Cross-Training your Skin – Part 1: Professional Treatments

Power yoga, weight-lifting, pilates, dancing (champagne in-hand), swimming, stair-running, hiking, biking, boot camp, and cardio-ballet.

Common factor? Skintechie Sara has done 'em all. And more!

As you undoubtedly know, each of those exercises improves fitness and health levels (er, except perhaps the champagne) and helps hone our body's aesthetics.

One's not necessarily better than another. In fact, the body can realize improved benefits by performing different types of movement...such as weight training, stretching, and random cardiovascular activities.

Effective cross-training methods can provide extensive benefits throughout the body, as it literally won't know what's coming next, which can 'shock' it into fitness, and fast!

Doesn't it make sense that your skin, too, might reap cross-training benefits? After decades (cue buzzards) performing every manner of facials, peels and whatnots, I've come to believe in the power of changing things up.

Bottom Line: Your skin achieves faster and more complete complexion-clearing using cross-training principles.

So help your face get its butt kicked... in a good way! (if indeed, said face even has a butt).

The following skin workouts focus on professional, in-office treatments. Next week's article will reveal optimum at-home skin fitness boosters.

SKIN Cross-Training Drills:
#1

Treat your face (or upper chest & hands!) with a series of treatments completely different from your norm.

If you usually go for microdermabrasion, receive a series of medical strength glycolic peels. Retin-A peels. Or lactic acid peels for more sensitive skin.

If peels or enzymes are more your usual game, reverse direction and go after that series of microdermabrasion.

You won't believe how switching professional polishers adds 'zing' to your complexion!

#2

If your go-to monthly treatment alternates evenly between microdermabrasion and peels/enzymes, here's a hard-core SKIN workout for you:

Have both every session ! Yessiree. Only for the un-faint-at heart. First, have a physical polishing with diamond-tipped microdermabrasion, followed by a mild to hot-tamale peel. Hot, hot, hot! I affectionately refer to this one-two punch as the Hellfire and Brimstone Treatment. If you don't believe your skin is still shockable, try this approach. (Obviously, as long as your esthetician believes it would be safe and beneficial for you...)

#3

Receive a "motley-crew" series. This individualized skin boot-camp approach incorporates a high-tech hodgepodge of strategies, each different & unique, and you receive them as quickly as is prudent.

For example, one week it's a salicylic acid peel, the next session, a polishing enzyme followed by a hydrating lactic-acid peel. Next up, acid-free mincrodermabrasion. Then a Vitamin A peel. And finally, derma-planing and an alpha/beta hydroxy-acid combo-peel. Make sure and net a customized workout-plan designed just for your skin-fitness needs from your favorite skin care pro.

Switch-hitting, by utilizing a vast array of skin-beautifiers, provides bountiful benefits that are sure to leave you and your skin tickled-pink.

Regardless which training course you choose, have about 4–8 treatments for peak results.

After you've completed your cross-training sessions, reward your face with a well-deserved break. Allow skin plenty of time to recuperate from its recent onslaught before continuing 'amped up' routines like these. Skin cross-training is similar to exercising while injured or tired. NOT GOOD. Neither your body nor your skin wins when you push too hard. So nurture your fatigued face with plenty of rest (around a month) and gentle, soothing products. And then, when it least suspects it...DO IT AGAIN! Get the pattern? Be the stern (yet oh-so-lovable) drill sergeant of your own skin.

So with helmut on, forge ahead my friends, into the foremost skin secret of the planet's finest facialists.

Cross-Training!

SKINtechie