 Timbo, you shut your mouth when you're talking to me. That's because we're talking about bite. We're talking about grip and effect that has on your strength with DJ from strong camps. This one is going to, if you're not down with like thinking outside of the box and trying some of a bit of crazy different things, then this isn't one to listen to. But if you wanna try and find a little bit of nugget of something that's gonna add a little bit to your training, it could be a simple that's just biting down whilst you're doing your favorite exercise and you're gonna be stronger and it's that simple, then listen on because you're in for a little treat. I feel like we maybe need to do a little waiver on this one and go, I would recommend before maximal effort biting that you go out and do as DJ says and get a mouth guard for a gun machine or something. What I don't want, Jacko, is lots of emails coming in and going, I tried that thing and fractured my tooth. That's a big disclaimer. I'll send you my dentistry bill. So take it steady people, be sensible, get a gum shield maybe if you're gonna go and like, if you're the sort of person Taipei who listens to this sort of sort of and goes like, all in, like I'm gonna tomorrow I'm going to do a one RM. Let's just go steady people. There's some interesting thoughts to play around with. The information provided in this podcast is never meant to be a legally binding or medical, if you do seek your medical professional before you're trying anything. School car science experts, no responsibility for any of the extras involved on your teeth when biting down hard or they're not biting hard but they're not. Dentists are not cheap. That's one thing I don't know. So yeah, enjoy this one. It's a really interesting conversation. And again, something pretty simple. I think, you know, if you go in deep into a workout just sometimes having a little bit of something available to you to deepen the resources at your disposal. I'm definitely gonna remember this one when I'm hanging out my backside at CrossFit next time. I need to pick up something heavy. So sit back, relax and enjoy DJ from Strong Camps on the Movement, Strength and Play podcast. Roll that jingle. Listen, players. You're listening to the Movement, Strength and Play podcast by the School of Calisthenics. Here are your hosts, Tim and Jaco. Welcome to the Movement, Strength and Play podcast. DJ, how are you doing? I'm great. Jaco and Tim, thanks for having me on. No, our pleasure. We're gonna give you the people that give you the chance to just sort of introduce yourself a little bit. I wanna just set the scene of like a friend of mine, shout out to Sarah Moore. She'd tagged me in a post or sent a post of like, look at this. And there was like you talking about people doing pull-ups and then retesting them the following day, I think it was. And there was like biting a resistance band with a kettlebell attached to it or something fairly crazy like that. And then instantly being able to do more pull-ups. And it was like, what's this about? And we'd come across some stuff a couple of years ago from the guys at the National Circus that were talking about like jaw position and tongue position in strength testing. And I remember watching the World's Strongest Man list this last year. And everyone had like a gum shield type thing and that they were biting on and then they were doing some heavy lifts. And I was like, Timbo, we need to speak to DJ because he's doing some crazy stuff, man. Like, and there's obviously something going on here. Just, that's me setting the scene for the list as to where this is coming from. But where has this come from for you? You must have an incredible story to like, wait, you don't just start just picking stuff up with your mouth as the first thing you do in the gym. Like you must have done a quite a bit of stuff in the build-up to this. Like give us the background. Oh, I've always liked to use my mouth for things. My mom used to yell at me. But yeah, how I first got kind of interested in it was the old school strong men. So the teeth lifting was a popular fetus strength. So you would have a strap attached to a dumbbell, some sort of weight other people and lifted up off the ground. So that's kind of where I was like, oh, cool fetus strength. Also in the CERC culture, the iron jaw performance is where people would bite onto a strap and they would be hoisted up. So it's kind of an aerial feat. And they'd go up in the air, spin around. They would also hold other people and have that bite grip. So that's been around for a long time. I know 1800s, there's some drawings of the happening. So yeah, but the strong man is where I looked into it. So I would do it and then I saw a post, someone replied to one of mine when I was lifting some weight and I was thinking, I could use this for neck training because for me, it feels better than the harness that you put around the head. And when I would share it, people would give me a lot of feedback like, man, I used to have neck pain trying to do like bridging or harness network, but the anchoring it from the mouth in pulling weight was a different experience, positive experience didn't have any of the discomfort. So I'm like, cool, this is maybe an alternative to neck strength for people. But yeah, with the band and the pullup, that was where it got really interesting where I kind of started going down the rabbit hole was anchoring the bite and the jaw and putting the other side of the band around the feet gave you this really tied in like midline feedback and stability throughout the chain. And so when I first tested it pulling up, shout out to the late Chris Daly was the one who kind of came up with this idea, but it's almost like I flew up in the air and it threw me off on the first one. It was like I was floating. So I was like, what's going on here? I got to share this with people. So we got a big group together, I think over 25 people had them test, just max out strict pullups and then use that bite grip with the band on the next day. And same thing, reported less effort, they felt lighter, they were getting higher on the bar, more range of motion and they were getting more reps. And then we tested it with pushups, same thing, reporting more reps with that. So the band is around your feet, at one end and then in the mouth on the other side. I feel like I'd seen one with a kettlebell, but anyway, but anyway, yeah. I mean, it's similar because it's anchoring the jaw down. I found it better even with a band, but yeah, with hanging weight off there, you get a similar experience. It's kind of harder with some movements because it will swing and go off the body. But yeah, there's something about that anchoring of the jaw through the rest of the spine, rest of the body up top. And we're talking quite a light band, right? We're not talking anything super. If it's going around, in my sense, it's going in the through the mouth or in the teeth and then around the feet. And we're doing pull ups. Have I got that right in my mind? Yeah, light band, maybe that like 20 pounds. Light band, super light. Okay. So some tension where you're working against it still though. Enough to give you feedback, to feel. Yeah, okay, cool. All right, so what's the, so as you said, you went down the rabbit hole, DJ, what's the, what did you find down there in terms of, if you dive into kind of like what's actually happening from a system perspective, because this will sound like for a lot of people, this will be kind of what I've heard or seen anything like this before. So we've also had Carl Clayton on, who's a cranial osteopath. And he talks in his base in Byron Bay in Australia. But he also kind of made us more aware to the importance of tongue position and jaw position around just movement and function. And there seems to be some really interesting sort of emerging science around this. Yeah, well, I mean, it's something we naturally do when we lift heavy things, a lot of people clench their jaw. And also, you know, in Olympic lifting or jumping explosive things, you'll see people maximally like open their mouth up wide. So the jaw is really just related to movement in general and it's a way to access tension. So what's interesting is when you look at intentionally clenching your jaw, a bunch of studies reporting higher force output when they're testing grip strength, squats, these other things. So that's interesting. Also interesting is, so CAP is concurrent activation potentiation. So that's this phenomena of, okay, I'm going to have a remote voluntary contraction so distal to the prime mover that I'm focusing on. So an example would be if I'm going to shake your hand and then I brace my core, I might be able to have more output into my hand strength or if I'm going to push something away with my legs and I squeeze my fist, you know, I'm driving more tension, maybe I could get more force output. So the Valsava maneuver is kind of similar to that. But the jaw is actually one of the best CAP strategies using tension through the jaw. And so yeah, that's been studied. So clenching is going to improve output and opening and the theory behind this, so kind of what they propose is what's happening is this cortical overflow. So meaning in your motor cortex, you have this movement designated for this part of the body. And when you do these clenching or squeezing, there's a cortical overflow. So activity is overflowing into other areas and there's some sort of functional synergy that's amplifying the output. And for me that makes me think, okay, so if it's certain locations in the brain which are getting the overflow, maybe we're seeing some strategies more beneficial than others. And I've kind of found just the pattern I've seen is when it comes to this explosive jumping movement like what we see in Olympic weightlifting or that third pole, the mouth opening seems to be the emergent strategy that comes up. When it comes to deadlifting, clenching seems to be the strategy that comes up which caring, deadlifting, pulling, strongman, you really want to clench on all these types of movements. On another sport where you're doing vertical jumps, basketball or something, maybe you want to use more of an opening in certain contexts. Could there be a relationship with light? But yeah, another thing. Okay, now you go, I'll come back to that. You go. Oh no, go ahead, go ahead. I just, we've had Dr. Cobb from Z-Health Performance on talking a lot about like neurology and how that affects things. And the widening compared to the clenching, I'm just wondering if there's any like flexor, flexor extensor tone changes happening where when we're opening the mouth hard out, is it like forcing like extension tone potentially more and that's helping with like a triple extension and deflection is more, maybe that's helping more with the grip. Cause there was some other stuff around like, I remember talking about like aggressively pushing your head forward into your hand, like that tends to like facilitate flexor tone through the body and pushing strongly back with the neck. So obviously these, there's things that are all connected within this and it's just, yeah, I just keep finding it more and more fascinating. Is there, is there any potential sort of truth in that? Is that something that's come out in theories? I mean, there's no literature on it or studies, but that's what I personally see it through that lens is I'm finding that for how I'm describing is internal torque or you could say flexion base. Yeah, it's more for the clenching and that band anchoring, which is tying in that midline and the opposite, the opening is gonna bias external torque or extension. So yeah, and that's why I think it's cool and that's why it differentiates from the idea of like a radiation, which is very like a unit dimensional, just kind of compress is, okay, now we have different strategies of tension to bias what we intend to do. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me. I was just thinking about it practically. If you were going to pick up something heavy, you wouldn't do that with a mouth wide open. You would clench down to do that. But if I'm gonna try and go up and extend, you wouldn't try and jump the highest you've ever jumped with your mouth biting down hard. Like naturally that if you didn't think about it, I think that's, you would opt for that strategy. So we're sort of basically talking about just optimizing what people would probably do naturally, but utilizing it for a specific kind of performance outcome. So what does it look like from a training perspective, DJ? So there'll be some people in the gym that will be listening to this and they're going, right, well, I wanna go and sort of like to use some of this information. How do we, how can you go about sort of optimizing it in a safe and progressive way? Yeah, so you could try it right away by clenching your teeth. And if you wanna be a little more safe about it, you can get a mouthpiece. You'll see a lot of people use like performance mouthpieces, but studies have shown you can just get a cheap boil and bite mouthpiece. It's just about the clenching, which is you're getting the benefit, you know. Is there any issues if someone's bite is off? You know, like, I mean, I've fractured my cheekbone and I had a head injury, like my bite. When I'm in the dentist, the dentist goes, bite down, how does that feel? I'm like, it feels crap because my foot feels like, is there any issues around that compared to if someone's nicely aligned? Yeah, in the studies, the occlusion, so the two things that are affected is the amount of force you're using and the position of the bite. So yeah, if you have like malocclusion or your bite's off or bite under bite, you're gonna have less output in general in strength they've found. That one, but yeah, but as far as how do you fix that? People say like, jaw will affect the rest of your posture and your body, but also the posture of the body will affect your jaw. So there's kind of that. We don't know where the causal direction is, but you can go to, they have oral facial, like myofunctional dentistry and people who kind of deal with that kind of stuff with hardware and train the bite. There's the mewing crowd who talk about training with the tongue position. And you know, that's another cool thing with the band bite that we're seeing is because it's placed over the tongue, when you're pressing up against the mouth, we're pretty much doing loaded resisted mewing and you'll fatigue really quick and feel those muscles working. So it's a practical way. So you have the band, you have the tongue keeping the band up. Yeah. Right, I was just thinking about biting the tongue in there. And it's in the perfect spot. Nice. Yeah. So give us an example then, DJ, in terms of like exercises that I'm trying to visualize what this looks like in a practical day-to-day training session. Someone's gonna go in, I've got a normal strength training set. Give us some examples of what it might look like. Sure. Once again, something you could do right away. If you're doing something, I would classify as like internal torque, almost any bodybuilding movement. If you're benching dumbbells, just focus on clenching your teeth maximally. And once again, if you use a mouthpiece, probably a little safer, I'll put a towel in my mouth, do it just to give me some feedback to press against. But that's it, just clench maximally. Every set, clench, go, clench, go. Easy one right there. If you want to add, if you're doing like, sorry, go ahead. Okay, we used to have those, I would say boil and bite mouth guards. That's what we used to play rugby with back in the day. It used to be a five pounds, but not five pounds anymore, but you burn the roof of your mouth because you put it in too fast and you have to have to mold it for a bit. We'll just get one of those and just pop it in when you say, and this is a maximal strength type work. And would you do it for like lower intensity sessions as well? So you say you're doing more hypertrophy reps, you know, eight, 10 rep ranges, something like that, or would you, is it something that typically works better when you're going to go like one to five rep maxes? Yeah, so in the studies, it works well for maximum effort sets. So you also want to use maximum effort clenching. So they showed sub-maximal clenching will produce sub-maximal results, so. Okay, yeah, yeah. But we found that the anchoring the jaw, which is, it's about the bite, but it's more about the rest of the system. That for longer sets, for endurance work, I mean, go in like past 20 to 30 reps. We found that really beneficial using the band anchoring. Nice. Could you effectively? Yeah, a mouth guard. Could you effectively do the banded anchoring with any exercise, so long as you figure out a way to sort of have the band around your foot and creating some midline up tension up until the jaw? Like if, in theory, work on anything? We found it mostly for internal torque, sagittal plane movements, it was the best. So something like that extension, by saying like explosive ballistic movements, maybe not. It's hard to test because even on the pull-ups, if you bend your knees or create slack in the band, you're not gonna have the same effect. You have that stiff, straight body. So maybe, I don't know, maybe there's a device you can create and strap around the body that would create the same effect. That would be interesting. But I have a feeling just for the kind of flexion-based movements, it works the best. When we had the Cold Clay Summit, I'd heard this freight, or someone said this a while ago, that you could actually sort of potentially question, I'd say, all strength training literature historically because no strength training literature that we base a lot of our reps and sets around in our modern day training practices accounted for tongue position, and now we could probably throw into the mixed bite or jaw clenching. So the variance in the potential performance results of somebody biting down and somebody not biting down, potentially would be enough to cause enough variance to potentially suggest that strength training. Do you understand what I'm saying? Like the variation, the grip that biting can cause could actually sort of change the outcomes of the strength performance in that research study. Does that make sense? It's that significant, let's guess what we were saying. I would say it's been pretty well studied. There's a lot of literature on that, and they've seen improvement. One of the things that they haven't accounted for tongue position or for the jaw clenching. So all that studies where they've never really kind of included that as one of the parameters or one of the part of the methodology, you could potentially question the results of that literature review or that study because they haven't accommodated or accounted for this thing. As you said, as well studied and also now well proven. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see. I mean, just like, I mean, when you look at any study, you got to look at these are individuals, what's their level? Cause I would like to think that just, I mean, these things are going to emerge at high levels anyways. I think professional elite power lifters, they're doing something with their neck, face, tongue, and jaw, probably unknowingly, that's biased toward an optimal, more optimal way of doing things. I think it'll just emerge when you go to a certain level, but I think it's important to look at these patterns and say, hey, can we implement them to shorten the learning curve and give them to people so they can access more potential right away. What did you spend the rest of your time doing, DJ, in terms of what's your, I'm interested in the rest of the context of your work and your training and coaching endeavors, those sorts of things? Man, yeah, well, I live in the gym pretty much, but my interests, parenting, training people, some reading and eating and sleeping. When you talk about training and spending your time in the gym, who do you train? Are you in a specific area around power lifting or different sort of type of training within that? Yeah, so I guess, so most of my clients are online clients and these are a lot of trainers, a lot of, I guess, unconventional trainers, probably, but in my gym, I have very general pop clients with normal goals, which I love to keep myself grounded through that, because if it doesn't work with your average everyday person, might not be practical to use. So, yeah, that's pretty much the clientele. Awesome, perfect. Well, I think there's some really interesting stuff in there, Jaco, for people to go in. It seems like a relatively simple and quite effective tool for people to have a play around with, so I definitely think they'll be, I will definitely be thinking about giving this a go next time I'm stepping up to a heavy bar. Yeah, no, for sure. Is there anything to add then from that, like just a grip of the, or just a jaw, either clenching or opening around, you already mentioned that neck strength, and this was a way of actually initially coming, seeing it as a training neck strength, but I'm getting a better anchoring point of this, like, you know, how many people train neck strength? Should everyone train next thing? They'll have come from a rugby background where they do do some neck strengthening work as some positions really require that and the scrum and that type of stuff. It's never something I've really looked at, but probably personally quite interested in that when I had a head injury that was sort of ending my career, when there was like a whiplashing in that and a whiplashing effect and so like, probably would benefit, would have benefited back then and maybe would benefit now from some neck strengthening work. And I'm wondering about, is that something, you know, is that something actually everyone would benefit from having a stronger neck because they can hold that better posture that you were talking about? Does the spine feel more stable? Like, what's, what's sort, or is it just something you think is relevant for any a certain type of person, like a power lifter or something that's requiring that extra sort of support? Well, I think it's a part of our bodies and I like every part of it to be strong as possible. And speaking of whiplash, I mean, after whiplash, a lot of cervical strength goes down and there's a lot of fear avoidance in the neck especially. So I think if this is something that people can do in access without discomfort, then yeah, I think people will be amazed at how getting just the neck cervical region stronger kind of carries over to a lot more other things. And with that bite, anchor, and grip, just the angles, like if you do it with a cable or band, you could set up really nice resistance profiles doing it like that instead of just pulling down with a harness. But yeah, I think it's really important. Also like spinal training and movement, which a lot of people do from their hands, load it from their hands like a Jefferson curl or something, loading it from the top of the spine. Man, the experience you get in the load on the, once again, that mid-back cervical region, thoracic region, there's a lot of stimulus and adaptation and progressive load we could use there that I think has been left off the table for a while. So it is just, would you do something like a Jefferson curl rather than holding the weight, literally holding it in your mouth? Yeah, I would do both, mouth and hands. But the mouth definitely gives you more out of it and just kind of like a spinal waving thing while anchoring the head through the mouth is, man, it's a great experience. I've had like doms in my core, like I was doing direct ab work from just doing it with a cable. Yeah, it was interesting. And is it a lot of, is it a lot of like extension or like, what are you, is it just ever, are you trying to focus a bit of everything? What's, so when I'm loading up the head for like the spinal waves and I'm loading it up so it's pulling behind me and I'll try to keep my head fixed and anchored at one spot and move the spine around it almost like it's closed chain. And it's like, whoa, this is very new sensation but man, it lights up, you feel instant tension and contraction through the right muscles to move your body into these positions. Yeah, it's really good feedback. Awesome. Did you- I am playing with that. If people wanna get a bit of a feel for this sort of stuff they'd probably be able to see you in action. How could people go and find out more about you and get a flavor for the things that you've explained to us today? Yeah, you could head to, I guess my Instagram at Strong Camps. There's a link there, we have a link tree to a free webinar all about kind of what we've found with the bike training. There's also a course where you could kind of see all the ways we use it, template for how you could incorporate it into your training. So all that's there on the Instagram. Yeah, check it out guys and girls. Comes highly recommended. When one of your videos pops up on my feed it's always, I'm always excited to see what crazy things is he picking you up with his mouth. There's two Jack, I mean, always learning more about breathing, watching your stuff. Oh, I didn't even realize. All right, DJ, thanks so much for coming on and sharing some wisdom with us. We really appreciate it and yeah, we look forward to connecting again. Cool, thanks for having me on guys. Now Timbo, I don't know if this is another part of the disclaimer, but one, I'm fascinated, but two, I think I need to clean my resistance bands before I try to put one of those in my mouth. I'm not afraid of throwing the resistance band around a bit and maybe doing a bit on the grass and getting a bit muddy. Maybe that's also gonna be good for my immune system because I'm gonna get a few bugs in there and I'm gonna get, maybe there's another added bonus to it, but put clean stuff in your mouth people, that's what I'm saying. He said chains at one point, I was like, oh, crikey, this is levels to this. Interestingly though, you know me, my one year old, she must have cottoned on to this idea already because she regularly pulls the resistance bands out of my gym bag and puts them in her mouth and I'm like, stop it, they've been in the gym, they're dirty. And she's like, no, dad, train them to draw. So what are you doing? You know, I flexed the tensors up. You got a nice jaw, dad, does it come in men's? You got a good jaw anyway, you've already done that. And that is a thing actually, I need to be careful with this because I could have more like David Coulthard if I stop. You don't need any hypertrophy like Joe, like. He's just gonna look like a guy who can't take my shoulders. I've got some work to do, yeah, I've got some work to do for me. This is gonna be a new thing. Strong jaw, like jaw is bigger than, anyway. And yes, so, let's not get on this one. Interesting ones to go and play around with. And yeah, we hope you enjoyed it again, divergence in our conversations, bringing you some people doing some interesting things at the frontier of movement, strength and play. And yeah, be interested to see how this one resonates. So get in touch, if you've got any questions. As always, we like answering questions. I've got some people actually have asked questions, Jaco, I've got one to hit you with, which is actually a really good one. Are we doing it in this app travel? Are we gonna do it as a podcast? No, I'm teasing it. It's social proof, right? So if people think that other people are asking questions and they might also ask questions, and then that helps us with content. And we also quite like answering your questions. I look forward to you being question master then next time. Yeah, it's a good one. It's from our friend Wesley again. Wes, big up Wes. Yeah, you get a shout out when you put questions. Yeah, exactly. He gets his own podcast episode dedicated to his question. Right, thank you for listening. I hope you do have had a good week. And let us know again, if you would like to anything we to discuss on the strength and movement, strength and play podcast, get in touch, let us know, give us a five star review on your favorite listening platform. You can find everything that we do at schoolofcalisthenx.com. There's nothing else to say, apart from keep exploring your physical potential through movement, strength and play. Class dismissed.