5 Secrets to Increase Vocal Strength and Stamina for Your Singing Voice
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5 Secrets to Increase Vocal Strength and Stamina for Your Singing Voice
Vocal strength and stamina are key elements to a voice that can deliver night after night. It’s also important to be able to count on your voice—that it will be there when you need it most.
To increase vocal strength, you will want to practice specific vocal exercises that focus on breath control and support, such as singing from your diaphragm, using proper posture, and using voice-building exercises to strengthen the core muscles and make your voice strong.
Regular warm-ups, cool downs, conditioning exercises and hydration are also essential for maintaining vocal health and enhancing your singing power and stamina.
Here are the 5 secrets to increase vocal strength and stamina discussed in this blog.
- Breath Control
- Onset + Breath Retention
- Support
- Consistent training and conditioning
- Voice-building techniques
Let’s dive in:
1. Breath Control
Breath control for singers involves managing the airflow from the lungs to support vocalization, which is essential for maintaining pitch, volume, and stamina.
Techniques like diaphragmatic breathing and specific exercises can help strengthen the diaphragm, move the intercostal muscles to get the air into the lower triangles of the lungs to improve overall breath support.
Try this:
- Look in the mirror to watch your chest and ribcage.
- Take a deep breath.
- Are you breathing into the chest? Did the chest lift on inhale?
- This indicates that you are breathing into the top portion of the lungs.
- Wrap your hands around your ribs with your fingers to the front and thumbs at the back.
- Take a deep breath, but this time focus on breathing into the 3-4 lower ribs.
- Did you notice the ribs move out at all?
- Try it again and focus on breathing slowly but focusing the breath into these 3-4 lower ribs moving outward.
- This is the beginning of breathing diaphragmatically.
Watch my video demonstration of this exercise on how to breathe diaphragmatically on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CgzS6mAFQ1p/
2. Breath Retention
The next step is to retain the air you’ve brought into your lungs instead of letting it all spill out on the first note (which is super common).
Try this:
- Wrap your hands around your ribs with your fingers to the front and thumbs at the back.
- Take a deep breath, but this time focus on breathing into the 3-4 lower ribs.
- Now exhale, paying attention to the rib movement.
- Did you notice the ribs coming inward on the exhale?
- Take another deep breath, but this time focus on keeping the ribs expanded and not letting them come inward on the exhale, especially in the first few moments of the exhale.
- Were you able to keep the ribs expanded?
- Repeat the same thing now as you sing an “AHHHH” and focus on keeping the ribs expanding out on the first few moments of the note.
This is the beginning of supporting your voice to sing “on the breath” instead of pushing the breath out.
It’s how you retain air and keep it in the lungs that gives you the fuel to sing on.
This is a more advanced technique so here are a few tips when practicing this.
Tip 1: Be sure you are not holding your breath
Tip 2: This is an isolated movement where only the ribs and surrounding muscles are engaged. Be sure not to hold tension in the throat as you keep your ribs expanded.
3. Support
Using the right support for your voice with your breathing as listed above is important, but support is also established using the muscles in the torso or “trunk” of your body.
Posture is the first place we look to improve your support, followed by using the muscles of the pectorals, intercostal, back, abdominal muscles to provide the support you need to keep from falling back on your throat and ruining your voice.
Correct posture helps to take the strain off the throat and use the body to absorb the work required to sing well. When the chest stays lifted during singing (instead of dropping which is common), the voice retains air in the lungs giving fuel to sing on, and the voice is supported instead of strained.
Try this:
- Stand in front of a mirror or monitor to watch your chest and posture.
- Take a deep, deep breath.
- Did your chest rise upward?
- This is an indicator that your chest is somewhat slumped, making you raise it to allow for room to expand your lungs. It also indicates that you are not yet breathing into the lower portion of the lungs (see #1 above).
- Now, raise the chest up closer to the chin.
- Take another breath.
- Did you feel more breath populate into the abdomen and diaphragm area?
- This is because when the chest stays lifted, your body will reach further down for the breath because it’s accessible.
- Now repeat that inhale with the raised chest.
- And watch your body as you exhale.
- Did you notice your chest dropping as you exhale?
- This is common.
- In singing technique we practice keeping the chest lifted upon exhale. Not letting the chest drop at all.
- Now with a raised chest, take another inhale.
- This time sing an “AHHHH” and keep the chest lifted. Don’t let it drop at all.
- What did you notice?
- Did you notice more support? More sound?
This is the beginning of supporting your voice and not falling back on your throat.
4. Consistent training and conditioning
The only way to really build a confident and consistent voice is to train. Vocal technique training is the process of practicing repeated motions to reprogram the body to use them during singing. We train so that on your worst day, you sound great. And—you can depend on your voice to deliver for you. Nothing is more important than that.
An important element in your technique training are exercises that also condition the instrument.
Vocal conditioning exercises are designed to condition the vocal instrument to keep it healthy for singing.
There is a natural wear and tear that comes from performance. It’s easy to end up accumulating unwanted throat tension and wearing out the voice early.
Conditioning exercises are particularly effective in reducing this tension, and reducing inflammation on the vocal folds, extending performance and stamina.
These conditioning techniques can be found first inside The Vocal Freedom Circle, where I teach The Cole Vocal Method, which includes these conditioning exercises and techniques to keep the voice healthy and extend endurance.
5. Voice-building techniques
In your training, you want to practice voice-building techniques (in addition to warmups and cooldowns). Voice-building is a specific set of techniques and exercises that build the strength of the voice.
I teach the voice-building techniques inside The Vocal Freedom Circle. This exercise set includes 38 exercises that build the overall strength, tone, foundation, range and endurance of the singing voice.
In this method, we focus on specific positions used on specific exercises that strip away the compensatory muscles and strengthen the core muscles. The result is a much stronger voice that can hold up well and deliver performance consistently.
Learn more about The Vocal Freedom Circle here.
Learn more about The Cole Vocal Method here.
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This post helps you get started, but it’s only the beginning. What would it feel like to finally reach your vocal potential and feel an actual transformation in your voice in 8 weeks? Come join the thousands of singers who have already transformed their voice and vocal health with the Cole Vocal Method™. Set your voice free in only 20 minutes a day with these transformative vocal techniques found only here! Click here to find out more.
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