@article{ref1,
title="Effects of a custom bite-aligning mouth guard on performance in college football players",
journal="Journal of strength and conditioning research",
year="2015",
author="Drum, Scott N. and Swisher, Anna and Buchanan, Christina A. and Donath, Lars",
volume="30",
number="5",
pages="1409-1415",
abstract="Beside injury prevention, mouth guards can be also employed to improve physical performance. The effects of personalization of mouth guards have not been assessed yet. This three-armed randomized controlled cross over trial investigated the difference of wearing a) personalized or custom-made (CM, e.g. bite aligned),b) standard (BB, boil and bite) and c) no (CON) mouth guards on general fitness parameters in experienced collegiate American football players. A group of ten upperclassmen (age = 20.7 ± 0.8 yrs; body mass = 83 ± 7.4 kg; height = 179.1 ± 5.2 cm; body mass index = 25.9 ± 2.2 kg/cm), NCAA Division II football players with at least two years of playing experience was randomly assigned to the three mouth guard conditions: A randomized within-subjects repeated measures design was applied. All participants were randomly tested on strength and endurance performance (VO2max testing, with Bruce treadmill protocol including (1) time to fatigue, and (2) blood lactate concentration in mmol·L at stage 2 and (3) at peak fatigue; (4) flexibility; (5) reaction time; (6) squat vertical jump; (7) countermovement vertical jump; and (8) 1 repetition maximum bench press. Repeated-measures analysis of variance showed no significant differences between the three conditions for each outcome variable (0.23<p<0.94; 0.007<np<0.15). These data indicate that CM mouth guards did not superiorly affect general fitness parameters compared to BB and CON. In turn, protective BB or CM mouthpieces did not appear to impair general fitness performance vs. CON. The recommendation of a custom bite-aligning mouth guards for performance enhancement in young division II football players is questioned. Further studies with larger sample sizes, gender comparison, and (sport) discipline-specific performance testing are needed.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1064-8011",
doi="10.1519/JSC.0000000000001235",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000001235"
}