Muscle is one of the most underrated factors in aging. Not just in the body, but in the face. Here is what is actually happening, and what is worth doing about it.
1. What age does to muscle, and why it shows on your face
From around 35, the body starts losing muscle mass at a rate of roughly 1% per year. The face is not immune. Facial muscles atrophy just like any other; the fat pads shift, and the scaffolding softens. A lot of what we read as looking tired or less defined is not the skin at all. It is the architecture underneath, and no serum addresses that.
Lean muscle mass is also directly tied to the hormonal signaling that drives skin cell turnover, overnight repair, and collagen synthesis. More muscle supports the biological environment that keeps skin functioning well. It is not a vanity argument. It is a structural one.
2. Why strength training specifically, not just movement
Yoga and Pilates do real things. But they do not create the progressive overload that builds and maintains muscle mass. That requires resistance: lifting something heavy enough that the muscle is genuinely challenged and has to rebuild.
Two sessions a week alongside what you already do is enough. Resistance training maintains lean mass, supports bone density as estrogen declines, improves insulin sensitivity, and reduces the chronic inflammation that accelerates skin aging. The compounding effect over months is significant.
3. The Botox argument: why less is more
Botox temporarily paralyzes the muscles that create expression lines. Used at the right frequency, it is a useful tool. But treating every three months across large areas directly contradicts the muscle logic above.
Facial muscles need to move to maintain tone and mass. Chronic suppression contributes to atrophy. The softening some women notice after years of heavy treatment is not just skin. It is the underlying muscle losing its structure. Twice a year, specific areas, enough movement in between. Expressive, mobile faces hold their structure better over time. That is not an argument against injectables. It is an argument for a little more restraint.
How Skindays Can Help
On a personal note...
I have always moved. Pilates, yoga, walking, the general kinetic background noise of a life that has never been particularly still. I thought that counted. For a long time, it did, or at least I did not notice that it might not.
What I have been learning recently, partly from reading, conversations, and just paying closer attention to what is happening in my body, is that there is a difference between moving and building. Flexibility and strength are not the same thing.
So I started lifting. Not dramatically, I still do my Pilates, yoga... But I have added two (more like one for now!) sessions a week where the actual goal is resistance, progressive load, building something rather than just maintaining. And it feels different. Not immediate but more somehow directly in conversation with what my body actually needs at this stage.
I am also thinking differently about my face. I have been relatively conservative with injectables. Reading more about facial muscle health has given me the language for something I sensed but could not articulate: that movement is structural, that stillness has a cost, and that the goal is not a frozen version of a younger face but a strong, expressive, well-supported version of the one I actually have.
That feels like the right thing to be building toward :)
xx,
Diana