Having a great chin is crucial in most striking combat sports.
In kickboxing, Boxing, MMA, and Muay Thai, having a great chin is one of the most extraordinary abilities to win a fight.
As one of the best boxing characters said, “it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”
I am a professional MMA fighter, and I’ve tried Boxing and Thai Boxing for MMA.
In my experience, a ‘well-trained chin’ usually comes from having a strong neck.
To understand this process, we will look at the following:
- The knockout process
- How to reduce chances of being knocked out
- How to build a knockout-resistant chin
We will discuss all these things mentioned below, and after reading this article, you will understand if it is possible to train your chin and, if so, how to do it.
So, let’s get started!
Table of Contents
What Happens During a Knockout?
Whether you are training your chin for boxing, Muay Thai, or MMA, we must understand the purpose of our training.
We train our chin to take the punches better and not get knocked out easily, so understanding the KO process is important.
If your goal is to become a professional MMA fighter, not getting knocked out too many times is vital.
Boxers, MMA fighters, Kickboxers, and other professional strikers always aim at the jaw to earn an easy KO.
Landing to the jaw requires less power to get a knockout because of the anatomy of the head.
A punch landed right on the jaw causes more rotation of the head, and during this process, the brain clashes with the sides of the skull, and this process results in a KO.
As such, a knockout punch rotates your skull at the neck, resulting in your brain bouncing around your skull and knocking you out.
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How To Reduce Chances Of Being Knocked Out
The best way to avoid getting knocked out is to not get hit by using – but this article is about what happens if you get hit despite your best efforts.
Reducing the chances of KO means avoiding brain rotation as much as possible.
Neck Strength Reduces the Rotation of Your Skull
People with powerful necks can take more punches because their necks can take the power of the punch, causing less brain bounce.
Most combat sports coaches agree that having a strong neck and chin is the most crucial part of reducing the chances of being knocked out.
It is hard to get a KO loss against Thai Boxers because they always have strong necks.
Thai Clinch is critical in their sport; they are always hanging on each other’s necks and have powerful muscles around this area.
By the same logic, it is also pretty hard to KO a wrestler because they do a lot of neck exercises.
So, to reduce the chances of a knockout, you need to strengthen your neck and chin.
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How To Get A Stronger Chin/Neck For Boxing
Various exercises can make your neck and chin stronger.
I will discuss the most famous and efficient exercises recognized by the world-famous boxers and strikers and share my personal experience with each exercise.
Wrestler’s Bridge
This is one of my favorite exercises, which I do every single session to warm up my neck for any kind of workout, grappling, striking, it does not matter.
This exercise owes to the wrestlers, but every neck exercise translates well for other sports to train your chin for boxing.
- Firstly, start with the front bridge position, with your hands and knees on the ground. You are making several deviations in each north/south/east/west direction.
- Afterward, lift your knees and balance with your toes, head, and hands on the ground.
- Put your hands behind your back, maintain balance with your toes and head on the ground, and keep making the same moves.
- After that, cycle with your legs around your head several times or do the jumping switch from the front to the back bridge and vice versa.
- The final position for this workout is the back bridge. Maintain balance with your head and toes, moving back and forward, and trying to touch the ground with your nose.
From my point of view, this is the must-do exercise for any combat sports athlete before any training session.
Yes, No, Maybe Neck Exercises
This is another famous workout that works well for me, too. After doing this exercise, I feel how stretched my neck is, which means that workout was beneficial.
The main idea behind this exercise is to lay down on your back and not touch the ground with your head.
- Yes – You start doing this exercise with “Yes” moves, which means rotating your head up and down.
- No – After that, you rotate your head to the left and the right, which means “No” in body language.
- And after that, inclining head to the left and the right, which is called “Maybe” or “I don’t know,” moves
This is another workout I start training with or finishing if I want to straighten my neck.
Neck Harness
The neck harness is one of the most effective workouts for your neck. This workout is famous in boxing because one of the best-undefeated boxers, Floyd Mayweather, frequently does this workout.
Place the harness on your neck while lying face up or down on a bench with your head over the edge. Then, you move your neck up and down against the resistance, each time counting as a repetition.
This exercise I’ve tried before is very hard, but it also delivers the results.
Neck Curl With Plate
I love this workout because I also feel lots of power in my neck after doing it several times.
People usually do it on special gym seats, with towels on their heads, but I did not have the same seat in the gym, so I created my way.
I took the punching bag to the ground, lied down on it, put my MMA gloves on my head, put the plate on it, held it, and started rotating my head up and down.
This is the harder version of the “Yes” workout we mentioned before, but I believe both are necessary and have their places in a professional fighter’s training schedule.
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Can You Train Your Chin For Boxing? – Final Word
In a word, any good neck exercise translates well for reducing knockout chances.
There are not many chin exercises, and having only a strong chin does not reduce the rotation of the head/brain, so really, training to have a “strong chin” means training to have a strong neck.
Having a stronger neck reduces the level of snapping in the brain, allowing you to eat more punches and reducing the chances of being knocked out.
So, if you want to train your chin to be able to eat more punches, and reduce the chance of being knocked out, do this and any good neck exercise because this is the recognized method by many famous striking coaches.
