Stop worrying about your cheeks, they are supposed to be used in chewing. The "circular" motion you're talking about is how you're supposed to chew, try chewing straight up and down and you'll realize how critical that circular motion is in grinding up your food. You are honestly not going to hypertrophy your cheeks to any noticeable degree like Mike Mew says. Just look at someone like Matt Stonie for example

As a competitive eater he obviously isn't doing a perfect swallow, yet his cheeks are just fine. Hollow cheeks are more to do with increased surface area on your face and lower body fat percentage than buccinators. Mike Mew likes to point to the fact that babies have big cheeks, however, their cheeks are primarily fat, they have fat cheeks precisely so they don't suck in their cheeks too hard (since they lack teeth) not because they suck in their cheeks. As you grow older body fat distribution changes and your skull/face gets bigger, distributing/stretching fat and skin over a bigger surface area. Cheek muscles are there for a reason, they hold food in the mouth while the tongue moves it around. In addition without containers for water you would have to suck up water, because we have water bottles and cups you can let gravity do the job of the cheeks. If you were to suddenly paralyze the cheeks you wouldn't be able to chew anymore, that's how critical they are.

@sinned

You seem to raise a lot of good points. Also other people with large masseters I know were unlikely to emphasise perfect swallow all the time. For example Austin Dunham just chewed gum all the time. Brad Pitt also probably just chewed a lot of hard food and it happened. Masseter muscle is very strong one and prone to hypertrophy in certain circumstances. Buccinator muscles are relatively weak and small so hypertrophying them to an extent that it would give "chubby cheeks effect" is very unlikely. Is my reasoning right?

Also, while we're talking I would like to hear your opinion on the training protocol I'm currently using. I'm chewing for two days in a row using these Chisell chewables (95 kg of resistance) and then take one day break. Each training session consists of 3 sets divided by 1 minute breaks. Each set consists of:

 - 2 minutes of 1 second holds

 - period of rapid chewing without hold

 - 30 second hold

I overload my chewing training by increasing the number of rapid chews in the middle of the set. I started at 40 and then increased the number by 10 every training session. Currently I'm at 140. Each session takes about 10 minutes.

Do you think it's a good way to train? Or do I need more volume, concentrate on rapid chews only or some other modification? 10 minutes per day seems very short (this competitive eater probably had a lot more volume) but on the other hand sessions are pretty intense. What do you think? Thank you in advance!

@mewerchewer

There's no reason to do holds, just chew as you normally would. If you are consistent you will get results. Just make sure when you chew you maintain the bolus, this emulates chewing normal food. When you chew normal food you naturally grind it down by turning the food into a bolus, in addition, when chewing food you are trying to finish the food, so there's a goal in mind. My advice is to try emulate chewing normal food as much as possible, maintain the bolus, and chew like you're trying to "finish", in other words don't get comfortable and complacent if that makes sense. And just like chewing normal food do it every day, even if you don't do it for long, you can build up the strength/endurance over time, watch out for your TMJ and stop if it starts hurting the joint. Also I recommend chewing gum not chewables. Chewables don't emulate chewing, chewing gum is better because it's malleable and therefore more similar to an actual bolus of food in your mouth. In chewing your jaw doesn't just go straight up and down, it goes in a rotating motion called rotary chewing, at least in the phase of chewing where it goes into your molars. So it goes like this, you front teeth incise/cut up the food, then it goes to the back to get ground up, in this phase you use rotary chewing to help grind up the food. Without the rotating motion it's impossible to grind down food, the only thing up and down motion can do is cut and incise food, which is what animals like dogs and cats do, they cut and incise big chunks and just swallow. However, animals with cheek muscles like ourselves use the cheek and tongue to keep the bolus in our mouths so it can be ground up against the molars in a rotating fashion.

@sinned

Yeah I think I understand what you mean. Actually as I said in my first post I'm able to somewhat imitate it with this chewable. But wouldn't suplemental upand down chewing achieve the goal that is masseter strengthening and hypertrophy? I ask because it's the easiest way to use this chewable without breaking it. Of course chewing gum suplementally would be on my list as well. Actually I have a whole pack of mastic gum to use. The reason I'm a little afraid of chewing it is that I fear that one side will become dominant and bigger leading to assymetry. Even if I chew on each side for the same time it's difficult to say whether I provided the same resistance to each side. If I use chewables that are placed on each side at the same time I'm pretty sure I deliver similar resistance (although I still tend to feel more burn on my right side which concerns me).

The reason hold are included in this routine is I think the fact that their used to fatigue the muscle before and after rapid chewing period. 2 minutes of 1 second hold makes my muscles already feeling a little bit sore. Then period of rapid chewing is followed by 30 seconds hold which makes it really intense session. But would that lead to better hypertrophy / results? If I just chew gum or these chewables rapidly without using any holds then I can do this pretty much indefinitely and don't feel much soreness. Would concentrating on rapid holds only lead to better results even though I don't feel my muscle working / getting sore that much? In other words - should I concentrate on lower intensity and bigger volume or higher intensity and shorter sessions as I described in my last reply?

@mewerchewer

Just emulate chewing and use gum. If you chew mastiha correctly where you're always making sure you maintain the bolus instead of keeping it flattened (if that makes sense), trust me, that's more than enough, especially if you're chewing a thick piece. Also, in terms of intensity, volume, and frequency, I would recommend chewing everyday for 20-30 minutes, you can increase it to an hour, I wouldn't go more than 90-120 minutes (I think 60-90 minutes is more than enough), if you're chewing like you're trying to "finish", especially if it's mastiha, it will be difficult. You're goal is to make chewing "feel" easier if that makes sense, imagine at first you chew for 30 minutes making sure you're diligent with maintaining the bolus and not slowing down, it might feel difficult at first, but over time if you keep doing the same thing everyday it becomes easier and easier.

@sinned

So I've been chewing according to what you've said for some time and some additional questions pop in mind.

1) Maybe it's stupid but does it add more resistance if I chew more gum pieces at once?

2) Judging by what you said it's not beneficial to do "recovery breaks" between chewing session days and just chew everyday - am I right? Do you think this muscle recovers fast enough to warrant every day training?

3) Is just chewing 15-30 minutes daily using the technique you described providing enough progressive overload to warrant constant progress? In theory I don't overload by volume because I'm always chewing for the same set amount of time. If I always try to use full force when chewing make me use my muscle more and more intensively eventually leading to more growth? Even if it becomes "efortless" over time?

@mewerchewer

More pieces adds more resistance, although it isn't always a good idea to add more pieces since the bolus might get too big, you can experiment with it. The mastication muscles can work everyday, that's how they're designed. Eating and chewing is a frequent, everyday, activity. If 15-30 minutes is not enough or too easy than add more resistance or chew for longer.

@sinned

So I've been training with this new protocol for some time and I have a few observations and questions.

When I used the old protocol - pre-tiring muscle with 1 second holds, then a period of rapid chewing and lastly 30 second hold I used to be REALLY tired after each workout. It was very challenging every time and I increased the resistance by adding 10 rapid "chews" every session. Also I tended to have a massive "pump" with my masseters swollen after every workout.

When I switched to doing rapid chews only for a given period of time I was very tired and swollen only in the beginning. A few workouts in I didn't really feel any fatigue and felt like I could chew indefinitely. Moreover the pump was gone. I have a gut feeling that this very pump and fatigue might be indicators that my masseters were challenged enough and received suffifcent stimulus for growth.

What do you think about that? Do you think that subjective tiredness and pump might be correlated with growth or they're completely irrelevant and stem from the unnatural loading of the muscle through holds? I'm tempted to start using the old protocol again for this very reason and also because it's far easier and more straightforward to track and increase progressive overload.

Thank you in advance!

@mewerchewer

I'd say how fatigued the masseter is can be an indicator of how much you worked it,  as long as your consistent and you don't get complacent anything you do will probably work.