A lot of clients coming through my door are looking to develop stronger public speaking skills.
The most important thing to do that most people miss out is warming up. Here is a list of five useful warm ups you can do before any presentation when time is short and space is limited. There are lots of different exercises when it comes to Voice work. These are just some of my favourites. Ideally you would do these exercises in the space you are working in but sometimes that isn’t always possible. Its a good idea to practice them at home and see which ones work for you.
Exercise: Body Scan
Time: 5 mins
Purpose: Allowing you to relax and feel settled in your body
- Start with feet hip width apart, knees softened. Imagine your spine is going up to the ceiling and your shoulders are dropping down your back making your chest feel nice and open. Eyes looking straight ahead.
- Imagine that you have a ball of light entering through the soles of your feet. Imagine the light is travelling through all of the foot and up into the ankle.
- Continue to imagine this light traveling up through the body soothing the muscles and easing the joints. Through your knees, upper legs. In an across your hips.
- All the way up through the spine and in and across the shoulders. Through you stomach, rib cage, all the way up to your collar bone.
- Up through your neck and over the top of your head. Down through the face.
- Take your time with this exercise and enjoy the sensation of your body feeling warmer and softer with the direction of lengthening and widening with this warm light.
Exercise: Grounding
Time: 5 Mins
Purpose: Helping you feel rooted into the floor
When giving a presentation, it is very easy to come off balance and feel uneasy on your feet. This exercise looks at helping your feet make as much contact with the floor as possible.
- Start with feet hip width apart, knees softened. Imagine your spine is going up to the ceiling and your shoulders are dropping down your back making your chest feel nice and open. Eyes looking straight ahead.
- Begin by rocking gentle through your feet from toe to heel. As you do so imagine each part of your foot coming into contact with the floor. As you do, allow the movements to go so you are going forward onto your toes and backwards into your heel. Check that you and not holding your breath or tensing your upper body as you do this. Take your time.
- Now rock from side to side through your feet. From The out side of your feet to the inside. Again, check that you are not tensing your upper body.
- Now think about creating a circular movement as you move through your feet. From the outside to the toes, to the inside and then then heals. Make these movements nice and gentle. Reverse the circle the other way.
- Place your feet back on the ground and imagine you are placing your feet into warm, soft mud. Imagine your feet creating a perfect foot print as your feet make full contact with the floor beneath them.
Exercise: Breath
Time: 10 minutes
Purpose: Settling down any nerves and connecting to breath support.
Mistakes are often made in public speaking due to poor breath support. Think of a time that you maybe stumbled over some words, or perhaps jumbled up a sentence. Its highly likely that these things happened due to poor breath support. This exercise encourages calm and a feel of connection with your breath.
- Start with feet hip width apart, knees softened. Imagine your spine is going up to the ceiling and your shoulders are dropping down your back making your chest feel nice and open. Eyes looking straight ahead.
- Bring your attention to your stomach. If it helps place the palms of your hands there. See if you can feel you diaphragm moving in and out. Try not to force the breath, just bring your attention to it moving organically. In through the nose and out through the mouth.
- Look for the moment that your in breath peaks and moves into the out breath. Look for the moment that the out breath melts into the in breath. Notice that this pattern is always there and you do not have to force it or suck breath in or push breath out.
- Imagine your breath is waves in the sea. The in breath is the wave coming back and peaking the out breath is the wave crashing over and spreading out in front of it. Think of those small waves at the beach. Think about the water spreading over the sand.
- On the next in breath, imagine the air filling all the way through your torso. First in travels down into the stomach and fills it with air, then through your chest.
- As the breath turns into the out breath imagine that you are sending it out and filling the room with it. Don’t force the breath out. Just imagine it filling the whole room. Check that you haven’t tensed any part of your body as you do this
- Repeat the last two steps.
- When you feel that you are comfortable with the above, make a long “s” sound like a snake. Repeat a few times.
- Now move to a long ‘z’ sound like a bee. Repeat a few times.
- Now a long ‘f’ sound like waves crashing on a beach. Repeat a few times.
- Now a long ‘v’ sound like a aeroplane.
Exercise: Laughter
Time: 5 minutes
Purpose: To actively open up the throat and engage the voice box.
When giving a presentation or a performance, some people feel that their throat goes tight. The following exercise should help you combat this.
- Start with feet hip width apart, knees softened. Imagine your spine is going up to the ceiling and your shoulders are dropping down your back making your chest feel nice and open. Eyes looking straight ahead.
- Bring your attention to the inside of your throat just above your collar bone.
- Now start a giggling sound on a ‘Hee, Hee’ and a ‘Hoo Hoo”. Imagine these sounds a bouncing from the diaphragm. in the middle of your stomach.
- Notice if you can feel your throat opening. its a subtle change but it is happening.
- Once you feel it happen, continue to giggle and count from one to ten. Notice the throat opening on each number you giggle.
- Once you feel confident at this, alternate between counting and speaking and see if you can feel that same sense of expansion as your speak the number as when you giggle it.
Exercise: Chewing
Time: 3 minutes
Purpose. To gently warm up your face.
Poor diction and pronunciation of words, can be due to a lack of energy in the face. This exercise helps you wake up the muscles in your face.
- Start with feet hip width apart, knees softened. Imagine your spine is going up to the ceiling and your shoulders are dropping down your back making your chest feel nice and open. Eyes looking straight ahead.
- Imagine you are chewing a soft sweet of chewing gum. Start moving your mouth in this way. As you do move the lips in all sorts of directions.
- Now imagine that the sweet is growing in size as you chew making the movements bigger and bigger. as you do this try and keep your mouth closed.
- Now exaggerate the movements so that you are wrinkling up your nose and rotating your jaw as you chew.
- Include your eyes and your eyebrows. So that you scrunching up your face and opening it up while you chew.
So there you go, 5 quick exercises to help you warm up for a presentation. I hope you find them useful. You can modify them in a way that maybe more helpful for you and think about working with different images then the ones I’ve given. It can be hard to not feel a bit silly when doing voice work but it’s also unpleasant when presentations go wrong due to poor vocal stamina. Try and cultivate an attitude of non-judgement about yourself while working. Find out more about what I mean in How to Love your Voice.
Felicity Goodman is a Voice and Elocution Teacher based in Manchester. Please contact her if you interested in vocal training. To learn more about the work she does, please visit www.felicitygoodman.co.uk
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