Tackle Your Voice First Thing in the Morning

I have officially been teaching singers for 30 years. I started in 1996, and after three decades I can say this with total confidence. A singer’s biggest hurdle is not range, power, or tone. It's the singers themselves. This shows up most clearly when it comes to warming up and training the voice.

Somewhere along the way, vocal training picked up a reputation for being a chore. That is unfortunate, because when it’s done right, it's actually fun. What I usually see is a burst of excitement. A singer commits to a great warmup, adds vocal strength training exercises, sings their songs, and feels amazing. Then life happens. The routine slips. Five or six days a week turns into once in a while. Eventually it disappears altogether.

I see this constantly with touring artists. I never scold them. I joke with them and ask, “Be honest. What have you been doing?” The answers are almost always the same. No strength training. Warmups only sometimes. Cool downs, what cool downs?!? 

The truth is simple. You are a physical instrument. Just because you can open your mouth and make noise doesn’t mean your instrument is tuned, conditioned, or ready to perform.

My approach has always been “the earlier is better”. For many years, I was up at 5 AM. I would walk on a treadmill while doing a warmup like Voice RX  and then straight into my ISO exercises (Falsetto Slides, Transcending Tones, and Sirens). The entire routine took about 30 minutes.

I also multitasked because my brain likes motion. Netflix was on when my body was moving. Why the treadmill? Because movement matters. When you move, you increase oxygen intake, warm up the muscles of the body, activate the lungs, and engage the intercostal muscles. This is what I call cardio singing, a term I coined back in 1991 when I jogged outside singing quietly along to songs on a Sony Walkman. The stamina gains are real.

I know what you're thinking. 5 AM is ridiculous. Fair enough. But if you normally get up at 7:00, getting up at 6:30 isn’t unreasonable. A treadmill, elliptical, rebounder, or even gentle bouncing in place works. Do your warmup and your vocal workout first. This completely kills the myth that your voice needs hours to wake up. That is simply not true. I work with many praise and worship leaders who sing early in the morning all the time, and they do just fine.

Once your warmup and workout are done, the best part is left. Singing. I live by the 2/3 rule. You sing at least twice as long as you spend warming up and training. Thirty minutes of vocalizing means sixty minutes of singing. Twenty minutes means forty minutes of singing. More singing than 2/3 is fine, but the balance matters.

If you take one thing from this, change the timing. Don’t wait until the afternoon or evening. Train early. If you’re pressed for time, warm up in the shower. Your voice loves heat and steam. Build the habit. Your voice thrives on routine.

If you want help building a morning routine with tools like DoctorVox, or if you have questions about your voice, reach out. Your voice will thank you for it.

Your Vox coach,

Jaime Vendera