Voice health ยท Article
Why your throat hurts after speaking
Usually it's because you're working too hard to be heard, by holding your breath and pushing from the throat. Speaking should feel easy, and with better breath and less tension it can.
What a sore throat is telling you
After a day of calls, a lot of people finish with a scratchy, tired throat. It's rarely about how much you talked. It's about how you talked. When you're tense or rushing, the breath stays high in the chest and the muscles around the throat do the work your breath should be doing.
You'll often notice it in the jaw and shoulders first. They creep up and the jaw clenches between sentences. By the afternoon your voice feels smaller than it did in the morning.
If the pain or hoarseness keeps coming back, or lasts more than a couple of weeks, see your GP. A voice coach can help with how you use your voice, but a doctor needs to rule out anything else.
A ten-minute warm-up before you speak
This is the warm-up I gave a client this week, before a day of back-to-back calls. It takes about ten minutes and you can do it at your desk.
- Release the neck and shoulders. Side stretches, then slow neck rolls. Let the shoulders drop rather than pulling them down.
- Breathe into your side ribs. Put your hands on your lower ribs and feel them widen as you breathe in. Then breathe out slowly on a long shh, and again on a long z.
- Free the jaw and tongue. Let the jaw hang open from the back, as if it's heavy. Then stretch the tongue out and circle it slowly round your teeth.
- Finish with lip trills. Blow air through loose lips so they buzz, and slide up and down in pitch like a siren.
By the end your voice should feel warmer and lower in the body. That's the place to speak from.
Keeping it easy through the day
Between calls, take a full breath out before you start the next one, and drop your shoulders. Sip water through the day rather than gulping it at the end. If your voice starts to tire, slow down. Speaking a little slower takes a surprising amount of strain off the throat.
If this keeps happening, it's worth looking at properly. In a Voice Audit I listen to how you speak at work and show you where the tension is coming from, so you know exactly what to change.
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