AD FEATURE: Exactly How to Keep Your Glow, Pre and Post Workout
Main image – Courtesy of writer
Call me a cliché but my early year ‘get-healthy’ plan has officially kicked in. This girl means business and is officially back on the healthy eating, fitness train.
But it’s not just my body I want to look after now that the new year has begun, it’s my skin too. Which is why I was intrigued when I heard about Achillea Beauty™ – a range of skincare products dedicated to exercise.
Achillea Beauty™ is the first sustainable skincare brand on the market that has been created with pre and post workout skin in mind. Aiming to enhance your post-exercise glow, hydrate the skin and keep pores clean and unclogged.
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Whilst other brands have created exercise-friendly makeup, Achillea Beauty™ is the only one to focus on reframing exercise as an act fuelled by nature that actually enhances skin’s health when combined with the right ingredients.
And when you think about it, it’s a really clever idea considering the change in your skin’s behaviour during and after exercise. After all, when we workout our heartbeat increases, our blood pumps closer to skin level and our skin cells go into repair mode, not to mention all that extra sweat which can wreak havoc for open pores.
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Achillea Beauty’s™ ethos and its promise of boosting my skin’s health during exercise, rather than hindering it, massively appealed to me. So, I decided to start using the products as I embarked on my January fitness mission. Keep scrolling to find out how I got on.
The product details
There are three products in the Achillea Beauty™ range – Kick Some Dirt Micellar Water Cleanser (£53), A Drop of Magic Spray (£55) and Jelly By Now Mask (£50).
Each formula contains intelligent, super potent ingredients researched and tested for over four years. They are handmade and hand poured, packaged up in 100% recycled (and further recyclable) cardboard, bottles and stickers and are even posted to consumers in a mailbag made of leftover sugar cane. Carbon footprint = impressively minimal.
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You can buy the products separately or as ‘A Magic Bundle’ which costs £140 – that’s £18 less than if you were to buy all three individually. Plus, it comes with a free water pouch worth £30 (and made of leftover apple skin no less) to encourage users to keep the brand’s mid-workout product, A Drop of Magic, next to their water bottle. Clever.
Kick Some Dirt is a refreshing cleanser that you can use both before and after your workout – it’s that gentle. The idea is that you can apply things like makeup (even the waterproof kind) or SPF in the morning and feel safe in the knowledge that this micellar cleanser will remove them properly before you work out. And it’ll keep your skin nicely hydrated too, through even the toughest of exercise sessions.
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Like all Achillea Beauty’s™ products, it’s free of alcohols, silicones, chemical sunscreens and fragrances but does contain skin-loving ingredients like rosa damascena flower water and protecting niacinamide.
A Drop of Magic is an antioxidant gel textured mist. It’s a great one to slip into your gym bag as, cleverly, it is activated by heat and movement which is pretty revolutionary. When used 2-3 times during your workout session, it promises to refresh and keep your skin barrier healthy and hydrated plus it aims to leave it looking dewy and plump too. This is 100% unique – there’s nothing else like it on the market – and it has been developed over 4 years, across over 20 different formulations. Now that’s commitment for you.
And who said face masks were only for when you’ve got lots of time to spare? Jelly By Now is a 2-minute in-shower mask, perfect to use quickly after your workout. After using your second helping of the Kick Some Dirt cleanser, this cooling gel mask uses things like vaccinium myrtillus fruit extract and salix nigra bark extract to dissolve dead skin, minimise post-workout redness and give the skin ample hydration with a side of glow.
First impressions
Kick Some Dirt has a subtle spa-like smell and shows up as a sheer brown colour on a cotton pad. I doused around 75% of my cotton pad with it and swept it around my skin. I had applied makeup that morning just to get me through the school run and a quick visit to the shops, so it had a bit of work to do.
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My makeup lifted off easily and after two cotton pads, my skin was clean, soft and ready to sweat! The biggest thing I noticed though was how refreshed my skin felt. The cleanser leaves this lovely cooling effect – which really is just what you want before a workout session!
During my workout, I sprayed A Drop of Magic onto my skin two or three times. The instructions suggest doing it in the early part of your workout, so I made sure I spaced it out within the first fifteen minutes of my 30-minute exercise routine.
Right from the first spritz, I noticed that it made my skin look and feel incredible. Hydrated, soft and extremely plump. In fact, Achillea Beauty’s™ website uses the word ‘pillowy’ and now I know why. Because my skin felt beautifully bouncy!
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Not only this but it proved to be a very welcome cooling down aid as I became warmer and warmer. I know, I know, anyone could just spritz a can of water on their face to cool down whilst exercising. But A Drop of Magic refreshes your skin and gives it a real hydrating, skin-plumping treat.
Once my workout was over, my skin looked supple and as if those 30 minutes of exercise had actually been a 30-minute spa treatment (although I’m not sure you could say the same about the rate of my breathing…).
Next up, it was time to try Jelly By Now. After cleansing my skin again with Kick Some Dirt, I applied the mask onto dry skin (you can choose wet or dry, but I prefer to apply masks to dry skin where possible).
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It went on smoothly and easily and my entire face looked wet with gel after taking only a pea-sized amount. It feels slightly tingly and cool on application – I love a mask that you can feel working – and goes slightly tacky after just a minute. I washed it off mid-shower and, once dry, I felt the smoothness of my skin almost instantly.
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I noticed my workout redness had disappeared too, and all I had been left with was a subtle glow and skin that felt super fresh and oh-so clean. That refreshing feeling lasted for hours afterwards, and my makeup glided on beautifully too.
My verdict
They say exercise raises your endorphins, but clearly a good skincare routine like this, combined with a workout, helps to give you an extra boost of skin-happiness too. Not to mention a noticeable, gorgeous glow.
Image – Courtesy of writer
The takeaway
I’m pretty sure these skincare products are motivating me to keep going with my fitness mission. A Drop of Magic in particular makes the thought of exercising much more bearable as I know my skin will be taken care of while I sweat.
Since using the products, I have had zero breakouts, and my oily skin hasn’t been made worse either which is always a worry for me when I start using something new.
The main feeling I get from my Achillea Beauty™ routine is that my skin just feels clean, fresh and soft, even when doing vigorous exercise. So now that there’s absolutely no excuse to stop keeping fit, here’s to a happy and healthy 2025!
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Get Glowing!
