Stand straight, speak easy

Your personal (voice) trainer says: Poor posture not only causes back aches and shoulder pain: slumping affects your voice. When your midsection droops, your lungs cannot fully inflate to give your vocal system a steady air stream to fuel your speech.

Slouching also leads to unnecessary tension on muscles and joints, making them tired and poorly prepared to support your voice.

When standing, balance your body's weight equally on both legs.

Separate your feet slightly with one foot a bit in front of the other.

Align hips below the shoulders.

Slightly bend your knees to put more weight on the balls of your feet.

Let your head "float."

Working with students? Crouch, or bend at the hips and knees. Don't bend at the waist with your knees straight.

Feed your voice well!

Your personal (voice) trainer says: Nutrition and vocal health are as interconnected as nutrition and overall good health.

The good nutrition, healthy voice link:

Vocal fold tissues constantly replace damaged cells with fresh ones. Good nutrition facilitates this process.

Speaking requires well-orchestrated, energetic movements of many small muscles. Muscles work best when they are well-supplied with energy sources and when waste material is promptly removed.

Too much fat limits muscle coordination, strength, and endurance of vocal functions.

Make this your nutrition mantra: Eat a well-balanced, varied, low-fat diet; drink sufficient liquids for adequate hydration; and match caloric intake with calorie output.

Move, stretch, sweat and sway!

Your personal (voice) trainer says: Exercise promotes efficient breathing, relaxation, increased vocal flexibility, and good body alignment.

Try for at least 30 minutes of exercise three times a week. It probably does not matter what type of exercise you do (other than the fact that people tend to stick to exercise regimens they enjoy).

Try something new: kickboxing, Pilates, square dancing, badminton, a co-ed volleyball team, rock climbing, speed walking.

Explore exercise patterns: work out first thing in the morning, or just before bed, or break up your session into 10-minute blocks.

Go to bed and wake up about the same time each day (even on weekends).

Take frequent mini-stretch breaks during the day to relieve tension.

Your fitness shows in your voice!

Free your voice from tension

Your personal (voice) trainer says: Unquelled stress is an enemy of the voice. It causes your shoulders to rise, neck to constrict, and belly to tense — all of which work against an ample intake of air and easy, well-coordinated voicing on the out breath.

Research shows that — in high-stress situations — people raise their pitch and have more fluctuations in their voices. These conditions are tough on the vocal anatomy and even rougher on the psyche.

Teachers — and most voice patients — report similar feelings when the voice is impaired: diminished vocal flexibility, range, loudness, or ease of voicing.

Many people become hoarse. In some cases people actually "lose their voices" for a time due to their distress.

Even quick, simple strategies keep undue tension at bay. Look for "vocal stress-busters" sprinkled throughout the Voice Academy.

The fluid factor

The relationship between drinking water and vocal health is complicated and not fully understood by scientists. Must we drink 64-80 ounces of water per day?

Facts:
We don't store excess water. It simply passes from the body as urine. You can't super-saturate or preventatively hydrate body tissues.

Drinking a lot of water causes frequent urination, but teachers get few bathroom breaks.

The water we drink travels down the esophagus. It does not pass by the vocal folds to directly hydrate them.

While scientists don't have all the answers, they suspect vocal folds are a low priority in terms of where the body directs fluid.

A diet rich in water-based foods (fruits and vegetables) makes water drinking less important.

People are not the same. We have varying hydration needs.

What is adequate hydration?

One barometer for adequate hydration is urine color. Dark urine indicates less hydration than clear or pale-colored output.

The truth is, water does keep the mouth and throat lubricated, facilitating speaking. Therefore, thirst is a reasonable barometer of water need. Some people report that speaking is easier when they drink more water. If possible, teachers should keep water close by to sip when needed, if only to keep the mouth and tongue moist.

Here's a secret from singers: munching an apple can ease your speech. Pectin, found in apple skin, has been reported to stimulate the salivary glands. The extra moisture in the mouth will likely make speaking easier.

Liquids to use with caution

Alcohol and caffeine: Some liquids, such as coffee, tea, colas and alcohol, dehydrate the body. In other words, they draw fluid from tissues.

Research has shown that dehydrated vocal folds do not vibrate efficiently. So, if you enjoy your morning java, go ahead, but follow it up by refilling your mug with water.

Mouthwash: Alcohol or mint in many mouthwashes may irritate the vocal system. If you like a morning swish of mouthwash, go ahead and rinse — just don't gargle. If you need to gargle, use salt water instead.

Also, understand that persistent bad breath could be a symptom of a low grade infection, gastric reflux from the stomach, or possibly some other medical trouble. Mouthwash won't cure these problems.

Vocal burden of coaching

If teachers are vocal athletes, PE teachers and coaches must be vocal Olympians! They must shout instructions in vocal minefields.

Consider:
Outdoors: There are few hard surfaces to contain sound waves. The voice fades as it travels.

Indoors: Acoustics are a major problem, especially in gyms and indoor swimming pools. Multiple hard surfaces and high ceilings create an echo chamber.

Cold: When we're cold, we raise our shoulders, tighten the neck and jaw, pull back our heads and fold their arms across our bodies. It's tough to vocalize healthfully in this position.

Teaching by example: Vocalizing while demonstrating an exercise, particularly while lying down or putting the body in a vocally unfriendly position, means less breath support is given to the voice and more stress is put upon the vocal muscles.

A survival guide

1. Use a megaphone. Make one out of cardboard or simply cup your hands around your mouth.

2. Close the gap. When instructing students, have them stand near a wall or "huddle" so you can use a normal voice level. Have them remove helmets or other protective gear while you are talking.

3. Keep warm. Muscles usually work best when the body is warm.

4. Don't speak against the wind. Nobody will hear you. Catch students' attention with gestures, a whistle, flags or some other means.

5. Consider using a portable amplification system. These devices can be worn fanny-pack style to boost teachers' voices both indoors and out.

6. Solicit help, if possible. For example, with traveling teams, allow another teacher or chaperone to supervise on the bus. Your voice probably needs the rest.

No voice recess for teachers

It's easy to identify the vocal pitfalls of being a coach, gym teacher or aerobics instructor. Hoarseness, sore throats and voice loss are common casualties of the profession. Classroom teachers face many of the same problems.

Most elementary teachers must report to recess duty. They may shout to gain students' attention, over the noise of playing or fighting children, and in all kinds of weather. They may return indoors to an overheated and poorly ventilated building.

Elementary teachers with no singing or voice training also find themselves regularly singing during activities. Middle and high school teachers may supervise extracurricular activities. Teachers with no voice training undertake drama, music or singing classes.

Is it any wonder teaching is considered a vocally risky profession?

Hygiene for voice

Vocal hygiene isn't washing your mouth out with soap.

Vocal hygiene, rather, is a phrase used by voice specialists (vocologists) for behaviors individuals can do to maintain good vocal health.

Here's a "what not to do" list:

Do not:
overuse dehydrating substances (antihistamines, alcohol, caffeine);

persistently cough or clear the throat (sip water instead);

habitually yell or shout;

speak at an inappropriately low/high pitch for extended periods;

excessively talk;

talk or sing over background noise (reduce background noise instead);

push the voice;

smoke; or

"talk through" sickness.

Management tips

1. Know signs of vocal trouble:

Your voice loses range or just sounds different than normal;

Hoarseness doesn't clear up in 2-3 weeks;

You routinely wake up with a low or groggy-sounding voice;

Speaking seems to require excessive energy;

Others ask you if you are sick.

2. Know that it is good for your voice to use its full range - not unlike a musical instrumentalist playing scales. However, it is harmful to consistently use one end of the range (very high or very low).

3. Teachers may fall into a habit of "snapping" the vocal folds open and shut quickly (often to get their students' attention). These glottal attacks, usually on a word beginning with a vowel (like "everybody") may be harmful.

Confidential to men

"My voice is too high and feminine. I look like a man — I want to sound like a man. What can I do to lower my pitch?"

First, just listen to many voices — both male and female. There probably is more overlap between female and male voice pitches than you thought: males often speak at 65 to 260 Hertz, while females speak in the 100 to 525 Hz range. Thus, a voice of 100 to 260 Hz is just as "masculine" as it is "feminine."

But men do adopt effeminate voicing and speaking patterns sometimes.

1. The root cause may be behavioral: was a dominant female the developing boy's "vocal role model?"

2. Anatomically, smaller vocal structures typically produce higher pitched (more feminine) voices. In general, people are unhappy with their voices when their bodily statures and voices do not "match" (for example, a large rugby player with a little voice).

What can I do?

For a male with a natural pitch on the high side, it's tempting to continuously press the larynx downward to achieve lowered pitch. This is potentially harmful.

It is far better to work with a vocologist (voice specialist). The vocologist can help sort out causes of a high-pitched voice and teach you to use your lower pitch range in a healthy manner.

Is surgery to permanently lower voice pitch an option? A few cases have been attempted to alter the configuration of the larynx. At best, the results have been mixed.

Vocally buff?

Can you bulk vocal muscles like you build biceps? No!

Knowing 75% of the vocal fold is muscle, why shouldn't you strengthen that muscle (the thyroarytenoid) for a stronger voice?

A weak voice does not necessarily originate from weak vocal muscles. In fact, research shows that we only use about a third of our laryngeal muscle capacity to speak.

The key is to precisely coordinate — rather than bulk up — vocal muscles. This is the essence of what serious singers do in their voice lessons.

Teachers, too, can benefit from using vocal muscles in a coordinated and efficient way. Little laryngeal muscles fine-tune the voice, but you should leave the major task of taking in and maintaining airflow for speech to the big guys: the large abdominal and intercostals (rib) muscles.

Extreme athletics and voice

Extreme sports may exact a price on your voice-producing structures.

Weight lifters exhale when lifting and inhale upon release. This pattern probably won't harm vocal folds. Breathing the reverse pattern — a common mistake — does strain the larynx. To compound the problem, many weight lifters hold their breath when lifting heavy loads, displacing some of the pressure to the vocal folds. These little muscles weren't meant to do this type of work.

Teachers may make the same mistakes when, say, carrying a load of books or moving desks around the room.

In general, sports that change normal breathing patterns (such as swimming) should be examined. Could it be that an altered breathing pattern for the sport has become the routine breathing pattern? Ask yourself: is this the ideal breathing pattern for teaching?