chin strength

[DempseyMarciano]

...

LOL. Ok.

[Golden-Gloves]

There is no way to literally "improve your chin".

You can strengthen your neck muscles which will act as a shock absorber and allow you to take a punch slightly better.

You can spar and train to prepare, but only with experience will you learn how to deal with being hit hard and controlling your reaction without a panic.

The human chin is one of the very few places that has concentrated nerve endings, when a person gets hit flush on the chin, in some cases, all of those nerve endings send messages to your brain, but since there are so many nerve endings and too many messages for your brain to process, it overloads and you can blackout, which in boxing we call a knockout. There is no possible way to prevent this from happening. My suggestion is dont get hit.. =)

[Golden-Gloves]

I've only been here a week or so, and already i pretty much no all the wanna-be's here. Stormi'Norman is correct, my inital reply wasn't a theory at all. It's pretty much fact. If a fighter is determind that the other fellow, no matter what he throw's at him, isn't going to knock him out, he isn't going anywhere.

Mind over matter.

Mind over matter has no barrier to physical contact big homey.. Your saying, when 500 pounds of pressure is continuously hitting you in the head, there is no way for that 500 pounds to take a toll on your body, because your confident in your ability?

[DempseyMarciano]

....

Being determined and being in great conditioning, goes a
long way.

[BennyST]

wtf mate no one is going to want to rub ****in horse piss on their face the way to improve ya chin is to spar hard and get used to take a punch all ya can do

Well, no not really true actually. You can gain a certain resistance by training your neck muscles (it is still not very much). Sparring won't improve your chin. Getting used to taking a punch also doesn't improve anything. Training your reflexes so you always see everything will help (just goes with defense though), which is maybe what you're thinking of by saying sparring can help, but it does not improve your chin.

You can improve it as much as it can be improved (which is really not much at all) by hard training of all the neck muscles, but being able to take a solid punch is really rather natural. Your determination will make you get up, and your training will help you from getting hit flush or not seeing a punch coming but the only real thing you can do is train the neck muscles. More important though is just training for great defense. If you want to improve your chin, keep it tucked in to your chest all the time and work on blocking, slipping, ducking etc etc. You'll suddenly have an amazing chin.

[BennyST]

Being determined and being in great conditioning, goes a
long way.

In a way that is true. Being determined will certainly not improve your ability to take a punch. It will make you more willing to go through pain and push on, and not give up or it will make you get up when you think you can't but it won't actually help your chin.

To improve your chin the best thing you can do is learn to fight with it tucked all the way in to your chest all the time, apart from actually training your neck muscles. Your motivation etc will determine how you deal with getting hit ie. whether or not you keep going or get up but actually getting hit is still the same. It will still hurt just as much or put you on your arse just as hard. The more determined you are the more likely you will be to get up though.

[Oriachim]

In Ricky Hattons autobiography, it says to improve the chin, its just getting used to the shots. Like would a newcomer be able to withstand kostya tszyus straight right?

[Clegg]

Well, no not really true actually. You can gain a certain resistance by training your neck muscles (it is still not very much). Sparring won't improve your chin. Getting used to taking a punch also doesn't improve anything. Training your reflexes so you always see everything will help (just goes with defense though), which is maybe what you're thinking of by saying sparring can help, but it does not improve your chin.

You can improve it as much as it can be improved (which is really not much at all) by hard training of all the neck muscles, but being able to take a solid punch is really rather natural. Your determination will make you get up, and your training will help you from getting hit flush or not seeing a punch coming but the only real thing you can do is train the neck muscles. More important though is just training for great defense. If you want to improve your chin, keep it tucked in to your chest all the time and work on blocking, slipping, ducking etc etc. You'll suddenly have an amazing chin.

That makes sense, but there are a few points that I don't understand.

Why don't more boxers, particularly those who are said to have questionable punch resistance, train their neck muscles more? Or would the effects be hard to notice because they would be minimal?

Also, how about boxers like Margarito, who were knocked down whilst inexperienced, but now seem to have an excellent chin? Is none of that due to his body adapting to having taken a lot of hard punches over several years?

[BennyST]

That makes sense, but there are a few points that I don't understand.

Why don't more boxers, particularly those who are said to have questionable punch resistance, train their neck muscles more? Or would the effects be hard to notice because they would be minimal?

Also, how about boxers like Margarito, who were knocked down whilst inexperienced, but now seem to have an excellent chin? Is none of that due to his body adapting to having taken a lot of hard punches over several years?

Most do train their neck muscles a lot. Nonetheless, while it will make a difference it won't be a great difference. Inexperience plays a big part in it. Margarito was knocked down when he was quite young and it could have been that his muscles were not as developed as they are know. His experience also would have taught him to take the punches less flush and not at times when he is most vulnerable. If he was as good as he is now he would not have been put down. I don't think it was his body adapting as much as it was his fighting experience and learning how to take a punch properly (ie. moving with it, not turning into it etc etc). Even in the Cotto fight he did not take a flush punch while turning into it. It was mostly while he had his head stationary and was ready to take it.

Marg was one of those guys that were just born with a good chin though. He would have always been hard to put down even when he was fifteen. You always need to get used to being hit, that goes without saying, but by the time you get to the pro level it won't change very much at all. By that stage you will as sued to getting hit as you will ever be really. Obviously you will be getting hit harder and with less protective gear on, but by that stage if you can't take a punch well, nothing will help you apart from learning defense better.

Of course you have to learn how to take a punch in the first place as it can be a big shock to the body and system, but that is all very obvious and goes without saying. After that is when your actual chin strength shows up. Once you have sparred and fought enough and have that experience, that is when you have adapted to taking the initial impact of punches and that first part, but it is then that you real chin strength is important. You shouldn't go into any fight without knowing whether you can take a punch or not. That is something that should have been known very early on. From there it is about training defense and your neck because by that stage you should already have adapted to taking those impact shots.