Yes, you can train your facial muscles, and research shows it produces measurable changes. In a Northwestern Medicine study, middle-aged women who did 30 minutes of facial exercises daily for 20 weeks saw their perceived age drop by nearly three years, with noticeably fuller cheeks. But facial muscles work differently from the muscles in your arms or legs, so the results, methods, and limitations look quite different from regular strength training.
How Facial Muscles Differ From Body Muscles
Most muscles in your body connect bone to bone. Facial muscles are unusual: they originate from bone or connective tissue but insert directly into your skin. That’s what allows you to smile, squint, and raise your eyebrows. It also means that when a facial muscle contracts or changes size, the effect shows up immediately on the surface of your face.
Structurally, facial muscles contain smaller bundles of loosely packed fibers with more connective tissue woven between them compared to limb muscles. Researchers have confirmed that facial exercises can increase the size of certain muscles, particularly in the cheeks. What’s still debated is whether this size increase represents true hypertrophy (the muscle fibers themselves getting larger) or a change in the muscle’s resting length that makes it sit differently under the skin. Either way, the visible effect is real: the muscle becomes firmer and fuller.
What the Evidence Shows
The most cited study on facial exercises comes from Northwestern University. Sixteen women between 40 and 65 did a structured program of 32 exercises targeting different parts of the face. For the first eight weeks, they exercised 30 minutes daily. From weeks nine through twenty, they switched to every other day. Dermatologists who rated photos without knowing when they were taken estimated the women looked about three years younger by the end of the program, with the biggest improvements in upper and lower cheek fullness.
A separate clinical trial on face yoga in middle-aged women found that the exercises increased muscle tone and stiffness in the cheek area while also improving elasticity. The researchers attributed this to isotonic and isometric movements that cause the muscle to contract against resistance, producing a strengthening effect similar to what you’d get from working out any other muscle. Pulling and resistance movements during face yoga appeared to create genuine muscle adaptation, not just temporary puffiness.
What Facial Training Can and Can’t Do
Facial exercises are best at building volume in areas where aging causes muscle and fat loss, particularly the cheeks and mid-face. As you age, you lose both facial fat and muscle mass, which contributes to sagging and a hollowed appearance. Exercises that target the cheek muscles can partially counteract this by plumping the area from underneath, similar in principle to what dermal fillers do from the outside.
What facial exercises cannot do is spot-reduce fat. If you’re hoping to slim a double chin or lose facial puffiness through targeted movements, the science is clear: spot reduction doesn’t work. A 2021 meta-analysis of 13 studies involving over 1,100 participants found that exercising a specific body part had no effect on fat deposits in that area. Fat loss happens systemically based on overall calorie balance and, to a significant degree, genetics. If your family tends to store or lose weight in the face first, you likely will too.
It’s also worth noting that training the jaw muscles (the masseters) heavily, as some people do with chewing devices to build a wider jawline, can backfire aesthetically. Masseter hypertrophy creates a square, bottom-heavy facial appearance. In cases where it develops unevenly, it causes visible jaw asymmetry. This is actually one of the most common complaints that brings people to specialists for treatment.
The Wrinkle Risk
The concern that repeatedly scrunching your face might create more wrinkles is not unfounded. Dynamic wrinkles, the kind caused by repeated muscle contractions, are exactly how crow’s feet and forehead lines form in the first place. Facial exercises that involve folding or creasing the skin may aggravate these lines over time.
The workaround, supported by a systematic review of facial exercise studies, is to focus on isometric exercises. These involve pressing or holding muscles against resistance without the repetitive skin folding. Think of pressing your fingers against your cheeks while trying to smile, rather than making exaggerated expressions. Most programs that showed positive results in research used primarily isometric movements, which strengthen muscles while minimizing skin creasing.
How Long It Takes to See Results
Expect to commit 20 to 30 minutes a day, six to seven days a week, to see changes. Most practitioners and the available evidence suggest early results become visible around three to four weeks. The Northwestern study showed modest improvements at eight weeks and more pronounced changes at twenty weeks, suggesting the benefits compound with longer practice.
Consistency matters more than intensity. In the Northwestern protocol, participants actually reduced their frequency from daily to every other day after the first eight weeks and still continued improving. But dropping the practice entirely means the muscles will gradually return to their previous state, just as any untrained muscle loses tone over time.
Medical Uses for Facial Muscle Training
Beyond aesthetics, facial muscle training has serious clinical applications. People recovering from facial nerve paralysis, such as Bell’s palsy, use structured neuromuscular retraining to restore symmetry and control. In a clinical trial comparing neuromuscular retraining to Botox injections for chronic facial nerve palsy, the exercise group improved their facial function scores by 24% compared to just 3% in the injection group. Participants also regained better control over involuntary muscle movements, where one part of the face twitches when you move another.
These medical programs are more intensive than cosmetic face yoga, typically involving guided sessions with biofeedback and mirror training over several months. But they demonstrate an important point: facial muscles respond to structured, progressive training in meaningful ways, both in size and in the brain’s ability to control them precisely.
How to Get Started Safely
A basic routine targets three areas: the cheeks (puffing, lifting against finger resistance), the area around the eyes (gentle squinting with resistance), and the forehead and brow (lifting against resistance). The key principles are to use resistance rather than repetitive scrunching, hold each contraction for several seconds, and avoid any movement that causes pain in the jaw joint.
If you have a history of jaw problems or TMJ dysfunction, be cautious with any exercises that involve wide opening, heavy clenching, or lateral jaw movements. Dizziness or nausea during any facial exercise is a signal to stop. For everyone else, the main risk is simply wasting time on an inconsistent routine that never reaches the threshold for visible change.