This journey into strength is not just about sculpting the body but how we can use the pathway of our bodies as a way to mine the strength in ourselves. For when external and internal strength are blended and balanced, the wires connect, the whole person wakes up and that union of flesh and spirit is magnificent, radiant, a cause to rejoice!
- Karen Andes, A Woman's Book of Strength
I recently recertified as a personal trainer through the National Academy of Sports Medicine. Sports science offers outstanding tools that can help anyone improve alignment, breathing and kinesthetic awareness. I'm always seeking new ways to apply them, in and out of the voice studio.
It's crucial that singers have access to these tools. Often a singer with sensational talent, musicianship and passion finds their technique unnecessarily limited by less-than-optimal alignment, oxygen consumption, or other issues that are easily addressed with a targeted fitness program. Adding a fitness component to voice major curricula and Young Artist Programs could have a tremendous impact.
Having refreshed and updated my training chops, I'm getting to work on developing workshops and group fitness classes for singers. I was enthusiastically shaping my materials into an engaging presentation when I asked myself the question, "Wouldn't it have been great if we'd had resources like this when I was an undergrad?"
And I had to answer: Honestly, I don't know.
It would have been great for those singers who were ready to embrace the idea of fitness, but I might not have been among them.
Throughout my adolescence I was bullied over my apparent lack of athletic aptitude. I recall how humiliating it was in middle school to have to design and perform a gymnastics floor routine in front of my peers when I could barely execute a decent somersault, to be picked last for the basketball team, and to be eliminated in the first round of track and field meets. I spent high school fabricating pretexts to get out of Phys Ed class and sneak back to the band room to practice clarinet for an hour.
It wasn't until my late 20s that I became interested in exercise. While browsing in a bookstore (remember when that was a thing you could do?) I came across A Woman's Book of Strength, by Karen Andes. She expressed such passion for fitness and compassion for women who long for physical strength but have no idea where to begin, and she made it sound fun and empowering. I signed up for a gym membership, discovered that I really enjoyed strength training, and have worked out consistently ever since.
I engaged fitness when I was ready, on my own terms. I truly don't know how I would have responded had someone told me that I ought to exercise to support my singing technique, no matter how compelling their reasons. Perhaps I would have found out how much I'd enjoy it a few years earlier than I did, but after everything I endured as a child it might instead have turned me off singing altogether.
Many singers, like me, grow up with a poor relationship with fitness, and nearly everyone grapples with body-image issues to a greater or lesser extent. Model Cameron Russell addresses this in her terrific TED talk:
We're all aware of the growing role that physical appearance plays in casting decisions. This has made our community more image-conscious and tempts us to prioritize appearance over the integrity of our instruments. For singers who already have a fraught relationship with fitness and/or body-image issues, this makes it even more emotionally difficult to figure out how or whether to exercise.
My suggestion is to strive for some detachment from your past experiences, the expectations of the opera world, and everything people have been telling you to do and consider whether you can engage fitness on your own terms.
As singing is of great importance to you, the best way to approach this may be to consider fitness as an extension of what you do in the practice room. You already regularly do exercises to develop range, flexibility, articulation, etc. Now you're going to add some exercises to develop alignment, better breathing, and stamina. Everyone prefers some vocal exercises over others, but when you're convinced that you're engaging in something that will improve your voice it makes the less entertaining ones tolerable. If you place physical exercises in the same category as your vocal exercises, you'll be more motivated to do them and any remaining negative associations you have with regard to fitness will begin to weaken.
Another vital correlation between fitness and your singing practice that deserves your attention is the way both of these disciplines cultivate a strong mind/body connection. The principles underlying the Karen Andes quote at the head of this post apply just as well to singing - one could also say that "the journey into singing technique is not just about making beautiful sounds but how we can use the pathway of our voices as a way to mine the beauty in ourselves." The more insight you gain about yourself and the world, the more impactful your singing becomes; the process of learning to sing is also a rich catalyst for personal insight and growth. Testing and transcending your physical limits at the gym is a fascinating process that can put you in touch with a capacity for strength, energy, and sensation that you never knew you had. It also brings old anxieties and insecurities to the surface. But singing does that too, and it's far better to get these demons out in the open where you can process them than allow them to fester in your unconscious mind.
I want you to share my enthusiasm for fitness. I want you all to discover the many far-reaching ways that it can ease and enhance the way your voice works and speed up your technical progress. I want you to experience the confidence and empowerment that becoming fit confers.
This is why I also wanted to share with you the fact that I once had an intensely painful relationship to exercise. Your singing practice will benefit immensely from a targeted fitness regimen, but you, like me, also need to come to it on your own terms if it's going to stick.
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