In Part 1 of this two-part series, I described the many ways a well-planned exercise regimen contributes to vocal technique and helps singers meet the demands of performance [Editors note: To see part 1 go to www.classicalsinger.com]. A program of strength, flexibility, coordination, and cardiovascular training can improve alignment, breath management, stamina, and phonation. Fitness programs that challenge the neuromuscular system can enhance fine motor control, so that we acquire new vocal skills more quickly and learn stage movement with greater ease. This part discusses the components of an exercise regimen, collaboration with a trainer, and aesthetic and dietary issues.
The First Step: Fitness Assessments and Goals
An effective exercise regimen begins with a complete assessment of your fitness and a detailed description of your goals. While everyone should assess general health and wellness before beginning an exercise program, the vocal athlete should monitor data related to the physical skills and qualities essential for singing. These assessments include:
• Blood pressure and resting heart rate: If your blood pressure is excessively high or low, consult a physician to ensure your safety during exercise. Your resting heart rate is used to determine your target heart-rate range to create an effective cardio program.
• Body composition: To track your progress, assess your ratio of lean muscle mass to body fat every six weeks. Your body fat percentage reveals more than your weight, because muscle is much heavier than fat. A pound of fat takes up three times as much space as a pound of muscle. As your overall body fat drops by significant percentage points, you may lose inches and notice visible muscle definition but see little change in your weight.
• VO2 Max: A trainer or physician can measure your oxygen consumption and help set a goal for your VO2 Max (a measurement of the greatest amount of oxygen you can consume while exercising at capacity). This is a crucial aspect of your exercise regimen, as oxygen consumption directly impacts your ability to sustain long phrases and perform energetic movements while singing.
• Posture and movement screens: A comprehensive alignment analysis requires the assistance of an experienced athletic professional. Trainers vary in their methods and ability to assess alignment. I use a series of observations developed by the National Association of Sports Medicine and a functional movement screen developed by physical therapist Gray Cook (see www.functionalmovement.com/SITE/the_screen/index.html for more information).
Alignment is dynamic, so while it is important to observe static posture, you should also assess basic movement patterns. An experienced trainer can analyze the length/tension relationships of your skeletal muscles and design a program of movement, stretches and exercises to bring everything into balance.
Use these data to establish measurable goals for blood pressure, body fat percentage, VO2 Max, and alignment. Set a date by which your goals can be attained and choose dates to reassess performance along the way. Singers may enjoy this process of setting and working towards tangible fitness goals—it can be much easier than assessing progress towards technical and career development goals! Vocal progress and performance careers sometimes develop along wildly unpredictable paths, but you can collect data and monitor your progress in terms of objective measurements.
Now you are ready to set up a cardio program that will enhance your oxygen consumption, and a strength-and-flexibility program designed to perfect your alignment and stabilize your core. Also, it is easy to incorporate general wellness and aesthetic goals into your program.
Sports-Specific Program Design
Athletes need exercise regimens designed to help them accomplish the tasks specific to their sport, address their weaknesses, and build on their strengths. With this in mind, I consulted Rob Kram, a trainer with experience in sport-specific program design, to inquire what sort of regimen he would recommend for an opera singer. Currently fitness manager at the Reebok Club in New York City, Rob has designed exercise programs for Division I basketball players, as well as soccer, tennis, and baseball players. These athletes require a level of flexibility, power, balance and control far beyond the average person, qualities that are also essential for singers.
To the best of my ability, I described the opera singer’s job in purely physiological terms, and asked Rob how he would design a program to prepare a singer’s body to meet the demands of our art form.
In sport-specific training of any kind, a program must be built upon the functional requirements of the sport. Rob emphasized the importance of first-hand experience of a client’s sport.
“I’d have to go to whatever you would consider practice or rehearsals and observe what you do,” he said, “and note the length of time, the voice exercises that you do, and take that into consideration for whatever program I would design. … If I’ve never even tried the vocal exercises, it takes away from my effectiveness. I would try to mimic what you’re doing, to get the feeling of what is actually going on in my throat, what’s going on in my diaphragm, what’s going on with my core, how I am controlling that breath.”
All elite athletes need to begin by resolving postural distortions. In addition to structuring a strength training program around the requirements of good posture, Rob would also assign 15 to 30 minutes of daily stretches and exercises to be performed at home.
“For someone for whom posture and appearance is important for their profession, this will be the most important aspect of their program,” he said. “A few hours a week with a trainer isn’t going to fix anything—it will be better than nothing, but it will not correct postural deviations. It has to be an ongoing, everyday thing, with exercises in a specific order, so that each day you’re building on progress from the day before.”
While he would prescribe a cardio program around building breath endurance, Rob feels that Pilates sessions are ideal for the kind of breath work that singers need.
“With its focus on the core, Pilates really gets you to feel the breath going to places where most people normally don’t feel it—into the lats, [Editor: latissimus dorsi or muscles of the upper back] into the obliques [muscles attaching from ribs “obliquely” to abdomen]—and this is where the singers are going to need it the most,” Rob explained.
“…The more conscious you become of moving the breath to all different parts of the body, the easier it becomes, and then you’re building muscle evenly in all the different muscle groups that impact the breath.”
Rob also expressed the importance of addressing skills vital to different kinds of singers, in the same way athletes who play different positions on a basketball team train in different ways. Yoga is extremely beneficial to develop breath control, he adds. A kundalini yoga class would be particularly useful for the vocal gestures that coloraturas must execute, while a deeper, slower form of yoga would be a better choice for dramatic voices.
For ideal overall program design, an opera singer’s training schedule would be just as intense therefore as the ones Rob laid out for his Division I athletes, comprising a five- or six-day weekly regimen, including two to three sessions with a trainer, one or two sessions with a private Pilates instructor using the special apparatuses, yoga and cardio classes, and daily homework assignments to develop optimum alignment.
“But that’s ideal, and not a lot of people will do that,” Rob admits, “so you start with ideal and then break it down to what the person can actually fit in with rehearsal schedule, family, travel, which may really cut down the ideal program to maybe two or three days a week. There will still be results, but it will extend the length of time that it will take to get those results.”
Choosing a Personal Trainer
Just like voice teachers, personal trainers vary in their qualifications and experience, and there is no federally regulated standard for personal training certification. As a result, certification programs range from extremely rigorous to some that are completed in a weekend. Your trainer should possess an excellent national personal training certification, current CPR certification and several years of experience.
Reputable certifications include the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the National Association of Sports Medicine (NASM), the International Sports Scientists Association (ISSA), the National Federation of Professional Trainers (NFPT), and the American Council on Exercise (ACE). The NASM approach is ideal for singers because it teaches alignment, balance and coordination before training strength and power, and proposes a system of exercise progression adaptable to the specific requirements of any sport.
I asked Rob what qualifications a singer should seek in a trainer. Under ideal circumstances: “The best thing to look for would be someone who has experience training singers,” he said. “In an ideal world, I would give you a trainer that has a college degree in the field, has been a singer, knows what it takes to do the vocal exercises personally, obviously one of the better private trainer certifications—like NASM or ACSM—and real success in training a singer in the past, as well as training themselves. You could get even more ideal by finding a trainer who has a Pilates or a yoga certification at the same time, along with the singing background.”
Admittedly, such a trainer would be difficult to find, but you should at the very least seek a trainer who respects the athletic nature of our art form and is intrigued by the challenges of designing a sports-specific program for voice performance. Any trainer on Rob’s staff would want to observe a voice lesson and perhaps even take a lesson themselves prior to designing a singer’s exercise program, and we should seek this level of commitment. We need trainers with experience in sport-specific program design who are interested in our sport.
Trainers work as private contractors or as employees of a health club. If you hire a private trainer, they should provide proof of their credentials, references, and information about insurance coverage. All trainers should carry liability insurance against the unlikely event that a client is injured. Don’t feel bad about asking for this. Your trainer also will ask you to sign a waiver before you work together.
If you prefer to work with a member of the training staff at your gym, meet with the fitness manager and ask for his or her recommendation, but be clear about your goals and what you are looking for in a trainer, including the quality of their certification and years of experience. It might be a good idea to show them this article. Ideally, someone on their staff will meet your needs, though some large gym franchises unfortunately experience a high level of turnover among the training staff and hire trainers without certification or experience. Try to engage a trainer who has been with the club for a while and looks like he or she will stick around. A more experienced member of the staff may charge a higher rate, but this is preferable to building a relationship with a less expensive trainer, only to lose her or him after a month or two.
Exercise and the Beautiful Singer
Amidst the increasing pressure on opera singers to cultivate an attractive physique, I propose that we vocal athletes regard our physical appearance in much the same way other athletes do: as the natural result of our training. Swimmers, basketball players and gymnasts develop their physiques as a natural consequence of their sport—they train movements, not aesthetics, but often the result is very beautiful. If we cultivate strength, coordination, flexibility and stamina in the service of our art form, the grace and beauty of our singing is likely to be reflected in our physical appearance. An exercise regimen that promotes optimum alignment, dynamic breath management, ease of movement and vocal stamina usually has the happy side effect of aesthetic weight management and muscle tone.
Conversely, weight management or bodybuilding undertaken for the sake of appearance—without consideration for vocal health—will have unexpected and possibly undesirable results for the voice. Men who develop massive chest and abdominal muscles without a balanced, overall strength-training plan risk a lopsided development of the torso. This compromises breath capacity and restricts the range of motion of the strap muscles that anchor the larynx in the clavicles and sternum, a disastrous development for vocal technique. Woman who sculpt their arms and shoulders but do not train the large, less aesthetically interesting muscles of the chest, back and core can end up with debilitating lower-back and neck pain, leading to problems in breathing and phonation.
If you plan to lose a significant amount of weight, realize that this can affect your instrument in unpredictable ways. Achieving a healthy weight will do wonders for your level of energy and the longevity of your career—not to mention your life—but you must take great care. The old myth that excess weight contributes to resonance has long been laid to rest, but excessive abdominal weight plays a negative role in a singer’s overall technique.
I believe this needs to be investigated more seriously. Abdominal weight can exert a significant downward pull on the lower ribs and diaphragm, so this mass is integrated into whatever strategy a singer uses to modulate the release of air. Eliminating this aspect of the functional breathing anatomy will have an impact.
You should compensate for the loss of abdominal weight gradually, by building core and abdominal strength. Weight loss should be undertaken slowly, carefully monitored by both your doctor and your voice teacher.
Nutrition and Exercise
Aesthetic weight loss or gain can be integrated into your training program, since either can result from improved body composition—the ratio of lean muscle mass to fat. Regardless of diet fads and trends, the rules governing weight management remain simple: You lose weight when you expend more calories than you consume. Personal training certifications require us to refer clients to FDA guidelines for creating a balanced diet, with calories well-distributed over the various food groups.
You can find the FDA food pyramid at www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/document/pdf/DGA2005.pdf and you can refer to “Dietary Guidelines for Americans,” a useful government-issued document, at http://198.102.218.57/dietaryguidelines/dga2000/document/frontcover.htm.
Trainers generally recommend consumption of carbohydrates prior to working out, and protein afterwards, as carbohydrates fuel exercise and protein assists with the repair and enhancement of muscle. We also encourage “grazing”—eating frequent, smaller meals throughout the day—to keep the metabolism stoked and prevent the intense hunger pangs that signal your metabolism is slowing down.
Unless a personal trainer holds a nutrition degree or a related advanced certification, this is the limit of their nutrition expertise. Recommending dietary supplements or prescribing a diet plan that falls outside of FDA guidelines is beyond the scope of our practice. Nevertheless, many health clubs sell supplements and enlist their trainers in this process. While I would never say that all supplements should be avoided, consult a qualified medical professional before trying them out.
Trainers generally advise against following the Atkins diet or other extreme high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet plans. We all know people who swear by these diets, but a significant, peer-reviewed scientific study of their long-term effects has yet to be conducted. Sports nutritionists recommend that 55-65 percent of an athlete’s daily caloric intake come from carbohydrates.
High protein diets create a sense of satiety that may keep you from eating as much as you normally would, but they can also make you extremely dehydrated. Water is retained in skeletal muscles as part of the process of storing glycogen from carbohydrates, so eliminating carbohydrates results in an immediate, extreme loss of water weight, which is thought to be the reason people lose weight so quickly. However, you cannot participate well in an exercise program on a strict low-carb diet, because the glycogen stored in your muscles is the very fuel needed for strength training of any kind—not to mention the energy you need to sustain an opera role.
Obviously, singers should avoid diets that cause dehydration or compromise physical stamina. If you’re reluctant to give up your low-carb diet but want to start exercising, I recommend that you cheat a little bit and consume a good-sized portion of carbs before your workout.
In Conclusion
A well-designed exercise program holds such immense potential benefit for classical singers that we really should avail ourselves of the means that athletes use to prepare their bodies for optimal performance. The athletic training paradigm could be adapted so easily to provide excellent training to singers as an integral component of a college voice curriculum, particularly at institutions that host Division I or II sports teams where outstanding faculty and resources are already in place.
Many voice departments have already begun to support singers’ physical needs by providing classes in movement and Alexander Technique. The sport-specific conditioning I have described would be a fabulous addition to these programs. Meanwhile, young singers who already feel financially overextended and pressed for leisure time may consider it an unreasonable luxury to hire a trainer and commit to an exercise program, but this investment of time and money can lead to invaluable technical growth.
You can resolve most common postural distortions completely within six months—and you can achieve massive improvements in oxygen consumption with just two or three months of targeted cardio work. Optimal alignment, breath coordination, and stamina are essential components of a singer’s technique, and we can all benefit from the enhanced neuromuscular coordination, stress relief, and comfort of movement that exercise provides. I encourage all singers to take advantage of the knowledge that athletic trainers possess for the achievement of these skills.
