Can chins be trained, made stronger?

Maybe the actual chin is not as relevant as people assume.
 
KO's have more to do than just how strong your jaw is though. It's more complex than that because if you look at Chuck Liddell for example he had a big head. And he used to be able to take big shots. But then as he got older he could no longer take them. Now what happened? His chin or neck muscles didn't get significantly weaker. So obviously something else internally has changed within him. Knockout's and the ability to take a punch in very misunderstood. I'm sure having a strong head/neck muscles can help lessen the impact, but by how much? Does it really make a difference? There are other more important factors involved.

"his neck muscle didnt get weaker"

how do you know this? he got older
 
KO's have more to do than just how strong your jaw is though. It's more complex than that because if you look at Chuck Liddell for example he had a big head. And he used to be able to take big shots. But then as he got older he could no longer take them. Now what happened? His chin or neck muscles didn't get significantly weaker. So obviously something else internally has changed within him. Knockout's and the ability to take a punch in very misunderstood. I'm sure having a strong head/neck muscles can help lessen the impact, but by how much? Does it really make a difference? There are other more important factors involved.
Repeated brain trauma is probably a shitload more important to Chuck (and most fighters who get attributed with a "weak" chin) than any muscle or bone.
 
Doesn't endurance have a great impact on this. If you mouth is open because you are breathing through it and not your nose you have a greater chance of being knocked out. I guess some of the neck exercises help because you can hold you head more steady as it is getting hit.
 
A stronger neck can help you absorb blows better and you can strengthen your neck. That's about it though.
 
"his neck muscle didnt get weaker"

how do you know this? he got older
i never said that though read again. I said never got "significantly" weaker. We know this because. His body always looked the same. Neck strength is not something you just lose in leaps and bounds. Unless you are starving yourself. Even if it got weaker that is not enough to impact how weak his chin actually became. That was my point.
 
neck muscle. shape of your head, it can't be too angular because there's more leverage behind it, something like that. since you're KO'ed when youur brain hits your skull hard enough, or something like that. since I'm too lazy to explain correctly, I'm calling someone who knows way better than me

I remember @NoBiasJustMMA talking about it in some other thread some time ago

You can make your chin a bit better but not by a lot, you can't change things like the physical structure of the skull much or the size of it(Nick Diaz had some bones shaved down but this is more to prevent cuts), you can strengthen the neck muscles and shoulders though so that it cushions the blow more. I have seen training videos of fighters on a back bend machine wearing a leather headgear with weights on it and do reps of head raises. We used to have a machine in high school weight training that you could actually select how much weight you want to use and sort of nod with the weight or turn sideways and do reps with your neck on one side or the other to strengthen the neck.

Improved cardio also seems to improve a fighter's ability to recover as well, as seen by Overeem with his improved cardio recovering very fast against Roy Nelson and Wanderlei recovering very well against Brian Stann(I think the weight cut to MW took a toll on Wanderlei's chin/recovery).

If someone has a small angular head with a long chin/face, there isn't much they can do, their chin is going to be below average.

Here's a video of someone doing reps with one of those harnesses I mentioned.

 
You can make your chin a bit better but not by a lot, you can't change things like the physical structure of the skull much or the size of it(Nick Diaz had some bones shaved down but this is more to prevent cuts), you can strengthen the neck muscles and shoulders though so that it cushions the blow more. I have seen training videos of fighters on a back bend machine wearing a leather headgear with weights on it and do reps of head raises. We used to have a machine in high school weight training that you could actually select how much weight you want to use and sort of nod with the weight or turn sideways and do reps with your neck on one side or the other to strengthen the neck.

Improved cardio also seems to improve a fighter's ability to recover as well, as seen by Overeem with his improved cardio recovering very fast against Roy Nelson and Wanderlei recovering very well against Brian Stann(I think the weight cut to MW took a toll on Wanderlei's chin/recovery).

If someone has a small angular head with a long chin/face, there isn't much they can do, their chin is going to be below average.
yeah, you talked about head sizes and these rectangular ones would be the worse of them all, right? and how BJ with his rounded head being a good thing. but wouldn't a big head with an angular face be bad too? like bigfoot, for example
 
Strengthening the neck helps. Jack Dempsey used to chew on wood chips
 
It has nothing to do with the "chin". Its the brain slapping against the side of your skull that knocks you out and you can't train that.
 
yeah, you talked about head sizes and these rectangular ones would be the worse of them all, right? and how BJ with his rounded head being a good thing. but wouldn't a big head with an angular face be bad too? like bigfoot, for example

Yeah, think of the head like a lever, the longer it is and the more angles the easier it is to move the far end of the lever when you hit the chin. The guys with the best chins mostly have the same or very similar shaped heads, generally bigger than average head and blockish or round(Rampage, Penn, Hunt, Cabbage, Ortiz). Bigfoot has a very big head which is good for taking shots but like you pointed out his face has a bunch of sharp angles and his face is kind of long and more rectangular than square.
 
You can improve your neck strength to help with the force your head takes, but chin normally comes under cardio/body tank if that makes sense, if your 100% prepared and your strong in yourself it would take more damage to effect you rather than, if you where unprepared , again it's just what I've read
 
You have to do chinnercises.

BigfootSilva_backstage.gif
Bigfoot has obviously been slacking on his, thinking his naturally muscular chin would carry him through.
 
You can train your ability to take a punch to an extent with recognising when strikes are coming and rolling with them or bracing yourself.

In addition neck/jaw strengthening exercises will of course help marginally, then again every little helps.

But what you can't do is improve a chin once it's been cracked. Total bro science thinking but example, once Chuck finally had his chin cracked he would get put down with shots that wouldn't have even phased him before.

It can't be coincidence that your body eventually learns once it shuts itself off for a time period (getting KO'd) it will prevent further prolonged demage, by the fight being stopped.

If it recognises this over and over again your brain and chin aren't going to hold up in future wars as your brain is accustomed to what is coming next, potentially 25 minutes of skull crushing punches to the dome.
 
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