If you’ve already got a cupboard full of face massage tools and vibrating wands (for your face, thank you), and want to take things to the next level, it’s time to become acquainted with Facegym: the brand taking skin sculpting to serious new heights.
Since launching almost a decade ago, Facegym has filled a niche in the industry for results-driven tech and topicals that all work together to deliver supermodel-sharp facial contours without the help of invasive treatments.
From the cult Facegym Pro microcurrent tool to the brand’s impressive recent skincare launches, we’re breaking down everything you need to know about FaceGym here.
What is FaceGym?
FaceGym was founded by ex-Financial Times writer and spa and fitness columnist Inge Theron after she was left house-bound as she recovered from a facelift procedure. Channelling her three years of first-hand research and experience, Theron founded a brand new skincare concept: a non-invasive workout for your face, with none of the downtime and all of the results.
'Undertaking a two-year study in face massage and muscle stimulation, I traversed the globe and worked with amazing doctors, facialists and fitness experts from Paris to Mexico to create FaceGym. It began as a 30-minute signature workout for the face, consisting of warm up, cardio, sculpt and cool down, performed by trainers in the FaceGym studio and enhanced with powerful non-invasive machines to lift, sculpt and tone your facial muscles,' Theron tells ELLE.
As the name suggests, FaceGym touts itself as a fitness class for your face. It works on the premise that you should flex and tone the 40+ muscles in your face just as you do those in the rest of your body in order to achieve tighter, more lifted contours.
The bedrock of the brand is its signature facial ‘workouts’, which can be experienced at the brand’s nationwide outposts – including Selfridges in both Manchester and London. Essentially, you recline and relax, while a trainer puts your facial muscles to work.
What are the benefits of a FaceGym workout?
If the theory is to be believed, FaceGym's results are akin to that of an intense HIIT class, but for lifting and firming your face, rather than your bum.
'The practice of facial exercise has a long history, but it’s often news to people that over 40 muscles make up the scaffolding of the face. And just like the muscles in the body, the more you move them, the more lifted, tightened and toned they become,' Facegym tells ELLE.
'Facial muscle stimulation works to keep the muscles firm and skin tight but it also stimulates the most important protein for keeping the face looking young: collagen. Focusing on the health and strength of your facial muscles as part of your self-care routine will pay dividends when it comes to the appearance of key focus areas like the jawline, forehead and eye area.'
Facegym At Home: The Tools
If you can't make it to a Facegym salon – or want to keep your results going after that appointment – there's a whole range of at-home Facegym tools and techniques to delve into.
Inspired by traditional Gua Sha stones, the brand’s Multi Sculpt is ideal for aiding lymphatic drainage and teasing out tension from a chronically clenched jawline. Use it over a face oil, such as the brand’s squalane and almond Face Coach blend.
For skin-surface improvements, the brand’s Hyaluronic Roller offers a low-lift way to reap the renewing benefits of a microneedling session, with dissolving single-use needles that send a hyaluronic acid and peptide blend straight into the skin, negating the risk of infection associated with reusable rollers.
FaceGym Pro
Medi Lift
Faceshot Microneedling Pen
Hydrating Active Roller
But the star of the show is the FaceGym Pro: a next-gen sculpting tool that uses high-strength electrical muscle stimulation to reach a deeper level than most microcurrent devices. The two diamond-faceted probes slip around the face’s contours, sending an electrical pulse through the muscles and prompting them to tone up.
Simply apply the conductor gel (essential for carrying the current) all over your face, then use the device to lift and hold your muscles as the pulse runs through the probes, paying close attention to your brow and jaw bones.
Whale the results are immediately apparent – expect visibly lifted cheekbones and a chiselled jawline – they aren’t permanent. Just as you can’t attend the gym once and expect to see sculpted abs, you’ll need to be reaching for your tool consistently to maintain the lifting effects. But considering the whole face can be treated in just 10 minutes, it’s hardly heavy lifting.
Hydro-Bound Daily Serum
Multi-Sculpt
Skin Changer
Facegym at Home: The Techniques
If you don't have time to visit a FaceGym trainer for a hands-on session, it's time to get DIY with your facial exercises. Luckily, it's pretty simple.
'There are easy at-home exercises you can do,' says Theron. 'Some simple chin exercises performed in the morning and evening every day will help, but you have to be consistent with them. Do each of the following exercises 10 times:
Chin Press Up x 3
- Make a V with your hand and rest your chin in it.
- Pull your lips over your top teeth, hold for 5 seconds and repeat (do this 10 times).
- Move the hand to either side of the chin with the length of your fingers covering your ears, and make the sound 'eeeee' with your mouth x 10.
- Put your ring fingers inside your mouth on either side, pull the skin to the side and use your jaw muscles to bring the fingers back in to touch your teeth x 10.
Fish Pose
- Hold your collarbone with your hands on either side, and tilt your head back slowly till you feel a stretch.
- Start opening and closing your mouth like a fish making circles as if you were saying 'ouch'.
Corrugator Lift
- Take your index finger and place it on your corrugator muscle, right between your eyebrows.
- Next, raise your eyebrows up and down 10 times. Lift those brows up as far as they can go to deepen the workout and the stretch.
- Keep that index finger firm on the corrugator.
Eeeee
- Still holding your hands on your collarbone, look ahead and say 'eeeeeee' 10 times.
Cheek Burpees
- Place your right hand on the right side of your face. Lightly use your hand to pull the
cheek’s skin back. - Now, breathe out forcefully toward the left for ten reps. Try as hard
as you can to work against the stretch created from your hand. - Now bring your left hand to your left cheek and repeat the same exercise for ten reps.
The Thinker
- Make a fist and rest your chin on it, like you’re feeling the weight of the day.
- While you maintain the upward pressure from your fist, open your mouth against that pressure, and then close again. Keep opening and closing while maintaining the pressure from your fist.
- Do this 10 times. This exercise will burn, but it’s so worth it!
Hey Smiley
- Smile by pulling the corners of your mouth outward, don’t grimace, or crinkle your eyes.
- Imagine you are saying the letter 'E'. The rest of your face should be totally still.
- Keep holding this position. It may feel like you are doing very little but you are actually targeting exactly those small muscles around your mouth and working them to help avoid any sagging at the corners.
- Release for a few seconds and smile again.
- Stretch the mouth to the sides like two hooks were pulling them out. Hold for at least ten seconds, then release.
