Skin in the Game

Is bulking up your facial muscles the key to a smoother, tighter look? Krista Bennett DeMaio takes her complexion to the gym in the name of research.

When I walked into the nondescript studio space in New York City's NoHo neighborhood, I noticed it had all the trappings of a modern fitness facility: blaring up-tempo music, a gritty-glam vibe, and T-shirt-clad trainers roaming the floor. But this wasn't your typical gym; I was there to work out my face. "We have more than 40 muscles from the neck up, which support our skin's structure," says Inge Theron, who came up with the concept of FaceGym. "I was taking all of these fitness classes and had this eureka moment: Why aren't we doing the same for our faces?"

While this idea was new to me, hands-on, muscle-toning facials are exploding on the skin-care circuit. Celebrity aesthetician Ivan Pol has A-listers flocking to his studio for the $1,500 "Beauty Sandwich" facial, which combines a muscle-sculpting face treatment with different layers of radiofrequency that tighten. As lexamined my own skin in the mirror, I decided I was in the pre-sag phase: not totally lax, but in need of a little lift. And that's what brought me to FaceGym.

The Knead-to- Know Facial

My skin trainer met me at the front desk and escorted me to a seat at the barre (an exercise one, naturally). The treatment chairs are out in the open—no private, dimly lit spa-style rooms here. Face Gym treatments range in price from $65 to $300, depending on the workout and add-ons. Mine started with the warm-up (basically, a cleanse), then transitioned into cardio (vigorous facial massage) and toning—more massage but with tools, including a gua sha (a smooth instrument used to “scrape” the skin), electrical muscle stimulation (EMS), and a microneedling brightening roller. The last step was the cooldown: a cryotherapy massage with a chilled wand.