How to Strengthen Eyelid Muscles With Exercises

Eyelid muscles can be worked through targeted movements like deliberate blinking, gentle squeezing, and lid-lifting drills, but the honest picture is more complicated than most exercise guides let on. The eyelid relies on a pair of small, specialized muscles that do not respond to training the way a bicep does, and the clinical evidence for “eyelid workouts” is thin. That said, there are real findings from facial exercise research and rehabilitation medicine that offer practical guidance, along with some important safety warnings that rarely make it into the blog posts promoting these routines.

The Two Muscles That Move Your Eyelids

Your upper eyelid is controlled by two muscles working against each other. The levator palpebrae superioris lifts the lid open, while the orbicularis oculi squeezes it shut. These two are anatomical opposites: the levator is part of the extraocular muscle group and shares fiber types with the muscles that rotate your eyeball, while the orbicularis oculi is a ring-shaped facial muscle more similar to ordinary skeletal muscle elsewhere in the body.¹ This distinction matters because the levator, tucked deep inside the orbit, is almost impossible to isolate voluntarily. You cannot “squeeze” it the way you can clench your fist. The orbicularis oculi, by contrast, is the muscle you engage every time you squint, wink, or blink hard.

There is also a third player: the superior tarsal muscle (sometimes called Müller’s muscle), a thin smooth-muscle strip that provides a small additional lift to the upper lid. Because smooth muscle is not under voluntary control, no exercise can target it directly. This is why pharmaceutical approaches to drooping eyelids, discussed later, go after Müller’s muscle chemically rather than through movement.

How Aging Changes Eyelid Muscle

A common reason people search for eyelid exercises is that their upper lids feel heavier or look droopier than they used to. Research confirms that part of this is genuine muscle loss. A 2025 study examining the upper-eyelid portion of the orbicularis oculi found that the number of fast-twitch muscle fibers dropped significantly with age, and the total count of muscle fibers in the analyzed area also declined. At the same time, collagen and elastic fibers within the muscle tissue increased, meaning the muscle was gradually being replaced by connective tissue.² The researchers linked this thinning to the sunken appearance many older adults notice in their upper lids.

This finding is worth keeping in mind because it sets realistic expectations. If the muscle fibers themselves are fewer in number and partly replaced by scar-like tissue, exercise can potentially maintain or modestly improve what remains, but it cannot reverse structural fiber loss the way strength training rebuilds a quadricep after disuse. The eyelid muscles are simply too small and too specialized for that kind of remodeling.

Exercises Commonly Recommended for the Eyelid Area

Online guides tend to recommend some variation of the following movements. None of these has been tested in a randomized controlled trial specifically measuring upper-eyelid lift, but each engages the relevant muscles to some degree based on what we know about anatomy.

Forceful blinking: Close your eyes tightly for two seconds, then open them wide for two seconds. Repeat for about a minute. This targets the orbicularis oculi on the squeeze and asks the levator to work against the residual tension on the release.
Brow anchoring with lid lifts: Place your fingertips along your eyebrows to hold them in place, then try to close your eyes against the resistance. The idea is to isolate the orbicularis oculi from the frontalis (the forehead muscle that often compensates for a weak lid lift).
Sustained wide opening: Open your eyes as wide as possible, hold for several seconds, then relax. This is the closest you can get to directly engaging the levator, though the frontalis muscle tends to do most of the heavy lifting.
Gentle squinting: Partially close your lids while looking straight ahead, as if reading fine print, and hold. This works the orbicularis oculi at a partial contraction, somewhat like a controlled hold in a weight-training context.

These movements are low-risk for most people, with one important exception covered in the safety section below. The bigger question is whether they actually produce measurable change.

What Facial Exercise Research Actually Shows

No published study has isolated eyelid exercises and measured their effect on lid position or levator strength in healthy adults. The closest evidence comes from broader facial exercise programs that happen to include the orbicularis oculi among the muscles measured. A clinical trial of intensive face yoga in middle-aged women found that after the program, muscle tone in the orbicularis oculi decreased significantly, alongside similar changes in the frontalis and corrugator supercilii (the frown muscle).³ At first glance a drop in resting tone might sound like the opposite of “strengthening,” but in muscle physiology, lower resting tone can indicate a muscle that is less chronically tense and better able to contract on demand. The researchers described the effect sizes as moderate to large.

A separate study testing a three-month daily exercise protocol found statistically significant volumetric changes around the orbicularis oris (the lip muscle) after participants performed targeted facial exercises for about fifteen minutes a day. The same protocol did not produce statistically significant changes around the zygomatic muscles, suggesting that not all facial muscles respond equally to the same routine.⁴ Participants did report feeling noticeably better about their appearance, with self-reported confidence increasing by about a fifth and satisfaction with how they looked in photos climbing by over half.

The takeaway from these studies is cautiously encouraging but not conclusive. Facial exercises can change measurable properties of some facial muscles, and people who do them consistently tend to feel the results are worth the effort. But the studies are small, typically lack control groups, and have not specifically tracked the levator palpebrae superioris or measured functional lid elevation. If you try eyelid-focused exercises and notice improvement after a few weeks, the benefit may be real, but it could also reflect changes in skin tone, reduced puffiness from increased blood flow, or simply greater awareness of the muscles involved.

Biofeedback-Assisted Training for Medical Conditions

The strongest evidence for eyelid exercise comes from rehabilitation medicine, specifically from patients recovering from facial nerve paralysis (Bell’s palsy) or dealing with post-paralysis complications like synkinesis, where muscles that should move independently start firing together. An updated systematic review of physical therapy for Bell’s palsy found that studies combining facial exercises with biofeedback, whether through a mirror or electronic monitoring, consistently reported positive improvements.⁵

Biofeedback means getting real-time information about what your muscles are doing while you exercise them. For the eyelid muscles specifically, this can involve watching your face in a half-mirror setup (where one side of your face is reflected to look like both sides, giving you a visual target for symmetry) or using surface sensors that detect electrical activity in the muscle. A study combining half-mirror biofeedback exercises with botulinum toxin injections found that after two years, patients with facial synkinesis showed lasting improvement in symmetry and overall facial appearance.⁶ Researchers have also developed portable, lower-cost devices that can detect facial muscle activity and provide feedback at home, potentially making this approach more accessible.⁷

For people without a medical diagnosis, the practical lesson from this research is that a mirror is your best training partner. Watching yourself perform eyelid exercises helps you learn which muscles are actually firing and prevents the forehead from doing all the work. If you notice that your eyebrows shoot upward every time you try to open your eyes wider, the frontalis is compensating for the levator. Holding your brows down with your fingers, or simply watching in a mirror and consciously relaxing the forehead, brings you closer to isolating the eyelid itself.

A Safety Issue Most Guides Skip

Hard squeezing of the eyelids causes a sharp spike in pressure inside the eye. Using implanted pressure sensors, researchers measured an average peak increase of about 42 mm Hg during forceful eyelid squeezing, a dramatic jump given that normal eye pressure sits between roughly 10 and 21 mm Hg.⁸ That study was conducted in glaucoma patients, but earlier research in mixed groups confirmed the phenomenon across different populations, noting that people with glaucoma tended to show a slight net increase in pressure after repeated squeeze-and-rest cycles, while healthy volunteers typically showed a small decrease.⁹

For most healthy eyes, brief pressure spikes during blinking exercises are not dangerous. The eye has mechanisms to handle transient changes, and the pressure normalizes quickly once you stop squeezing. But if you have glaucoma, ocular hypertension, or are at high risk for either, aggressive eyelid-squeezing routines are worth discussing with an eye doctor before you begin. Vigorous eye rubbing poses similar risks and is best avoided entirely in these groups.

Blink Training and Screen Habits

One of the most practical ways to keep your eyelid muscles active is also the simplest: blink more deliberately, especially during screen use. Research on adolescents found that blink rates during screen viewing dropped in a dose-dependent way, falling from about 15 blinks per minute in low screen-time users to roughly 11 per minute in heavy users. Participants who experienced digital eye strain symptoms had significantly lower blink rates than those without symptoms.¹⁰

A separate study examining adults during computer tasks confirmed that both blink rate and blink amplitude (how fully the lid closes during each blink) declined during demanding visual work. The researchers specifically recommended frequent breaks and “blinking awareness training” for people doing prolonged screen-based tasks.¹¹ “Blinking awareness training” is a clinical way of saying: periodically remind yourself to blink fully and deliberately. Some eye care practitioners suggest the 20-20-20 pattern (every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds) paired with a few full, slow blinks during each break.

From an eyelid-muscle perspective, the issue with reduced blinking is not that the muscles atrophy from underuse in any acute sense. The orbicularis oculi fires thousands of times a day regardless of screen habits. But incomplete blinks, where the lid does not fully close, become more common during concentrated visual work. Over time, habitually shallow blinking may contribute to the sensation of tired, heavy lids at the end of a long workday. Deliberately practicing full blinks is a low-effort intervention that addresses both eye comfort and eyelid muscle engagement.

How the Forehead Compensates for a Weak Lid

If you have mild eyelid drooping, whether from age, fatigue, or early ptosis, your body has a built-in workaround: the frontalis muscle in your forehead contracts to raise the eyebrows, indirectly pulling the upper lid open a bit wider. Research on the coordination between the levator, the frontalis, and even the upper trapezius (the muscle running from your neck to your shoulder) has shown that when the eyes are directed upward beyond a certain point, reflex contractions ripple outward. The frontalis pulls the eyebrows and scalp backward, and the upper trapezius extends the head, which can contribute to tension headaches and neck pain in people who rely heavily on this compensatory chain.¹²

This is relevant to exercise because many people who think they are training their eyelid muscles are actually training their forehead. If your exercise routine makes your forehead sore but your lids feel the same, the frontalis is doing the work. The brow-anchoring technique mentioned earlier specifically counters this: by pinning the eyebrows in place with your fingers, you force the levator to contribute more. It also means that if you are exercising your eyelids to address a droopy appearance and find yourself developing forehead tension or headaches, backing off the intensity and focusing on gentler, isolated movements could help.

When Exercises Are Not Enough

For genuine ptosis, where the upper eyelid droops enough to partially cover the pupil, exercises alone are unlikely to fix the problem. The most common cause of acquired ptosis in adults is a stretching or detachment of the levator’s connective tissue from the tarsal plate of the lid, a mechanical issue that no amount of muscle contraction will repair. Surgical correction, typically by shortening or reattaching the levator’s aponeurosis, remains the definitive treatment.

A newer non-surgical option arrived in 2020 with the FDA’s approval of an oxymetazoline ophthalmic solution specifically for acquired ptosis.¹³ Oxymetazoline works by stimulating the smooth muscle in the superior tarsal (Müller’s) muscle, producing a modest lid lift. A systematic review found that treatment improved the distance between the upper lid margin and the pupil center by about 1.4 mm on average, with a statistically significant advantage over controls.¹⁴ That might not sound like much, but for someone whose lid is just barely encroaching on their visual axis, a millimeter or so of lift can noticeably improve both the field of vision and the cosmetic appearance.

The existence of a pharmacological option does not make exercises pointless. For mild, age-related heaviness that does not meet the clinical threshold for ptosis, a combination of deliberate blink training, gentle eyelid exercises with mirror feedback, and good screen hygiene is a reasonable first approach. If the drooping progresses to the point where it affects your vision or bothers you significantly despite consistent effort, an ophthalmologist can assess whether the issue is muscular weakness, connective tissue laxity, excess skin, or something neurological, each of which calls for a different intervention.

Putting Together a Practical Routine

Given the scattered state of the evidence, a sensible daily eyelid exercise routine might look something like this: start with 10 to 15 full, deliberate blinks, closing the lids completely and pausing briefly before reopening. Follow with a minute of gentle squeeze-and-release cycles, holding the squeeze for two seconds and the open phase for two seconds. Then try a set of wide-open holds, opening the eyes as far as comfortable for five seconds at a time while keeping the eyebrows relaxed (use your fingers or a mirror to check). Finish with a few rounds of partial squinting, holding for five seconds each. The whole routine takes less than five minutes.

Consistency matters more than intensity. The facial exercise studies that showed measurable changes involved daily practice sustained over weeks or months. A single vigorous session is unlikely to do anything except possibly leave your eyelids feeling fatigued. And there is no reason to push into discomfort or squeeze as hard as you can, both because the pressure spikes are unnecessary for most people and because the muscles involved are small enough that moderate effort is sufficient stimulus. If you have any eye condition that involves elevated pressure, stick to gentle blinking and sustained holds rather than forceful squeezing, and check with your eye care provider first.