All about Warming Up Part One - Warming up the body and stretching.

If you are a singer, a voice actor, a podcaster, or a presenter, you are using your voice more than the average person. So it makes sense that you have to treat your voice a bit differently. You have to make sure that your instrument's in good shape, that you’re warmed up & that you're stretched out. In this episode I'm going to take you on the beginning of the journey to warming up with my favorite physical warm-ups and stretches. Yes, there is dancing.  Here's the link to my personal dance mix Norton's Feel Good Friday on Spotify, please have a dance on me! ❤️ Here's your homework challenge: #1 Move your body and stretch. 1. Dance or fast walk or do something to get your body warm at the beginning of every day. 2. Stretch your body out front back and side ribs so your lungs can fully inflate. And here's the messy transcript: Hello, and welcome to Episode Two - All about -Warm-Ups Part One. If you are a singer, a voice actor, a podcaster, or a presenter, you are using your voice more than the average person. So it makes sense that you have to treat your voice a bit differently. You have to make sure that your instrument's in good shape, that you’re warmed up, that you're stretched out. I mean, if you decided that you wanted to run a marathon, you wouldn't just… “Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna run a marathon tomorrow. It's gonna be awesome”. You'd think, “Ooh, I've been sitting on the couch for two years. I better start walking around the block and then staggering for a little bit, and then running a little bit longer and Ooh, yeah, stretching out because Ooh, that's a lot”, you'd think all those things and the same thing is true if you've not been using your voice particularly, or you haven't got good technique to start with, and then you book a four hour video game session and well, it may not end well. So you need to be warmed up and know how to cool down. We'll do that later. But the first part we're gonna walk through is warming up. Now, because there are quite a few things to take into consideration. I'm going to go through these in the next few episodes. So this first part of the warm-up series is going to be about warming up your body and stretching, getting that into a habit first. And then in episode three, We're gonna work on breathing, episode four, it's going to be more about, releasing the tongue and self massage and then episode five is going to be about warming up the articulators and everybody's favorite tongue twisters. So hang in there. Let's do this! Going in now for warm-ups episode two! The first thing you need to do is get your body warm. What I love to do is I walk my dog fast in the morning, around the neighborhood, about 45 minutes. Um, so I get pretty kind of hot and sweaty. So something like that, some kind of vigorous, exercise, maybe you like to run or bike ride or row or any of those things.That's all great. Something that gets you breathing a little deeply. If you don't have time for that, I, as anybody who's ever been in one of my classes or workshops knows, I always start with a dance. We always have a dance party. So if your body is not warm right now, and you wanna just pause this podcast for a minute, just pause it, go find one of your favorite dance songs and just dance for three minutes, you know, just pick one, Stevie Wonder's great. But you know, like anything, pick a song, go and dance for three minutes. I'll be right here waiting for you when you get back. Okay. Off. I'm gonna go do that too. Oh, Hey you back? That feels much better. So you've had a little dance. Oh, I'm feeling my breath is all nice and deep. Now just notice how your body feels different right now having moved. And if you didn't before and now you're thinking, oh, I wish I actually had, do it now. Pause the thing. Go dance. And then come back. Okay. So stand with your feet hip with the part and your knees are soft and just notice how different your body feels. Having just energized with some dancing. That's great. I feel the energy in my fingertips. I imagine that I have a string from the crown of my head, pulling me up towards the ceiling, lengthening the spine. Let my shoulders release away from my ears. My hands feel warm and my arms are hanging loosely and heavy, like old ropes. As with all of the stuff I'm ever gonna teach you on this podcast. I want you to do what feels right for you. I don’t know, what's going on with your body right now? And I won't. So I need you to take full responsibility for your physical comfort and just do what feels good to you. The main stretch I'm gonna teach you today is ragdoll stretch, which I learned in my Voice Movement Therapy training, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, and I'm still doing it. Stand with your feet hip width apart, that means that you could probably fit two fists in between your feet. So not the ‘outside’ of the hips, but where the hip bones are. Make sure your knees are soft. Take a nice gentle breath into your belly. Because when I talk about that, I'm using the imagery of belly breathing rather than anatomical correctness, but just imagining you are really filling the lower lungs. The diaphragm drops, the lower lungs inflate, keep your shoulders soft, keep your knees soft and feet your hip width apart. And then. Come up onto your toes, just as high as is comfortable. It could just be just off the ground or a little bit more stretch your arms up above your head. Keep your chin parallel to the floor, but look up with your eyes. So you're stretching right up. And then as you breathe in, bring your heels to the floor. Hold your breath. Still stretching. Bend your knees still stretching up and then drop forward and exhale like a rag doll. So stay down, give your head a little shake. Yes and no. Make sure the arms are nice and loose. Shake those, make sure your knees are still bent and your knees are gonna be bent all the way up. Like they're just very gently gonna come up as we uncurl. So you're in a ragdoll forward. The knees are bent slowly, slowly, start to uncurl the spine one vertebra on top of the one before. See, if you can release any tension in the shoulders by just giving your arms a little jiggle, maybe let them do little circles. Imagine that you're drizzling honey onto the floor from your shoulder sockets. Just to really kind of get that nice and loose, slowly un-curling the spine stacking one vertebra on top of the one before don't rush and you're just steadily breathing in and out through your mouth. Working up gently through the vertebrae in the neck. Finally bringing your legs straight, but not locked. Head up last. Let the shoulders just fall. Nice. Good. Now we're gonna do a stretch. I call a Titanic pose, which will become apparent if you've ever seen the movie, uh, once we do it. So actually look, think about that. Clip from the movie, the most famous image from Titanic with, um, matey de Caprio and Kate whats’er face , uh, at the front of the boat, the Titanic and her arms are stretched back and he's holding her. So take your left foot forward, it's gonna be helpful I hope to have that image, take your left foot forward so your knee is over the ankle, don't ever take it forward, and the right leg is back, so you're getting a nice calf stretch in the right leg. Take a step and then you're going to stretch forward with the breast bone, with your arms back as if you were breaking through the tape, winning a race or Kate and Leo at the front of the boat, arms are back, head is tipped back slightly. But imagine that your head is resting on an imaginary grapefruit, just so that you're not crunching the vertebrae in the back of the neck. Really feel yourself expand through the chest. Nice breathing steadily. Good, make sure your shoulders are down and you're not clenching any muscles and then release that. Bring the back foot in about halfway. And this time you're gonna scoot your butt under, keep the shoulders down and relaxed, put your arms out in front of you as if you're hugging a beach ball so the pelvis is tucked under, hugging a beach ball with your arms and then drop your head forward so that the back of the neck is released. You should feel that stretch in between the shoulder blades. So, if we were stretching in the middle of the breast bone before, and a knitting needle went all the way through your body, it's that same point, which, which is a horrible image, and I apologize, it's that same point in between your shoulder blades, that's now stretching. So hug that beach ball or hug a tree, whatever you wanna hug, but hug something, keep your shoulders down. And now you are stretching in between the shoulder blades. Steadily breathing and release. Let's do the same thing on the other side. So we're gonna do Titanic first. So this time, right foot forward, left foot back. Good, arms are back as if you're winning a race, breathing steadily through your mouth while you're doing this, keep your shoulders down. Really expanding through the chest. Head is resting on an imaginary grapefruit. So you're not crunching the vertebrae in the back of the neck. Really feel that expansion and release. Bring your back foot in halfway scoot your pelvis under both legs are bent, hugging a tree. Keep your shoulders down. Your arms in front of you hugging a tree or a beach ball, and then drop your head forward to release across the top of the shoulders and in between the shoulder blades. Ah, and then you can release that side too. Lovely. Great. Now we're gonna do a side stretch because when your lungs fully inflate, the intercostal muscles, which are the muscles in between, the ribs also need to stretch. So they need to be flexible, so the lungs can fully go into the width of your body. So we've done the front and the back, and now we're gonna do the sides. So, whichever kind of side stretch you like to do is totally fine, as with all of these, anything that you like to do, do it, but we wanna stretch front back in sides. The one I like to do is this side stretch. So if you take your left leg across the front of your right leg, about a foot in front, then your right arm is up. I'm doing this in my booth here, which is crazy because I don't really have room . Um, and then you are going to put the weight into the front leg and stretch to the right. So you're stretching from your armpit, into your hip. Don't hold your breath, and release and let's try the other side. So put your right leg across the front of the left. This is me tripping over my mic stand. Right. Leg is across the front of the left. Left arm is up. So whichever leg is crossing in front, the opposite arm is up. It looks a little bit like a ballet move. But instead of leaning over to the right now, I'm gonna be stretching to the left from my armpit to my hip. So the impetus is going that way to the left this time, all the weight's going into my front leg to really get a juicy stretch in there. Don’t hold your breath. Try not to twist too much at the hips and release. So that's the Titanic stretch front back side to side. Right? Bring your body back in to center. Just notice where your feet are connecting to the floor. Make sure your knees aren't locked and just shimmy your whole body for a sec. Just let everything kind of jiggle and shake, making sure that you're not holding onto tension anywhere. Don't forget your fingers. Make sure your head's not tipping back and then release that. Notice where you’re naturally wanting to hold your weight. So is your weight more in the front of your feet or in your heels? Is it in the left or the right? So maybe just take a little moment just to feel where you’re holding your weight. Front, back. Left. Right? And then do some circles as if you're kind of like a, a drunken sailor here. Like just do some circles moving your weight without stepping and change direction (ugh the squeaks in my booth. I need to get something going on in here to get rid of some of these squeaks.) Okay, good. Shake that all out. Make sure you're not holding in your butt or your belly. Give your belly another rub. Okay. So this is warm up part one - warming up the body. It's super important. So what I'd like you to try. What I'd like you to try this week, is to make sure that you have some kind of physical, mildly cardio thing that you do. First thing in the morning, you're going to either, uh, dance, walk fast, do some yoga, you know, whatever gets you warm and fully engaged with your body? It's really easy, especially as voice actors for us to just stagger from our jammies into our booth, because we're all recording from home these days. So you have to kind of make this extra step happen. So physically warm up and then try these stretches. Okay? Or any stretches that you already do, just making sure that you’re stretching through the chest, the back and the sides so that the lungs have room to fully inflate. I'm going to encourage you to make a favorite dancing playlist. I have one, I'll share it in the show notes. I made this Feel Good Friday dance mix for my girlfriends during lockdown. When we couldn't see each other, and every Friday I released a 15 minute playlist on Spotify. And then I put them all together at the end. Well, at the end of COVID like it's ever going away, but you know, once we could start seeing each other again, they're all in one big playlist. So I’ll put a link to that in the show notes, and it's a real mix of funky, edgy, hip hop, sixties, all kinds of things in there. So, um, hopefully you'll find some things in there that you wanna dance to too. And if you have favorite dancing to songs, then let me know, cuz I'm always open to a good dance song to start off the day. Do that stretch your body. Be kind to yourself. Think kind thoughts, keep your shoulders relaxed. Don't clench your butt and have a great week. And I'll see you in the next episode where we're gonna talk more about the breath. Ah, that's better. 📍