Meeting preparation: Vocal warm-ups

You can write the speech of your life, but if you don’t deliver it confidently, it can come across as being flat and uninteresting.

Preparing for a meeting isn’t just a case of researching the information and turning it into a speech – equally important is preparing how to present it properly. If you sound nervous when you’re speaking, your message is lost.

You may think vocal warm-ups are just for singers. In fact, they can help with preparing for a meeting as well and are just as important for a speaker as they are for a vocalist.

Completing vocal warm-ups can help you to sound more powerful, as you’ll be going in mentally prepared, with the correct resonance in your voice. There are many methods that can help you with preparations and some regular speakers have honed their vocal warm-up to a fine art.

What are the benefits of a vocal warm-up?

There are both physical and mental benefits to warming up before speaking at an event. If you were running a marathon, you wouldn’t start without stretching your muscles in preparation. It’s the same when you’re about to give a speech. A warm-up will stretch your vocal cords and help to clear your throat. Stretching out your body is important to help relax your muscles, while it can also help to practice breathing exercises too.

As well as the physical benefits of warming up, it can help you to get mentally prepared. When you’re feeling relaxed, with your vocal cords warmed up, you know you’re 100% prepared physically to deliver your speech. You will be calmer mentally and feel more confident once you start speaking.

What are the best vocal warm-ups?

Try loosening up your body by rolling your shoulders backwards and forwards. Gently roll your head forwards so you’re looking at the floor and backwards so you can see the ceiling. Then, stand on your tiptoes and stretch up and shake your hands out. This will loosen your shoulders, relax your neck and releases your jaw, all in one go. Finally, take in some really deep breaths to help rid yourself of nerves. These exercises will help stop you from feeling and sounding anxious when you speak.

The breathing exercises are very important. As you breathe in deeply, put your hands on your stomach and push it with the palms of your hands, as if you’re pushing on a balloon filling up with air. Then, try to exhale by pushing the air out from your stomach right up to your mouth, while saying, “Shhhhhh!” You need to do this “shaking loose” and “shhh” breathing for only about one minute, before moving on to the next stage of vocal warm-ups.

You will need to get your tongue warmed up too! One of the best ways to do this is to perform “tongue trills”. This is when you roll your tongue as quickly as possible, in ascending and descending tones. Do five or six tongue trills, up and down the scale.

Warm up your vocal cords by humming, as the vibrations are the key to loosening them up and improving your speaking voice, especially if you’re speaking at a meeting early in the morning. Even one basic long “hmmm”, holding it for as long as you can, will do the trick. You can also ascend and descend the scale with a hum, as you do for the tongue trills.

How do you know when you’re warmed up?

Keep on with the humming exercises until you get a comfortable resonance, with the sound coming from your throat being clear and continuing for a relatively long time. When you first start, your voice might sound a little rough and raspy. By the time you’ve done the exercises, it should sound smooth.

Once you feel your voice is sufficiently warmed up, the final step is to get your mouth ready to enunciate properly with a chant. Try saying, “Ma, pa, ta, ma, pa, ta,” around ten times in succession. Hold the words first for a short time and then longer, opening your mouth wide on the “a”. This completes your vocal warm-up.

If you’re worried you don’t have time to do the full range of warm-ups, remember they literally take just a few minutes. You can do them while you’re getting dressed, doing your hair, or on your way to the meeting. Easy to complete, you could even multi-task if you’re pushed for time – they can still make a massive difference to your impending speech.

If you’re planning a meeting, contact &Meetings for information on our wide selection of facilities, or use our handy online booking form for your convenience!