facial exercises for a beginner
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free skin care · Sat Oct 29, 2011 11:05 am

flick24 your belief that repeated facial expressions can cause permanent lines isn't farfetched. It is true, especially as we age and lose elasticity and collagen in our skin. I mean, when we make facial expressions like smiling or frowning, we do, in a way, exercise certain muscles of the face, and hence laugh lines and frown lines form from this respectively. Which would lead one to rationally conclude that any exercising of face muscles will lead to wrinkles since we do it all the time and wrinkles still occur. The creases we make become almost ironed in and add to the wrinkles we get from other effects like UV rays and gravity's pull that causes sag. For a lot of people, the only way to stop this from happening is to get Botox and stop all movement of the face. No movement means no creasing which means smooth skin, right? But paralysis by Botox also means loss of facial expression and muscle atrophy because if you don't use them (muscles) you lose them. And whenever the Botox wears out, the state of the skin is usually worse than before because those muscles have had no exercise and gravity didn't take a break from pulling on them.

Sounds like a lost cause, either way, doesn't it? I mean, you exercise your face by making expressions and being normal, you get wrinkles. You don't move your face, you appear dead and still get wrinkles, not to mention how expensive this second method is in the long run.

So what's one to do besides going under the knife? Enter the world of face exercises. What makes a good face exercise program different and defiant of the rule that "exercising the face will cause more lines" is that it is designed so as to engage muscles of the face that we rarely use and exercise these dormant ones for a change. If you look at the anatomy of the face, you'll see muscles lie in so many different directions and they are connected to each other and to the skin, not to mention some are underneath others...Just a whole lotta confusion going on there.

So tone in one muscle causes it to exert a strong force on any muscles attached to it. That pull can also cause an accordion effect on another muscle that is nearby which isn't as toned or on the skin that is indirectly affected by this difference in tone. What face exercises try to do is try to improve tone in all the muscles so that there's an opening up of the creases due to a firmer pull on related muscles and a smoothing out of the wrinkles as the muscles underneath firm up and push up as the ones that are rarely used finally get some tone and pull on those that are used regularly. That's a simplistic way of explaining it but it's as far as my little brain cares to go and it makes sense to me as I have observed changes in myself and others that seem to confirm this.

It is helpful to understand what happens to skin as we age. Dr Pickart has a great article on that on this page: http://www.reverseskinaging.com/biology1.html

This brings me to the other positive effect of face exercises: they do help with improving skin elasticity and collagen according to the following articles: http://www.carolynsfacialfitness.com/as-you-exercise-the-face-how-does-it-improve-over-time

I do agree with Sean that Tom's workout is a great one to start with but I don't think it's just good for young people; there was a discussion just the other day on SkinBio where a 70-year old shared how helpful Tom's program has been to her. And it has kept Tom looking great for his age, so give it a shot. The bonus is it's FREE! (There's a CD you can buy of the workout but I do think you can make do with just the website. I have friends who only use that.) Please read the whole website before you start as he gives a lot of good info and I think proper form is very important with any workout so please pay attention to the details he gives for each exercise (www.shapeyourface.com). I have friends who do the it and love it. Initially you may not be able to do the workout as well as Tom does but persistence pays off, and as your face gets stronger, you'll get better at the exercises. Tom has a forum too where you can get suggestions and helps from others and Tom himself, who's a great guy BTW, if you have any problems.

free skin care · Sat Oct 29, 2011 6:52 pm

flick24 wrote:

Thanks Nonie those links were really informative, I had never really thought about the botox affect as its not something I have considered it sounds like a vicious cycle that once you start its hard to stop, I'm definantly gonna start a facial exercise regime although when I look at the before/after pics I can't really see much difference between them just looks like different poses/expressions although I'm probably not comparing as well as they are themselves, it may be quite subtle, I have ordered some collagen supplements so hopefully they will help as well

flick24, I do agree it's hard sometimes to really discern changes in people that do face exercises, so perhaps instead of looking at the changes, you can look at the final results rather than where the people started from. Echoecho made a point which I thought was very good: that people who do face exercises generally look good. Maybe not "perfect" but definitely good enough to be happy with their faces.

I don't claim to take great pics but I took the following photos for my own benefit and to get guidance from my face exercise instructor, Carolyn, so I did try to take them as clearly as I could. I had taken a hiatus from face exercising for several months to a year and not only did my skin not look that great, I had pronounced N/L lines when I smiled by January 2007. In the course of a few months of doing a good program, my N/L gradually diminshed by becoming shallow and the double parenthesis also became less obvious and eventually disappeared. (The 3 photos on top were taken in January 2007 and the 3 below those were taken in March 2007, three months into the program:

8 months in, August 2007, my N/L lines were where I wanted them and I was very happy with my face:

January 2009, about 2 years since I started the program I'm on, I couldn't have been happier:

Here's another random photo taken in June 2008 that I think shows the improvement in my N/L lines when compared with the January 2007 image:

I believe most people who take before/after photos do so not to fool others but to share exciting "news". So even if the change may not be obvious, I can tell you from my own experience, it is usually remarkable and pleasing enough for them to want to share. But as I've said before, the proof is in the pudding. We would not be singing praises of face exercises if they didn't work so well. I personally don't use any other anti-aging products like retinols, glycolics, CPs etc and at 40-something, I can honestly say face exercises have helped me keep up with those who do.

Thanks Dickymoe. I'm glad you were able to make sense of that ramble in spite of the typos. Funny how one tends to notice them only after the window for editing has expired. *groan*

free skin care · Wed Jan 11, 2012 3:34 am

HippoMe you're completely right here - apologies. Sometimes in my haste to get things down and responses to messages my grammar and English do seem to take a vacation, but I'll take on board this and slow down. Might mean some people have to wait a little while longer for responses but its much better to have correct english than ones that can be misunderstood!

HippoMe wrote:

SeanySeanUK wrote:

"If your young, that may be all you need".

On an entirely different topic

... use of the apostrophe - http://apostrophe.org.uk/

'Special care must be taken over the use of your and you're as they sound the same but are used quite differently:

your is possessive as in this is your pen

you're is short for you are as in you're coming over to my house.

Therefore, the "your" in SeanySeanUK's sentence above should be "you're".

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