The “vocal athlete” model is valuable. It offers a helpful way of thinking about preparation, load, and recovery. But it is not the whole picture, and for anyone who performs and sings, whether they call themselves a singer or not, the stakes of getting this right are too high to stop there.
I remember the first time I saw a touring schedule of an artist who had just broken through. I was shocked at how much was crammed into their day.
This was a young artist, early in their career, full of energy and personality. They were a pianist as well as a singer, the kind of performer who jumps around a lot including onto the piano, giving everything to the audience. Innately talented. Hugely likeable. Spontaneously creative.
But during a brief conversation, I glimpsed something else entirely. Behind the talent and the energy lay real self-doubt. A sense of not belonging in this new world they’d found themselves in, appreciative of every opportunity, but not quite feeling deserving of any of them. Not enough.
When I looked at their schedule, early morning radio, promo appearances, sometimes singing as part of those interviews, five to six shows a week, sleeping on a tour bus, waking in different cities most mornings, I realised how little control they had over any of it, especially at that stage of their career.
At the time, I was solely focused on the voice, but this encounter planted a seed. It would still be some time before my practice as a singing teacher began to reflect it, but something had shifted. I had caught a glimpse of how much bigger the picture actually was.
It was in preparing a lecture for clinicians taking PAMA’s Essentials of Performing Arts Medicine course that I found myself thinking all of this through properly for the first time. And let’s be honest, when you have to explain something clearly to a group of clinicians, you have to really know what you think.
In researching the literature, I was struck by how thin the performing arts medicine evidence base feels compared to sports and exercise medicine. An informal search suggests the gap is substantial, though to properly quantify it would require more rigorous analysis than I have space for here. What I can say is that pulling the evidence together, building the argument, crystallised something I realise now I have been moving toward for years.
And what I think is this: the “vocal athlete” model is a vital starting point. But it is not designed to carry the full weight of what performing artists actually navigate.
The “vocal athlete” framework
The idea that singers are “vocal athletes” is one of the most useful conceptual shifts in vocal pedagogy. It gives us a rigorous, evidence-grounded language for talking about preparation, load management, tissue warm-up, and recovery. The laryngeal musculature is subject to the same fatigue and micro-trauma cycles as skeletal muscle anywhere else in the body. Exercise science principles apply. This framing matters, and it is changing how we educate singers and support their vocal health.
But that artist’s touring schedule stayed with me. I began to wonder whether elite sports programmes would deliberately design a performance schedule like that.
Where the analogy breaks down
At elite levels, athletes typically follow structured training and competition cycles designed to optimise performance at key events. Of course, elite sport is not perfectly controlled either. Many athletes compete within dense seasons, financial pressures and commercial demands. But the principle of structured load management remains embedded within sports science.
A performer’s schedule and workload can vary enormously, situation by situation, job by job. A musical theatre performer contracted to a show will have a programmed schedule, but the reality can be far more complex than it appears. It’s not uncommon for a performer moving from one show to another to be doing evening shows on one contract while simultaneously rehearsing a new show during the day. Add to that the financial instability that characterises most performance careers, the pressure of feeling only as good as your last job, and the very real need to take any and all work to maintain income flow. In elite sports, coaches usually avoid combining peak competition demands with full training loads or major skill development. Training volume is typically reduced during competition phases so athletes can perform and recover effectively. But in the performing arts, this is just a Tuesday.
A signed artist may know their major performance commitments years in advance. But a working singer, usually self-employed or working through an agent, may have no such structure, juggling several projects simultaneously, moving between genres and jobs, doing casual work to pay the rent, teaching or coaching and training and recovery simply not factored in to their schedule. Classical performance culture has historically offered more protection, but even that isn’t universal.
The truth is, it is complicated. And that complexity is precisely why we need to take the time to understand each individual’s circumstances.
Scheduling tells part of the story. But what happens when the performance itself is the thing that compromises the voice, mind and body?
When the performance is the problem
There is something even more fundamental. A sprinter will never intentionally run with poor form. But an actor-singer may be required to sustain poor form for two or more hours as part of the performance itself, singing while conveying anger, performing in physically restrictive costumes, singing in a dialect not their own, performing hunched over or on their knees for the whole show, moving sets or props around, singing and playing an instrument or singing whilst flying on a trapeze.
The athlete also tends to wear clothing designed to support their performance. A singer dresses for the character, the genre, or the expectations of the industry. Standing, moving and delivering vocally demanding material in high heels makes no postural sense, yet it is entirely routine. Singing inside a full animal body suit is not conducive to free breathing, vocal resonance, or even hearing yourself clearly. Restrictive corsetry limits rib expansion. Full prosthetic makeup restricts facial muscle movement, directly affecting articulation and expression. Harnesses worn for flying rigs limit thoracic movement and alter breathing mechanics, and are often strapped on long before the moment they are actually needed.
And yet the show must go on. In exactly that costume. On exactly that stage, sometimes raked. Eight times, or more, a week.
The compromised form is not the problem. The compromised form is the performance.
Add to this the cognitive load, the emotional exposure and the identity fusion many singers have with their vocal instrument. Layer on top of that the relentless need for visibility on social media, industry expectations, and an audience who feel they have a claim on who you are, how you look, and how you perform. In my experience, and in the emerging literature on performing arts medicine, these dimensions, identity, visibility, industry pressure, remain significantly underaddressed in clinical practice. I believe rather than being peripheral to the performer’s physical, vocal and mental health, they are central to it.
Singing performers therefore require a broader framework than the athletic model alone, one that integrates vocal load, physical staging demands, psychological pressures, and the vastly varied occupational realities.
What I do differently now
When I work with artists today, I still work on the voice. But I start somewhere else entirely.
I take a fuller history: medical, health and wellbeing practices, performance, musical, education, and psychological. I ask about their goals, their schedule, their job/role demands, their working environment, their wardrobe, their touring conditions. I explore their mindset, their relationship with pressure and self-doubt. And I refer to other practitioners, in performance, medicine, physical fitness, nutrition and mental health, because no single practitioner can hold all of this alone.
The “vocal athlete” model is the right foundation. But performers need a holistic framework built on top of it, one that accounts for the full complexity of what they do, and who they are.
I’m still learning. My practice is still evolving. But I know that the performers I work with deserve more than a single lens.
I’d love to know, whether you are a performer or a clinician working with performers, what does your experience tell you?
Line 💜
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