ENHANCING YOUR LUNG CAPACITY AND IMPROVING YOUR VOCAL PERFORMANCE

The importance of enhancing lung capacity and controlling your breath to improving your vocal performance.

Since we sing and speak through breathing, our lungs performance affects our vocal performance.

Voice is the result of air movement which makes your vocal folds close. Therefore, you can improve your voice quality by breathing exercises aimed at expanding your lung capacity and improving your breath control. This will allow you to better regulate the amount of air pressing the vocal folds, and as a result, produce longer sounds much easier. Thanks to this exercises, you could minimize the amount of air required to generate voice.

A better air supply also allows you to reduce the straining of your vocal cords, thus making your singing and speech more flexible and effortless.

Voice control involves pressing the air against your vocal cords, making it resonate through vocal cavities. This way you can enhance it through resonance.

The bad news is, especially if you live on your voice, is that your bronchi and alveoli grow narrow with age, which means you lose lung capacity. This harms your breathing capacity, and as a result, the length, resonance and general quality of your voice. Your lungs performance may further suffer due to air pollution, microbes, smoking and other disorders.

The good news is that there is an exercise allowing you to significantly improve your breath control and the effect of vocal resonance.

Moreover: it can also allow you to significantly expand your lungs, with positive effects not only on your voice generation, but on your health in general, thanks to better oxygen supply, even at old age.

If you are skeptical, check this video and see how far our lung capacity can be expanded!! Do not Try this underwater!!!

So how can we expand our lung capacity, in order to improve our vocal performance?

Lung-capacity expanding exercise for beginners

Perform the following exercise every day before any work requiring strained vocal effort. It is an essential part of vocal warm up. Its purpose is to expand your lung capacity as well as minimize the airflow pressing against the vocal folds.

Warnings:

• It is strictly forbidden to perform this exercise in the water.
• Such exercises have relaxing and distracting effect, so you should better not perform them before any activity involving concentration, such as driving.

1. Lie or sit upright and relaxed.
2. To the count of 3, inhale through your nose. Hold your breath to the count of 16, and then exhale, to the count of 8.

During this exercise, your ribs should extend sideways, and you should feel the back of lungs expand.

3. After a few minutes of exercising, you could repeat the exercise while making an even, continuous sound when exhaling.

On your first exercises, use a quick count, which should be slowed down the longer you exercise. Try to perform it as long as possible, preferably, 20 minutes at a time.

We recommend you should perform this exercise at least 3 times a day, for 3 weeks, regularly. Then, you should perform it at least twice a day, before bedtime and before a vocal strain.

The following video shows how effectively you can extend your lung capacity:

Good luck!

Talya