Jaw tension

Whenever I sing my jaw seems tense and it hurts a little after I'm done. How can I prevent this?

Try doing the jaw relaxing warmups. You can find them in the lesson 2 of beginner course.

Great suggestion, Zeeshan!

A good approach to reducing tension is to:

First pinpoint what is tensing! Then, either

(1) move those muscles to prevent them from tensing in the first place (i.e.: softening and mobilizing your jaw so it cannot clench, or slowly shaking your head “no” to prevent the neck muscles from “grabbing”) 

OR 

(2) remove those muscles from the equation (ie: preventing tongue tension by singing with the tongue totally relaxed, out of your mouth and resting on your bottom lip). 

The ultimate goal with all of the above is to let the correct muscles do their job without the "help" of those extrinsic muscles that are tensing.

I like to warm up by yawning to stretch my jaw. I do this several times to really stretching out my jaw and

opening up that entire area. Also when you sing, think of your jaw like a rubber band. Nice loose and stretchy when you sing. 

Great idea to routinely stretch out your jaw. We want the jaw to be soft and mobile to adjust as we sing!

If the pain you feel is at the top of the jaw near the ear, you might be prone to TMJ (Temporomandibular Joint) pain. I have a tendency to develop that - daily stretches (whether I'm singing or not) help a lot.

I do something like this:

https://www.healthline.com/health/tmj-exercises

Also when practicing I pay a lot of attention to leaving my jaw relaxed. More so than, say, gettting the right pitch - I can sing on the wrong pitch, I can't sing once TMJ pain flares up!

Great input. Thanks, Alice!