94. How not to lose your voice with Anna McManamey
Fitness goddess Anna McManamey shares how she managed to take care of her voice while working shift-work as a TV journalism and teaching group fitness classes.
Transcript
Hello, today I’m taking you all the way back to episode FOUR with a taste of my chat with Anna McManamey. Anna and I first met when we both worked for 7 News in Rockhampton, since then Anna has gone on to take the fitness world by storm. She’s a physique coach and a comp judge, she’ in incredible shape, and I’ve always admired Anna’s discipline and determination and the way she takes care of herself, and this is why I wanted to share the part of our chat about voice care.
Voice Care is so important and often forgotten. In all my coaching we go through practical exercises you can do and practices you can adopt, to not only help your voice sound great, but also to ensure it’s there for you.
If you find yourself getting a sore throat quite often, or your voice easily goes raspy or crackly or just weak – then you need to start taking serious care of your voice.
This is something we cover in My Six Week Voice Makeover, and we’ll also be covering in my new course Speak from Your Soul which starts on November 7th.
The link to more info is in the shownotes, or just DM me, that’s Speak from Your Soul.
So now let’s hear Anna’s big game changer when it came to her voice.
Anna: Learning to breathe from your diaphragm. This is something I think we're all guilty of. We're very shallow breathers. I think stress and just day to day pressures has a lot to do with that. We tend to, we don't breathe deeply anymore and that was a big change for me. I used to, well it's shallow breathing and it was a lot of I don't want to say screeching, it wasn't screeching, but it was very hard on my throat and it wasn't until another group fitness instructor suggested to me, yeah, just look, just watch your voice because keep doing that and you're going to lose it one day. Try to focus on your breathing deeply. Try to avoid any kind of URGH like up in the throat, sort of instruction. But yeah, that being said, group fitness is a tough, tough gig and most of us who do it don't do it full time.
We're working other jobs as well outside of that. And I remember when I first got into group fitness, I was actually just starting my journalism career and I was working at Sky News and I was doing shift work. So my body clock was all over the place. Didn't know what time of day it was. Very, very stressed, very, very sleep deprived and tried to teach classes on top. And I remember there was, there was a time there for a good two months that I lost my voice. I couldn't voice any packages. I could barely teach a class. So it's taking care of yourself as well because if you're not healthy then you know your voice is often the first thing to go. You know, a lot of people describe coming down with tonsillitis or or just, you know, having that sort of scratchy feeling in their throats when they know that they're getting run down. And that's the first signs. So it was a combination of just being aware of how I was using my voice. And then just ensuring I'm getting enough sleep, you know, the basics. Taking care of myself, being healthy.
Yep, the basics of adulting, sleep, diet and exercise. These are the three things I come back to when my energy isn’t great. To listen to the full chat with Anna, scroll on right back to episode 4. And remember to get on the list for Speak from your Soul. It’s like how to adult for your voice, because if you connect with your voice with your truth, your voice and your message will connect with others. So get on the waitlist, the link is in the shownotes.