The following applies to all three tips: Try out the warm-up exercises for your speaker's voice in a protected environment before using it under competition conditions. If you are looking for a protected setting, make sure that you are absolutely undisturbed. Consciously activate your hearing and body awareness. Both senses are the key to the development and development of your voice. Time required in total approx. 3 minutes.
1. Activate your gesture room
Just ten seconds are enough: Stretch your hands and arms to the side, use your entire range of motion of the arms in deliberate large movements.
- Move slowly, as if in slow motion. Slowly let your movements become larger and more expansive. Enjoy the feeling of liberation and the vastness of space.
- Pay particular attention to the mobility of your elbows: The so-called "elbow radius" determines how fluid and authentic your gestures appear.
If the upper arms are close to the body when speaking, it signals the need for protection. At the same time, your Voice less moved and modulated. If, on the other hand, the shoulders let go and the gestures gain space, the sound of your voice unfolds, you sound much more immediate and lively. The pleasant ups and downs of your voice (the Modulation ) is increasing significantly. As a result, they speak many times more vividly.
2. Loosen your vocal seat
When the first redeeming reactions from the audience come, the nervousness in the lecture usually subsides significantly. Before that, however, the first movements, which are so important, often sound impersonal, too high and thin. The performance stress activates old defense patterns - the increased body tension in the shoulders and neck is supposed to offer protection, but causes the fine vocal muscles in the larynx to audibly tense along. With the following 20-second warm-up exercise, you will chase away muscular stress, bring the breathing muscles up to working temperature and maybe even laugh heartily at yourself.
- Start walking at a leisurely pace at the stand. Stay upright in your upper body and let your shoulders droop.
- Bounce off the ground with every step. Through this up and down movement of the body, your arms and shoulders receive short impulses again and again.
- This quickly relieves stress tension, your shoulders will bounce up and down more and more freely.
If you have the feeling that your shoulders still remain rather immobile, use the following trick:
- Intentionally pull your shoulders all the way up.
- As you continue to walk on the belay, allow your shoulders to sink down very slowly.
- You will feel how your shoulders become heavier and heavier and thus let go completely.
- Meanwhile, create an inarticulate sound with your voice: "aaaaaaaa". Listen to the rise and fall of the sound. Explore how much your voice sounds fuller and deeper when the tension subsides.
With this exercise you relax all your vocal muscles, release performance stress and activate your breathing muscles at the same time.
3. Activate the diaphragm by "Flight of the Bumblebee"
Simple but effective: Acoustically let a fat bumblebee fly up from its resting place and do a short lap of honour:
- "Wwwwww!" So they articulate a voiced "w".
- Get louder and quieter, imagine the bumblebee circling.
- The exercise becomes even easier and more fun if you let your index finger become a bumblebee for a short moment and follow it vocally with the "Wwwww!".
The amazing effect of this one-second exercise can be explained by the finely tuned motor interaction of the lips and the diaphragm muscles. Your voice immediately sounds fuller, you speak more articulately, with less pressure.
Now enjoy when your voice sounds clear and understandable from the first word and lasts until the last word without losing power!
Yours sincerely,
Arno Fischbacher
P.S.: I'm happy if you like this post. If so, please share it on one of your networks! Do you have a question or would you like to discuss my thoughts with me? Write a comment! I look forward to hearing your opinion!
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The author:
Arno Fischbacher is a business voice coach and rhetoric expert, speaker and author. He prepares executives and employees of the top companies in Germany and Austria for negotiations, presentations and media appearances. Fischbacher is the author of several books, past president of the German Speakers Association (GSA) Austria, chairman of the European Network of Voice Experts, stimme.at.
If you would like to learn more about specific training opportunities with Arno Fischbacher, make an appointment here free information talk.
Dear Mr. Fischbacher,
I still follow her tips with great pleasure, although I no longer work with a voice professionally, but also in my private life many things are VERY useful.
Unfortunately, I read your information with great interest for another reason, as my husband was diagnosed with ALS 1 1/2 years ago. This disease is also accompanied by a severe loss of vocal volume due to weakening of the necessary muscularity and the indistinctness is increasing, although he began to work with a very committed speech therapist immediately after the diagnosis.
Admirably, he also does daily exercises, where I support him if possible, and also have them read to me. Last autumn he was even able to give his lecture at the Vienna University of Technology in English – for the last time – although there were already shortcomings in English. Probably the topic of "illness" is not as broad as those topics that can help and advance people in professional life, but if you occasionally include one or the other tip in the direction of age-related weakening of the voice or illness in your messages, this would be wonderful. This as a small suggestion, I hope this is ok for you.
Best regards
Waltraud Zopf
Dear Ms. Zopf,
Thank you very much for your touching lines. I would be happy to forward your important question to our group of experts. In the stimme.at newsletter, we take on the health challenges related to the voice from time to time – even if we probably can't go as deep as you would like as a person affected.
Overall, there is no doubt that all topics that have to do with people in advancing age are becoming increasingly important. The superficial cult of youth can only poorly whitewash the demographic development of our society.
I wish you and your husband all the best!
Yours, Arno Fischbacher