Wearing a mouth guard is always a good idea when practicing Jiu Jitsu. I wear a mouth guard regularly I was excited when Elite MMA asked me to review Shock Doctor’s Power Gel-Nano mouth guard.

The Power Gel-Nano is a heavy duty mouth guard with a high-quality look and feel. Looking at its packaging, one would get the impression that the Gel Nano is Shock Doctor’s “deluxe” item, like the nicest car released by by Honda or the most powerful laptop released by Apple.

Description

The mouth guard features a plastic frame encasing the gel mold material, which is the material surrounding the teeth while the mouth guard molds to your mouth. Both materials change shape when setting, but the design of the product ensures that your teeth don’t really touch the frame itself, only the inner gel mold. The mouth piece is designed to provide more insulating gel mold material than other mouth pieces.

Most quality mouth guards feature a frame for structural integrity, which often act a “skeleton”, giving the product form and structural integrity. A key difference in the design of Gel-Nano, however, is that its frame is bigger and more pronounced, surrounding the wearer’s teeth and gums at a deeper level than many other mouth guards.

For some wearers, this is bound to make the Gel-Nano feel larger then a typical mouth piece. There is a positive consequence to the large frame: it gives the wearer a more confident sense of protection. In fact, when I wear this mouth guard I have virtually no fear experiencing a mouth or tooth injury.

The Gel-Nano mouth guard also provides some indentations in the gel mold for the lower teeth, both for some front teeth and rear molars. Other mouth guards I wear regularly, including the Shock Doctor Gel-Max mouth guard (also available at Elite MMA), don’t feature dramatic indentations for the bottom teeth. These indentations in the Gel-Nano help the mouth piece feel more secure and protective, but it makes it harder to talk. Then again, no one wears mouth guards to give speeches or communicate effectively.

The Gel-Nano’s Trade-Off

While it is obvious the Gel-Nano mouth guard is meant to be an ultimate, premium mouth guard in terms of protection, you will likely trade some comfort for this protection. It does feel large –annoyingly so at times – but it’s something I mostly only notice when I’m not participating in a physical class activity.

Because of this the Gel-Nano is probably not going to be replacing my Gel-Max mouth guard when drilling grappling technique or rolling, but it is a very strong contender to replace it when I practice stand-up self defense and take-downs (I normally have my head gear and mouth guard case accessible in class). When we start doing activities which I feel warrant stronger protection I’ll grab the Gel-Nano. I’m slowly finding myself getting accustomed to the sense of protection it provides despite the size.

The protection does feel top notch. I couldn’t imagine fighting MMA (or sparring in Muay Thai or boxing) with anything else. I expect many professional MMA fighters have it on hand and use it regularly.

Pros
- Deep indentation in the gel mold surrounds more teeth and gums, providing greater protection.
- Deeper mold indents for lower rear molars add extra stability
- Feels well-made and of high quality
- Feels more protective and insulating than other mouth guards

Cons
- May feel large or uncomfortable to some people
- Related to above: for people with smaller mouths, the amount of gel mold in the mouth guard may also be excessive
- More difficult to mold to mouth.

Some Advice…

Although not related to a the review above, I did want to share a bit of advice: when you pick a up a mouth guard, make sure you follow its molding directions as accurately as you can. About 8 months ago I let mouth piece get too hot in the molding process: the result was a deformed mouth guard beyond salvation.