Over developed corrugator muscles - help!
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Sat Oct 02, 2010 8:11 am

Hi, this is my first time to post here. I only found this forum yesterday.

I have been doing Calore Maggio's Facercise for 2 years now and I have over developed my corrugator muscles!! They are so built up that they create a permanent frown/hollow between the brows, even when my face is completely relaxed.

I don't have any lines or wrinkles in this, I'm only 29.

I had an online private tuition with Carole last August, and have followed her advice since, but have seen no change in the corrugator muscles.

I have completely stopped all exercises that directly work the corrugators, (the eyebrow lift and eye opener).

I'm really desperate at this point, does anyone have any suggestion on how I can smooth out these muscles and return my smooth flat forehead?

free skin care · Sat Oct 02, 2010 3:15 pm

Since when have you noticed the overbuilding???
If it is very recent don't panic as stopping your exercises will eventually return the corrugator to its original shape and size.

If nothing else works, and I mean NOTHING... and I was totally desperate I would cosider Botox (only from a really good specialist knowing facial muscles really well) as it does not allow the muscles to move at all.
That should be a warranty to stop them from any movement and or contraction to speed up the atrophy and make them go back to their original size and form.

But hopefully you won't have to go that way if you have already stopped totally your exercise routine.

Sat Oct 02, 2010 5:19 pm

Hi Zenity,

I noticed the over building last summer and contacted Carole Maggio. She was very helpful, she suggested I place strips of tape on my forehead when going to bed to stop the muscles contracting during sleep. I have been doing that for a year now, but it hasn't really made a difference.

I have stopped all eye exercises, but I still do the other exercises, I wonder if those exercises still activate the corrugator muscles?

I do the facial exercises in the morning and leave the strips of tape on to help stop the corrugators moving.

I really don't want to have to go the Botox route if possible. I get that "freezing" the muscle should cause the muscle to atrophy and make them less prominent, but like you said you need a really good specialist.

free skin care · Sun Oct 03, 2010 11:00 am

Jared R wrote:

Hi Zenity,

I noticed the over building last summer and contacted Carole Maggio. She was very helpful, she suggested I place strips of tape on my forehead when going to bed to stop the muscles contracting during sleep. I have been doing that for a year now, but it hasn't really made a difference.

I have stopped all eye exercises, but I still do the other exercises, I wonder if those exercises still activate the corrugator muscles?

I do the facial exercises in the morning and leave the strips of tape on to help stop the corrugators moving.

I really don't want to have to go the Botox route if possible. I get that "freezing" the muscle should cause the muscle to atrophy and make them less prominent, but like you said you need a really good specialist.

Hi Jared,

Two thoughts:

(1) Are you still doing any forehead exercises? These will activate the corrugator muscles. It's probably a good idea to lay off the forehead exercises for a few weeks, if you are still doing them. (FWIW, when I do forehead exercises, I try to relax my corrugators while doing them and to initiate the movement from the very top of my forehead.)

(2) Do you engage your corrugator muscles during the day or store tension in them? If so, learning to relax them will help a lot, as will massaging the area.

I hope you figure out what is causing the problem! Best wishes Smile

free skin care · Sun Oct 03, 2010 11:35 am

Oh, and another thing, when you are doing Facercise, I'd suggest doing it in front of a mirror, as that way you can say if your corrugators are engaging when they shouldn't be. I find using a mirror super-helpful in making sure I get the best workout and am engaging the muscles I want to target. HTH Smile

free skin care · Sun Oct 03, 2010 5:48 pm

cm5597 wrote:

Jared R wrote:

Hi Zenity,

Hi Jared,

Two thoughts:

(1) Are you still doing any forehead exercises? These will activate the corrugator muscles. It's probably a good idea to lay off the forehead exercises for a few weeks, if you are still doing them. (FWIW, when I do forehead exercises, I try to relax my corrugators while doing them and to initiate the movement from the very top of my forehead.)

(2) Do you engage your corrugator muscles during the day or store tension in them? If so, learning to relax them will help a lot, as will massaging the area.

CM, I was wondering how you initiate the movement from the very top of the forehead? Would you mind explaining it? Thanks

free skin care · Sun Oct 03, 2010 6:38 pm

skincarefreak wrote:

cm5597 wrote:

Jared R wrote:

Hi Zenity,

Hi Jared,

Two thoughts:

(1) Are you still doing any forehead exercises? These will activate the corrugator muscles. It's probably a good idea to lay off the forehead exercises for a few weeks, if you are still doing them. (FWIW, when I do forehead exercises, I try to relax my corrugators while doing them and to initiate the movement from the very top of my forehead.)

(2) Do you engage your corrugator muscles during the day or store tension in them? If so, learning to relax them will help a lot, as will massaging the area.

CM, I was wondering how you initiate the movement from the very top of the forehead? Would you mind explaining it? Thanks

Hi Skincarefreak Smile

What I try to do when I do my forehead exercises is to really get my forehead muscle to do the work, while my corrugators relax. I found this very hard to do initially, but over time, I got it to work, so that my corrugators are about as relaxed as possible when exercising my forehead.

What I do is three-fold:

(1) I visualize and try to relax my corrugators as much as possible (though they will always engage a bit, so it's impossible to perfectly relax them).

(2) I put the resistance on the middle to upper part of my forehead. My favorite finger placement is about roughly 1 inch below my hairline (for reference, I have a longer forehead), so quite far away from my corrugators. So that is where I apply the resistance. (In the FlexEffect program, the equivalent would be not to run your fingers all the way down to the bottom of your forehead when doing their forehead exercise.)

(3) I focus on feeling the muscle working directly under and above my fingers (where I've placed the resistance). That is, I focus on getting the portion of my forehead muscle between my finger tips and my hairline to 'carry' a majority of the resistance.

When I do this, I find that the movement that one makes is much smaller than if one is strongly engaging the corrugators, so there is not a lot of movement. But you should feel it more strongly in your mid to upper forehead.

I find this gives me a more balanced forehead look, with less build in the corrugators (mine are strong, too).

I hope this helps! Smile

free skin care · Sun Oct 03, 2010 9:01 pm

I went through a bumpy corrugator stage. I found that if I opened my eyes to the maximum, with only a very small move of the eyebrows upwards -not moving the forehead really, but the eyebrows move up slightly as I opened my eyes, and then smoothing strongly in horizontal way with each hand (fingers or palms) over my eyebrows helped a lot. It took a couple of weeks to start to release the tension but it finally came. In fact I got a liking to this movement and do it every day! It is keeping the frown lines out of the way! And I seem to be noticing it even helps with horizontal brow lines when I use my whole palm over the whole forehead in this motion. Just my experience.

Mon Oct 04, 2010 11:12 am

Hi CM,

No I have stopped all forehead/corrugator exercises. I just do them for the rest of the face. And I do consciously relax the corrugators during the day if I feel them tensing or frowning. I also wear sunglasses when driving or walking out in the sun to prevent frowning.

ATester,

I have always done the Facercise exercises in front of a mirror. I feel the visualization that is recommended helps, but I think actually been able to see my face helped me to engage the correct muscles.

As a side note, I started doing the Tanaka massage yesterday and hope this will help. Does anyone know if I need to do more massage on the forehead/corrugators? And how often could I massage and smooth them out daily without casing them to tense even further...if that makes sense?

free skin care · Mon Oct 04, 2010 2:57 pm

I agree with most of the comments here.
Really you have to make sure you don't engage the corrugators while exercising other muscles. If you hesitate don't do it until you master the technique properly.

Another tip for you: re-educate your facial posture in your every day.

As this may sound weird let me explain that most of our faces are not fully relaxed when we think they are, unless, you consciously make an effort to fully relax, and in that case your look could not be the best.

Holding your face in a certain way will improve in time your corrugator issue.

This is how is done: engage the outer (external) part of your frontalis as you do when you lift only one brow but with both. Don't do it to its maximum, just enough to pull apart the corrugator making sure you focus on the upper part of your temple. At the pic below you will see in green the area you need to focus on.

If you know how to contract your occipitalis do it at the same time as that is not visible but very noticeable an it will work in synergy with the frontalis external contraction enhancing and supporting. That will open up your face and at the same time won't allow your corrugator to contract. If you practise this for a while your face will eventually get used to it and it will adapt it as a "repositioning" of your facial-posture.

free skin care · Mon Oct 04, 2010 3:01 pm

And BTW have you checked the safetox thread???

This could be effective in your case:

http://www.essentialdayspa.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=29913&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=0

free skin care · Mon Oct 04, 2010 5:19 pm

Hi Jared,
It was cm5597 that suggested the mirror, not me.
I've suggested other things.

Tue Oct 05, 2010 7:06 am

Hi ATester,

Sorry for the confusion. I have only started to massage the forehead/corrugators since Sunday, so probably to soon to notice a difference.

Zenity,

Thank you so much for all the advice!! I have very good control of the occipitalis muscles, so when I tried you suggestion I could feel it immediately. Hopefully it will help.

I also had a look at the Safetox. It looks interesting and I would love to try it out, but it's a little out of my price range at the moment. Do you need to keep replacing the pads after every use like with the Slendertone facial exerciser?

Could you tell me where that diagram is from? I love finding out what movements target specific muscles Smile

free skin care · Tue Oct 05, 2010 2:55 pm

If you can already contract the occip. while elevating the external part of your brows you don't need to use the safetox. Safetox is precisely recommended to activate the occip. while inhibiting the opposite muscles: frontalis, corrug. and pyramidal procerus.

http://www.safetoxbeauty.com/en/anti-wrinkles/the-facial-muscles-2.html

Really, I had it for a while and didn't use it cause I didn't find it as useful as contracting muscles by myself. Just recently I've changed the electrode fromm safetox to another one from cefaly (bigger) and I am enjoying it.
And yes you need to replace electrodes after few uses, even though some users can keep them working longer by using a conductive adhesive gel.

The site where I got the diagram for you is called "artnatomy": http://www.artnatomia.net/uk/artnatomiaIng.html

Go an have fun playing with the model you will learn more for sure.

I've recently posted few links of a very useful soft at FE forums. If you really want to learn more maybe those can help you a bit:

http://flexeffect.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=4742

And another tip for you regarding massage.(I am trying it right now so I can't really recommend it based on results, but liking it so far. Just keep in mind that it has to be performed with some type of oil in your face, like olive, jojoba or any other to rub your skin intensely:

Vertical frown lines between eye brows: Place palms together (as if praying) with index fingers up against the lines. Then alternately move fingers up and down quite fast many times while pressing on lines using hand palms as a guide. They will quickly diminish. particularly if you do repeatedly throughout the day

Extract from: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AoinUNweYJsKShlF_GoGEOrty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20100530075846AAMBYna&show=7#profile-info-9t7E7Mdaaa

I hope you can sort out your problem soon.

Good luck!

Quote:

Zenity,

Thank you so much for all the advice!! I have very good control of the occipitalis muscles, so when I tried you suggestion I could feel it immediately. Hopefully it will help.

I also had a look at the Safetox. It looks interesting and I would love to try it out, but it's a little out of my price range at the moment. Do you need to keep replacing the pads after every use like with the Slendertone facial exerciser?

Could you tell me where that diagram is from? I love finding out what movements target specific muscles Smile

free skin care · Wed Oct 06, 2010 1:12 pm

Zenity, marvellous posts!! Very Happy

And yes, very important to use some kind of slip on the skin while doing these rubbing massages... I was overzealous on my forehead once with nothing and ended up with an erosion on the right side of my brow, Mad

.

, sooooo, one has to be careful to not go over the top.
About facial posture, it's funny, I remember I 'thought' I was contracting my occipitalis once and all I was doing was pulling back my upper cheeks it a kind of half smile -contracting my eyes by the way, crows feet appearing, etc... until I realized although I was feeling the ears move back slightly the occipitalis was quite still!!! I've luckily gone over that stage now, but it has taken me quite a while to get the knack of the occipitalis!! Rolling Eyes

free skin care · Wed Oct 06, 2010 3:36 pm

Hi Jared,

Just to add, if none of the advice here ends up solving your problem (incl. the advice re: massage and posture), you might want to either stop doing all exercises for a while and/or seek another experts' help. Best wishes Smile

free skin care · Wed Oct 06, 2010 5:26 pm

Thanks CM! I will try it and let you know. Thanks!

free skin care · Fri Oct 08, 2010 6:34 am

Atester.

LOL! Iknow what you mean, I've been there too...

Curious what you mention about the occip and the auricularis as the technique I've mentioned above can be done using only the upper auricularis and/or the posterior one without engaging the occip. But auricularis are not popular muscles and I only know few people who can engage them at will... That's why using the occip its easier for most, and auricularis are auxiliar muscles for occip. Meaning that mostly they will engage when contracting Occip (unless you know how to isolate them).

Also sup. auricularis can work in synergy with the external frontalis too.

I hope I make sense....

ATester wrote:

Zenity, marvellous posts!! Very Happy

And yes, very important to use some kind of slip on the skin while doing these rubbing massages... I was overzealous on my forehead once with nothing and ended up with an erosion on the right side of my brow, Mad

.

, sooooo, one has to be careful to not go over the top.
About facial posture, it's funny, I remember I 'thought' I was contracting my occipitalis once and all I was doing was pulling back my upper cheeks it a kind of half smile -contracting my eyes by the way, crows feet appearing, etc... until I realized although I was feeling the ears move back slightly the occipitalis was quite still!!! I've luckily gone over that stage now, but it has taken me quite a while to get the knack of the occipitalis!! Rolling Eyes

Sat Oct 09, 2010 2:36 am

Thanks for that link, it really helps to see what expressions each muscle is responsible for. So interesting!

Thanks cm557, I will definitely give all the advice my best, but I will also continue searching for more information until I get the result I'm after.

free skin care · Sat Oct 09, 2010 1:06 pm

Jared, yes keep us posted on how you solve this. I am sure your experience can help others too.
Best wishes Smile

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