The Singing Athlete

If you’re on this platform, you know

She’s the force behind “Raise Your Ya-Ya-Ya” and has built one of the most engaged communities for singers online.

She asked me recently how to approach the final phrase of “So Much Better” from Legally Blonde.

We made two small adjustments to the key moments (the onset and offset).

First, the onset: the voiced TH.

The dental constriction in /ð/ creates a semi-occluded vocal tract (the same basic aerodynamic principle as a straw or lip trill.)

Back-pressure builds above the glottis, the transglottal pressure differential drops, and the folds can sustain vibration without subglottic pressure having to climb as high. It’s a lighter, more efficient configuration right when you need it.

Second, the offset: “than beFAH” instead of “than beFORE.”

The “American R” (/ɹ/)requires tongue base retraction, and that retraction overlaps with the neuromuscular sequence your body uses to initiate a swallow.

When the styloglossus fires, the hyoid shifts and the larynx follows it up.

Pharyngeal space narrows, and the resonance you were using for the note disappears at the exact moment you need to bring the phrase home.

Neurologically, swallowing wins over singing every time.

In your brain’s hierarchy, it’s way more important for your survival…no matter how much you want to nail the end of Act One.

𝗝𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗸𝗲𝗽𝘁 𝗳𝗹𝗶𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗼.

There’s a moment near the end of “Donny Novitski” where the song calls for full voice...and his nervous system didn’t feel safe enough to do it.

He was also struggling to stay in the rhythm of the song. Your cerebellum runs both: timing and motor output. Flipping the note is a movement error. Losing the beat is a movement error. When the cerebellum is underperforming, both can show up at once.

We ran a RAPS test: a rhythmic assessment of the hands that tells us how well the cerebellum is communicating with the motor system. Left hand was dysrhythmic.

Muscle tested the posterior deltoid. Also weak on the left.

The cerebellum has a strong bias toward proximal extensors, and the posterior deltoid is one of its primary outputs. When that muscle goes offline, the postural chain that the voice lives inside starts to compensate.

Loaded the posterior deltoid with a .band. And then reassessed.

James hit the note in full voice.



Tag a singer who’s been told to “commit more” without anyone ever checking what the nervous system was actually doing.

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𝗘𝗿𝗶𝗰’𝘀 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗶𝗺 𝗼𝗳𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱.

Literally. The high A in “It All Fades Away” pulled him onto relevé. And his left knee was hyperextending.

Eric came in with a torn medial meniscus and sprain on his right knee. The menisci are the C-shaped cartilage discs that sit between your femur and tibia, acting as shock absorbers and stabilizers for the joint. When one is compromised, the other side can sometimes take over, and the nervous system reorganizes around the injury.

That reorganization showed up in his singing.

We didn’t touch the injured side. We went to the left (the side that was compensating) and used a .band to load knee flexion in an anterior lunge.

Then the high note soared. The tension faded away (pun absolutely intended).

Flexvit link for discount in bio.



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Brandon’s high G came out when his scapula had somewhere to be.

Winged scapula on the right side. As he climbed the “ee” scale, pec minor was dragging him into protraction and anterior tilt…and his voice was paying for it.

One of my hands on the pec minor. The other on the rhomboid. The cue is: “Maintain space between my hands.”

𝗛𝗶𝗴𝗵 𝗚 came out great.

When the scapula loses its position, the larynx loses its ability to stabilize inferiorly. (The omohyoid connects them directly.)

He said it felt counterintuitive. He also said the flow was noticeably better. We ended in a hug. 🤝

𝗘𝗺𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘃𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸.

It didn’t.

She was working on “Journey to the Past”, and the last note wanted to flip into head voice (where it should be belted.)

We started in speaking voice on “yuh-way.” Favorable vowels, low threat. Then an arpeggio on the same sounds. Then we swapped in the actual words she needed: “At last.”

That’s associative learning. The nervous system doesn’t care whether the syllable is a drill or a lyric—it just needs a pattern it can trust. So we built the pattern first, then attached the demand to it.

This is the SAID principle in practice: Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand. You don’t start with the hard thing. You start with what’s already working and walk the nervous system toward the challenge. Lower the threat. Build from success. Then surmount.

She held the final note exactly as written. Her face said the rest.

Tag a singer who’s been avoiding their belt.



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“That was easy!”

Sara Nord came to me with “I Dreamed A Dream” and a detail she almost didn’t mention — her right eardrum is a prosthetic.

We did the finger-rub test in front of her right ear. Nothing.

Left ear was normal.

Then I crinkled a bag in front of the right ear, and that was loud enough to register.

We ran the song again.

The strain was gone. 👂

Her nervous system wasn’t fighting the song. It was finally getting enough information to stop bracing.

Brain-based voice training isn’t always about what you’re doing with your voice. Sometimes it’s about what your brain is 𝗻𝗼𝘁 receiving.

sara

𝗞𝗶𝘁𝘁𝘆’𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝗳𝘁 𝗲𝘆𝗲𝗯𝗿𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗱𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸.

Not both eyebrows. Just the left one. Every time she held the final note of “Here I Am,” that brow would climb — recruiting, bracing, compensating for something.

We assessed. A C-128 tuning fork on her left forehead told us what the eyebrow already knew: the ophthalmic branch of the trigeminal nerve on the left side was asleep. The vibration barely registered. So the motor system had found a workaround — extra facial tension trying to fill in what the nerve wasn’t delivering.

That’s the thing about compensation patterns. They’re not bad habits. They’re intelligent solutions to a sensory gap.

We vibrated her left forehead with the and asked her to hold the note again.

She held it. Full duration. No fatigue.

Her exact words: “What happened? I need this gadget.”

That’s Assess and Reassess. One nerve branch, one test, one input change — and the voice that was already inside her finally had the map it needed.

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