The Mouth Guard I Make Every Kid Wear

The first thing I do before the kids' kickboxing class is walk the line and check mouths. Not hand wraps. Not gloves. Mouths. About half of them will tell me they left it at home, and the other half will pull out something they have been chewing on since last season, still damp, still in a pocket, with the edges bitten flat.

I have been coaching for about fifteen years at a small club in Columbus, Ohio, kickboxing and jiu-jitsu, adults and kids. I competed in amateur kickboxing in my twenties and I still roll, so I am not squeamish about contact. But I have also paid for a crown, and my own front tooth has a chip in it from a round I did not take seriously. My son Mateo is twelve and takes the kids' class. When I say I make every kid wear one, I mean mine first. Mine is a Shock Doctor Gel Max, and it has been in my bag for years.

For years I handed out whatever came cheap in a multi-pack, and I learned why that fails. Those guards either never fit or fit for a week. A kid gags on the tray, so he trims it with scissors, and now it is loose. It warps in a hot car, so it gets re-boiled at home and comes back worse. By October the thing lives at the bottom of a bag and the kid swears it is in there. A guard that does not fit is not protection. It is a thing you argue about every Tuesday.

The reason I settled on the Shock Doctor guard is the fit. It is a boil-and-bite mouth guard with a Gel-Fit liner: heat water, drop it in, let it soften, bite down and hold. The liner molds to the teeth instead of sitting over them like a tray. It also has a heavy duty exoskeletal frame, integrated breathing channels, and a strap. Adult and youth sizes, latex free, BPA free and phthalate free. None of that matters if the fitting gets rushed, which is the next thing I want to talk about.

Mateo is on his third. He is twelve, he has a narrow jaw like mine, and the youth size still fits him with the strap trimmed back. I fit it for him at the kitchen table the same way I fit the loaners, and he keeps it in its case in the front pocket of his bag so he cannot claim he lost it. That is the whole system. It is not clever, but it works.

A guard that does not fit is not protection. It is a thing you argue about every Tuesday.

Here is the fitting, since this is where most people get it wrong. Boil water, take it off the heat, give it a few seconds so it is not scalding, then drop the guard in until it goes soft. Lift it out with a spoon, shake it once, and get it into the mouth while it is still warm. Bite down evenly, press your thumbs against the outside of the molars, and hold for the count on the package. Then straight into cold water to set the shape. Do the first one in front of a mirror with the kid watching, so he knows what a proper fit feels like.

One more thing about the strap. I cut them shorter on the kids so there is less to fiddle with, and I leave them long on adults. A strap sounds like a small detail until you have watched a child crawl under a row of chairs looking for a guard that flew out of his mouth during a drill. The Shock Doctor guard has one, and I use it.

I have been wearing the Shock Doctor Gel Max for every sparring round and for rolls with strikes. The breathing channels in the front matter more than the feature list suggests: when you are working hard with your mouth closed, you notice the difference between a guard you can pull air through and one you cannot. I have rolled in mine, taken knees to the jaw in a clinch, and had it stay put. I am not going to tell you it prevents anything. Nobody can promise that, and I would not trust a coach who did. I will tell you it fits well enough that I forget it is in.

What wears out is the liner. Kids chew, adults clench, and after a few months the inside goes rough and thin at the front. I re-fitted a new one about five months ago, and I replace mine roughly every season, sooner if the fit goes soft. Rinse it in cold water after every session, shake it out, and let it dry in the case with the lid open. Do not leave it in the van in July. Mine gets hot enough to cook a guard back into a flat tray shape, and I have ruined two that way.

Gear I like gets lent out long before I say anything good about it. The club runs about forty adult members and twenty kids, and the loaner guards go through the same fitting I just described. Most of the resistance comes from parents who think a mouth guard is a hockey thing, or from adults who have trained for years without one and figure they are fine. Then somebody catches an elbow in a light drill and the conversation ends.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you not to buy four cheap ones. Buy one that fits, write a name on the case with a marker, and replace it when the liner goes rough. The custom fit is the entire product. If you skip the fitting, or rush it because you are late for class, you have bought an expensive thing to chew on.

I would tell you to wear it every round, including the easy ones, because the rounds that hurt are never the ones you plan for. I would tell you that kids copy what they see, so if you are a parent who trains, wear yours in front of them and stop negotiating about it every week. And I would tell you to check the thing before class instead of digging for it after the whistle.

I would also tell you the Shock Doctor Gel Max is not the cheapest guard on the shelf, and it is not a piece of equipment that will change your training. It is a guard that fits, breathes, and stays where you put it, which is all I have ever needed from one. With twenty kids cycling through my Tuesday class, that is worth more than any feature list.