Build Your Voice Using Isokinetic Exercise


After reviewing the literature on exercise strategies, one form of exercise stood out as the one ideally suited to the needs of voice building: isokinetic (uniform movement) exercise. This form of strength training focuses on the natural movements of the voice muscles to create high levels of antagonism. Isokinetic exercises, generally, work by guiding a muscle or muscle group through a full range of motion by carrying out two critical functions concurrently: the exercise must keep the rate of movement of muscular movement constant while, at the same time, maximizing the resistance to that movement. This ensures maximum overloading of the voice muscles at each point of their movements.
By comparison, in a typical weight-lifting exercise, such as the curl, for instance, the muscular difficulty you experience in your biceps during the full range of motion changes: the first half of the curl movement is more difficult than the second. This is due to what exercise physiologists call “biomechanical advantage,” in which certain angles in a range of muscular motion are easier to achieve than others. This is directly linked to the muscle’s capacity to contract; contraction is the tendency of muscle fibers to shorten—called concentric muscular movement—or lengthen and/or expand—called eccentric muscular movement—during work, which results in increased muscle strength, flexibility, and endurance.
In the case of the curl performed with a barbell, muscle contractions (concentric) are more difficult to achieve at the outset because the bicep musculature is not fully engaged. As the curl progresses, however, the muscle fibers become more fully “recruited” and with this increased contraction,there is greater strength. With an ideal isokinetic exercise, a uniform balance must be struck between the uniform rate of movement and maximum resistance. If we were to apply this principle to our curl exercise, for example, the speed of the movement of the exercise would have to remain constant and slow throughout the full range of motion, while the resistance to this movement would need to increase to the highest possible degree during the second half of the movement, without slowing down the rate of motion.
In typical exercise programs, however, employing legitimate isokinetic principles is difficult. The ability to control precisely both the speed and increased resistance normally requires the use of specially designed isokinetic equipment. At first blush, the idea of applying isokinetic exercises to voice building might seem puzzling. We obviously cannot use special equipment to exercise the vocal musculature. The answer, as we may suspect, lies in the natural functions of the vocal muscles—in the normal points of antagonism between them. They are: The movements of the abdominal and intercostal muscles (concentric and eccentric); the adduction of the vocal folds (concentric); the movements of the pitch muscles (concentric and eccentric); the lowering and rising movements of the larynx (concentric and eccentric); the rising movements of the soft palate (eccentric); and the various configurations that are informed in the pharynx and oral cavity (eccentric)—these are the entry points where we can deploy isokinetic exercises.
How do we accomplish isokinetic exercise with our voices? The key is the special application of our five voice building vowel sounds (ah, as in the word father; eh, as in the word set; ee, as in the word seed; oh, as in the word ought; oo, as in the word boot) in simple, specially designed musical scales. Let’s take, for example, the vowel oh as in the word ought. If you were to sing oh on any note, while putting your throat in a yawn position, the results would include muscular actions that would concurrently bring the vocal folds together, shorten and stretch the vocal folds, lower the larynx as a whole, elongate and expand the pharynx (throat cavity) and finally, cause the soft palate to rise. These actions have the direct effect of producing slight concentric and eccentric antagonisms between and among all these muscle groups. Now if you were to slide the oh vowel up a musical scale very slowly—at a constant speed, and in full, AND increasing, volume—the level of antagonism between the engaged muscle groups would increase significantly.
This exercise simulates isokinetic principles faithfully because the muscular fibers of the various muscular groups are slowly and uniformly shortened or lengthened in the exercise, and, as such, are meeting maximum resistance throughout their full range of motion. The isokinetic principle in voice building is anchored in the back, down, and open yawn position. The yawn throat position is the configuration out of which all the other vowel configurations are formed. Coupled with various vowel sounds, this position imposes challenging positions and configurations in the larynx, pharynx, oral cavity, and soft palate and creates significant muscular antagonism. The result is rapid and spectacular increase in vocal strength and general athletic vocal ability.
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Reader Comments (2)
I've never heard of isokinetic exercises, but they sound pretty interesting.
Voice building is so important for singers and specially classical singers. I agree this research of voice building by hard kinetic exercise. Builder Auckland