With any action sport, it goes without saying that there will be injury. In the game of football, this can be a common occurrence. Often, an overlooked piece of safety gear is a mouthguard, even though it is built to protect one of your biggest assets – that big smile!
Our Test
We wanted to use real football players to test eight well known mouthguard brands to find out which provide the best durability and protection to avoid teeth and jaw injury.
A total of five different high school football players took part in our test, they all played different positions. After roughly 40 hours of gameplay and grueling testing, our football players came back with a list of the top three which they felt more than passed the test. Let us take a closer look.
‘6 of the 8 mouthguards we tested’
Finding Quality Through The Noise
As with any sports gear, it can be difficult to separate marketing hype from actual performance-enhancing qualities, mostly due to the large amount of money being spent on marketing each year.
In this day and age advertising makes it easy for any company to make many promises or claims which may or may not be true. We wanted the real thing and to take each mouthguard through the fire.
For the sake of fairness, we asked each participant to play a full game with one of the eight mouthguards at least once, with five players totaling nearly 40 hours of testing time. Additionally, we selected players from a wide variety of positions, each of whom had a unique set of abilities and demands on the mouthguards during the game.
According to our calculations, the games would have taken us 40 hours to play through, however for this review we only focused on actual playing time. Aside from comfort and performance, we asked each player to rate the guard on 10 essential review assessment categories, which included overall satisfaction.
Only one of the footballers we invited to do the test decided to return to the same mouthguard after testing was complete. After the testing, the vote was unanimous.
The SISU Aero Nextgen mouthguard, won the top position as the best mouthguard for football due to factors such as comfort, durability, shock absorption and overall mouth and teeth safety.
Mouthguards and Features Which Really Surprised Us
It can be hard knowing which solution will be best for your action sport of choice, so we wanted to include a few other mouthguards and features which really surprised us.
Known as a great ‘all rounder’, we wanted to mention ‘The Battle Oxygen Predator’ as a worthy mouthguard in football, or any high action sport, to help avoid any dental or cosmetic tooth damage.
In addition to protecting the lips when they are worn over them, their mouthguards have a large opening in the front of them that allows for a lot of air to come out of the front. A lot of people like to show off a little on the field with their battle mouthguards because they come in weird patterns and designs.
Oxygen and the ability to breath freely is the main feature of this mouthguard, and it was very well-liked by the people who tried it out. One of our football players commented: ‘This mouthguard made me breathe so much better. It really did feel like a guard that was made for you’.
The Battle Oxygen Predator Football Mouthguard is a great choice for football players because of the scuba breathing innovation above, which makes it easier to breathe and talk than most other mouthguards on the market.
Another great thing about this mouthguard is that it doesn’t need to be boiled, and the molding process is very simple.
You don’t have to do a lot of work to make this mould because it’s not a traditional boil and bite mouthguard. Instead, this would be called a one-size-fits-all mouthguard, which means that it will last a long time.
The Shock Doctor Max Airflow lip guard is still a great choice for a sports mouthguard, even though it didn’t make our “Top 2.” It provides comfort, a perfect fit, protection, and durability.
This mouthguard is good for a lot of different types of contact sports, as well as some fights, like MMA. It’s a very useful piece of protective gear.
Many of our players have said that this mouthguard didn’t make it hard for them to breathe during the game.
In Summary
Apart from the brands of mouthguards mentioned above, a few common themes exist when our players gave us their feedback. These were: comfort, the ability to breath easily and mouthguard durability.
Keep these factors in mind when selecting your next mouthguard to keep you safe during any action sport.