) is basically the same as lumbago for low back pain: could be anything, could be everything. However, more than 10 millions people are afflicted by it per year, and that’s only counting medically diagnosed americans. We could easily multiply it by three, even four, if we were to take in the entire world.

Thus, it is a pretty common disorder and decline itself in many aspects, here is a non exhaustive list:

• pain that can be felt in the ears, face or neck (at rest or while chewing/talking)
• stiffness in the muscles of the jaw
• limited movement of the jaw
• locking of the jaw
• clicking or popping sound from the TMJ
• shift in the jaw, changing the way that the upper and lower teeth align (ie. malocclusion)

The causes can be numerous, hence, maybe why it is so hard to diagnosticate without proper X Ray and MRI scans. Speaking of causes, again, here is a short non exhaustive list of what could be at play here:

• injury to the jaw joint (broken bone, partial or total dislocation, partial or total ligament tears,…)
• excess stimulation of the jaw joint
• a displaced disc that usually helps cushion the movements of the jaw
• arthritis of the disc that cushions the jaw joint
• grinding your teeth at night
• involuntarily clenching your jaw due to stress and/or anxiety and/or strong emotions
• trauma to the jaw joint, like during contact and combat sports

Depending of the cause(s), the solution(s) will of course vary, but here is a short list again of what may help you:

• eat softer foods
• use ice to reduce swelling (if there is any)
• reduce jaw movements
• avoid chewing gum and tough foods (like beef jerky, bread or apples)
• reduce stress (sleep better, eat better, stay active and try to relax)
• use jaw-stretching and training exercises to help improve jaw movement and bring blood flow to help repair and prehab the joint (like the ones you can do with the Jawliner)
• use heat to relax the muscles tensions around the jaw
• massage with your index and middle finger the jaw muscles to help further relaxation and circulation
• make sure to increase your magnesium and potassium intake to avoid cramping and spasms

In most cases, those “home-made” remedies will be more than enough to fix your problem, since said problem is often just a symptom of high chronic stress or too much jaw stimulation. If, of course, you are into combat sports and took a round house kick right in the jaw from a heavy weight, you may need more than just stress management.

Linking Jaw Training and TMJD

As we saw above, jaw pain and discomfort is very well categorized and known in the medical field. And as you noted above, overstimulation of said jaw can be one of these causes for TMJD. Furthermore, if you are already experiencing some, training it carelessly could worsen your symptoms. What does this mean for you? Simple:

Start slow. Your temporo-mandibular joint is most likely totally unprepared for hours of chewing.

Make sure to use proper form, and to have your jaw align when chewing to avoid malocclusion from happening or worsening if it’s already the case. Make sure to squeeze with control and then, to stretch after training it, just like you would stretch after any workout (I hope).

Conclusion

• Jaw Training is very specific to contact and combat sport athletes but can enhance your looks too
• JawLiner is the best jaw training item. Get yours right here for 10% off.
• Jaw muscles must be treated just like any muscles, with proper training and recovery.
• TMJD can really plague your well-being and quality of life and should be avoided and treated asap.
• A bigger jaw is NEVER a disadvantage!

 

Your lightkeeper,

-Hersovyac.