Essential 5 Minute Trans Voice Warm Up for Daily Practice

Warming up your voice is essential for sustainable vocal feminization. Vocal warm ups prevent injury, relieve vocal tension, and can help encourage ease in the voice. 

Why do Vocal Warm Ups for Vocal Feminization?

Warming up your voice for vocal feminization is just like stretching before you go for a jog. Even a couple minutes can make a big difference in the health of your voice and your approach to practice.  

In this vocal warm up, we’ll do some stretching, breathing, and vocalizing. 

5 Minute Trans Voice Vocal Warm Up

Stretching

Stretching is an important part of a warm up. For vocal feminization, we want to decrease tension wherever we can. A decrease in tension allows for more control over the vocal mechanism. 

Exercise:

Wrap your left arm up and over the top of your head, resting your hand on your right ear. Gently pull your head over toward your left shoulder. Hold for 3 breaths. 

Now bring your head more toward your armpit on the same side. Hold for 3 breaths. Release your hand and let your head gently float back to center. 

Repeat on the other side. Do this 3 times on each side. 

Belly Breathing

Breath gets the voice going, so it’s important to breathe deeply from the belly rather than taking shallow breaths that you might feel in your chest. Shallow breathing can cause tension, and doesn’t allow you to take in enough air. 

Exercise:

Place one hand on your belly and one hand on your chest. Take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. 

The goal is to feel movement in your belly rather than in your chest. 

Straw In Water

Exercise: Grab a straw and a cup about half way full with water. Put the straw in the water a few inches deep. Blow even bubbles in the water, taking deep belly breaths. Make sure your lips are closed around the straw, and there’s no air escaping out of the sides of your mouth. Repeat 5 times. 

Add a hum on a comfortable pitch as you blow bubbles. Repeat 5 times. 

Slide from a low pitch to a high pitch as you blow bubbles. Repeat 5 times. 

Slide from a high pitch to a low pitch. Repeat 5 times. 

Slide from low to high, and back down to low, 5 times. 

All throughout these exercises, focus on keeping steady bubbles, or breath flow. 

How to Create a Warm Up Habit

Consistency is key when it comes to warming up. It’s better to warm up daily for a few minutes than to warm up once a week for an hour. 

Since these warm ups are only a five minute commitment, one technique that can be very helpful is called habit stacking. I learned about this in James Clear’s Atomic Habits. 

With habit stacking, you attach the new habit onto something that you’re already in the habit of doing. For instance, as you make your coffee in the morning, you could do your stretches warm up. 

I also like time blocking. With time blocking, you make an appointment with yourself to do your warm up. You put it on your calendar with a certain time length, just like you would for a haircut or doctor’s appointment. Once that time is up, you can go about your day. 

Keep it up!

Consistency is key! Focus on building a habit around your warm up so that you work on your vocal health every day. 

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