High, expressive cheekbones are a current trend in the beauty industry. Plastic surgeons offer implants and lipofilling, cosmetologists pump up cheekbones with fillers, and makeup artists accent them with highlighter and concealer. Fans of face-building also have their own recipe, preferring to work on facial contours with the help of facial gymnastics. Let’s figure out whether it’s possible to pump up the cheekbones on your face and how to do it as effectively as possible.
photo from barbuora.blogas.lt
Upgrading cheekbones: how and most importantly – why?
The terrible force called beauty never ceases to amaze us with new standards. It would seem, why change the proportions of the face intended by nature? Psychological studies have shown that when looking at portrait photographs, both women and men find people with well-defined facial contours more attractive. Therefore, the question of how to pump up the cheekbones on the face is relevant for representatives of both sexes.
Doing the following set of exercises daily will help you get a clear outline:
- Extend your lips with a tube and fix this position by pressing the skin in the corners of your mouth with the pads of your middle and index fingers. Try to smile, overcoming the resistance of your fingers and stay in this smile for 10 seconds. Feel how the muscle fibers of the upper cheekbones work. Relax and do 3 sets of 10-15 repetitions.
- Smile as wide as possible, opening your mouth and stretching the corners of your lips as wide as possible. At the same time, strain your eyes, trying to move them forward. Stay in this tension for 10 seconds, feeling how all facial muscles tense. Relax and do 3 sets of 10 reps.
photo from the site nevseoboi.com.ua
- Extend your mouth into an oval, lowering and pushing your lower jaw forward. At the same time, hold out the sound “O” for 5-8 seconds. Say “X”, stretching your lips as far as possible and raising the corners of your mouth. Hold for 5-8 seconds. Do 3 sets of 10 repetitions, alternating “O-X”.
- Try to fold your lips into a bow, making a “fish”. Hold the tension for 10 seconds and perform 10-15 repetitions. This exercise is not recommended for women who have purse-string wrinkles around the mouth. It will, of course, help pump up the cheekbones of the face, but it will increase the formation of skin creases.
- Puff out your cheeks as much as possible. Using the thumb and index finger of your left hand, squeeze your lips together to prevent them from opening prematurely. Place the thumb of your right hand on your right cheek, and the rest on your left. Press down on your cheeks without letting out the air. This exercise puts a lot of stress on the muscles, so limit yourself to 5 repetitions for the first time, gradually increasing the number to 15.
- Pull your closed lips forward, as if for a kiss. Stay in this position for 5 seconds. Move your lips to the right, then to the left, pausing for 5 seconds in each position. Perform 3 sets of 10 repetitions.
photo from www.hipwee.com
Subconscious attraction
The fact that high cheekbones are sexually attractive has a completely logical explanation. Children's roundness of the cheeks with the onset of puberty is replaced by the growth of facial bones. The emerging relief signals the opposite sex about readiness for procreation.
Before performing exercises, be sure to remove your makeup, as blood flow to the muscles will warm up the skin and open the pores, and all impurities will penetrate deeper. Don't forget to lubricate your face with moisturizer to make the epidermis more elastic and prevent the formation of wrinkles.
Tips from Evgenia Baglyk: how to pump up the cheekbones on a girl’s face
One of the most popular face-building systems is the complex developed by the charming girl Evgenia. Despite her rather young age, she took a responsible approach to developing exercises, having studied the anatomy and innervation of the facial muscles. Before class, be sure to wash your hands and cleanse your face. To make your cheekbones firm and textured, spend time doing this workout every day:
- Knead your face by rolling air from one cheek to the other. Try to stretch your cheek as much as possible, drawing in more air and repeat 10 times for each side.
- Continue warming up, alternately puffing out the skin above and below the lower lip. The number of repetitions is the same.
- Roll the air in your mouth in a circle, consistently blowing out your right cheek, lower lip, left cheek and upper lip. Do 10 of these circular rolls.
- Press your tongue against either cheek with maximum force. Make circular movements with your tongue, consistently stretching the cheeks and the area above and below the lower lip. 10 repetitions of this exercise complete the warm-up.
photo from www.theblaze.com
- Open your mouth, lowering your lower jaw and slightly pushing the corners of your lips forward to form a regular, even oval. Place your index fingers behind your cheeks, at the level of your lower teeth. Using your cheeks, push your fingers inward 25-30 times.
- The position of the mouth is the same, and the fingers move under the upper lip and are located at an angle of 45⁰ to it, towards the temples. Use your upper lip to push your fingers inward 25-30 times.
- Place your fingertips in a vertical line from the upper lip along the nose to the eyes. Press the skin and try to raise your upper lip, as if baring your teeth. This exercise tightens the cheek muscles located along the nose to accentuate the beginning of the zygomatic tubercles.
- The next exercise is one of the most technically difficult, since it uses the zygomatic muscles, which usually do little work. But if the task is how to pump up a girl’s cheekbones, it is imperative to do it. Draw your mouth into an oval, as described above. Wrap your upper lip around your teeth and press the skin above your upper lip and in the area of the nasolabial fold with your fingertips. Work your zygomatic muscles, trying to pull your lower eyelid up, as if squinting. Do 25-30 reps.
After completing the complex, a feeling of muscle fatigue remains, as after an active workout or massage. You will feel warmth, perhaps even redness in your face, this is normal, because muscle work causes blood flow. Increased blood circulation promotes the delivery of nutrients to the skin, so face building not only solves the problem of how to pump up cheekbones on the face, but also slows down the aging process.
Below is a video in which Evgenia Bagly shows the practical aspects of performing the exercises. Pay attention to the audience in the studio when the camera takes a close-up of them - this is a clear demonstration of how not to do the exercises.
So what about testosterone?
Women are often underestimated, and women themselves do not believe that they can develop the same physical potential as men. In one famous experiment, test subjects increased their strength by 321% simply because they took placebos passed off as steroids. True, the subjects were already quite advanced athletes, whose working weight on the bench press and squat already exceeded 137 kg. Moreover, they believed that they were taking approximately 70 mg of dianabol per week. When actually taking this amount of dianabol, advanced athletes may only experience an increase in strength of a few percent.
Well, how do you think women react when they are told that they have 15 times less testosterone in their blood? In sports, particularly at the elite level, there are generally more men, which means the chances that a man will reach the top are much higher.
Elite male athletes are most likely the finest male representatives of the human race, physically. There may be many more potential record holders and champions among women, but they are unaware of their potential because they have never even tried to start playing sports.
What about testosterone? At the individual level, higher testosterone levels mean better muscle mass. There is no doubt about it. But if we compare between men and women, the dependence of muscle development on testosterone levels becomes less clear.
The following conclusions were drawn from observations of elite athletes: “Differences in lean body mass between men and women are sufficient to be considered as a factor in the development of strength and aerobic endurance differently between the sexes, and there is no need to hypothesize the influence testosterone content on the development of sports performance.”
As explained in the BioSignature article, testosterone affects men and women differently. Using the example of wildlife, you can clearly see why testosterone is not necessary for muscle development in women.
IGF-1 and growth hormone “take” the place of testosterone. And since women contain the same amount of IGF-1 as men, and produce three times more growth hormone, it becomes clear that lower testosterone does not limit the ability of a woman’s muscles to hypertrophy. In the female body, these growth hormones are much more important for the development of strength and muscle hypertrophy than in men.
We can go further: sex hormones and growth factors interact with each other and with genes. In short, it is incorrect to say that a woman cannot build muscle as well as a man because she has lower testosterone levels.
Severe male cheekbones: how to pump up without girlish problems
Frankly speaking, few guys are able to understand all the intricacies of facebuilding, mastering the technique and correct placement of fingers. And not everyone will agree to put their fingers in their mouth. Therefore, before pumping up the cheekbones on his face, a man should remember the following set of exercises:
- Lower your lower jaw as low as possible and push it forward. With that Neanderthal expression, freeze for 10-15 seconds, relax and repeat 20 times. In this exercise, the zygomatic and hyoid muscles work simultaneously, so that at the same time the double chin, if any, will be tightened.
- Play with your nodules. The manner of clenching your jaw tightly when you are angry can be useful for developing strong-willed facial sculpture. In order to specifically load the desired bundles of muscle fibers, make their work heavier by placing your fingers under the outer edge of the cheekbones. Feel the muscles working under your fingers.
photo from the site kino-kingdom.com
- Blow up balloons. If you have children, great, start a tradition of playing balloon popping with your bellies, butts, or backs every night. An excellent practice would be to inflate all sorts of rubber flotation devices. If there are no children, there is a reason to throw a themed party with rooms filled with balloons.
- Chewing gum. A great way to strengthen the chewing muscles so that the middle part of the cheek is tightened, thus focusing attention on the cheekbones. If as a child you loved stuffing your mouth with chewing gum to an absurd size, it’s time to remember this habit - the larger the chewed lump, the better.
Don't forget about the bubbles!
Yes, blowing huge bubbles from chewing gum is also extremely useful. So men's facebuilding is not only harsh, but also quite a fun thing, solving the problem of how to pump up a man's cheekbones.
photo from the site ogrencikariyeri.com
If you are inspired, you can also master traditional fesbuilding systems. Perform exercises only in front of a mirror, and for the first few times it is better to follow a video lesson to control the technique.
Why women don't reach their potential
So, having chipped away a little granite of knowledge from scientific sources, we found out that the potential for gaining muscle mass in women is not inferior to that of men. So why do we so rarely see muscular women in the gym?
- There are few women in sports. Even at the level of participation in the Olympics, there are fewer women participants. Even scientific research involves 50% more men.
- Even if a woman goes to the gym, most of them don't go further than a treadmill or pink dumbbells.
- Different expectations. If a man presses a lot, this is perceived as a form of social dominance; he is praised and proud of him. If a woman presses her breasts a lot, then this is perceived as something abnormal, as a refusal to be a “real woman.” Often girls literally resist the idea of increasing their training weight precisely because of social pressure.
It's time to stop treating women like “physically underdeveloped men.” Women have the same relative potential for developing muscle mass and strength as men. Whether they want to implement it (and whether they use steroids for active development) is another matter. If they want, then they need to understand that they are not men, they are different, and they need to train according to their strength.
Translated by Olga Reinholdt, fitness trainer and consultant, author of the “Fitness for Adults” project.
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