Make yourself heard… no shouting
Voice Fitness…It’s a thing!
Understanding body fit is core to your job as a personal trainer or groupex instructor, that’s a given. But how much attention do you pay to the vital instrument that you need to do your job to the best of your ability, your voice? Although microphones are part of the tech employed indoors, quite often in outdoor fitness offerings, like RISE Fitness franchise, the trainer has to rely on making themselves heard over all the other noise around. How best to do that? Read on…
How do we make noise when we speak?
Well, there are three body systems involved in you making your voice heard. One is your lungs, you need breath to create pressure, second is your voice box or larynx & vocal cords to produce sound and finally you need the vocal tract which is mouth, sinuses, throat and nasal passages to make the sound understandable.
Let’s not get all too complicated but breathe in, start making the vocal cords vibrate by exhaling, then the vocal tract turns this buzzing sound into language. Magic!
Stop yelling, start projecting
In outdoor fitness franchises like RISE the trainer is trying to make themselves heard over any ambient noise in the location. If you are only using your vocal cords and not your diaphragm, then a sore throat beckons and this can affect your ability to do the job properly.
Doing some exercises to improve your projection should hep protect those precious vocal cords from strain. Try the following:
- Shallow breathing – Avoid shallow breathing, it just enourages use of the vocal cords and the diaphragm gets lazy
- Good posture – try and stand up straight (can your hear your mother now…), slouching again causes you to use just the upper part of the chest.
- Exercise your diaphragm – place hand on belly and breath in without letting your chest expand. If just your chest moves you are not using your diaphragm.
- Yawn – yes yawning and stretching while you have a lovely big yawn helps open out your chest and larynx.
- Laugh – great news! Laughing is performed mainly by the diaphragm so get someone to tell you a funny joke…
- Count – try counting up using one single breath and see how far you get. This will force your diaphragm into action.
- The ‘ha’ exercise: Not Ha Ha! Take a big breath in – kind of pulling your lungs down and pushing your abdomen out. Then force all that air out on a “ha.” Be really bang it out and use all your air at once. This will improve your projection.
- Get projecting: So, projection matters so you can get the motivational messages and technical tips across to the group. It will make a real difference to your members if they don’t have to strain to hear what you are saying and a big difference to you to keep your vocal cords in good shape. We don’t want to ruin our pop star chances do we…
We are keen to talk to hard working PT’s who want to take their business to the next level. The RISE business systems contains all the sales training, the marketing assets, fitech and online presence you need to launch into the next phase of your career.
#franchisefitness #businessopportunity #outdoorfitness
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