Digging Deeper into Mechanisms: How Exercises and Stretching Impact the Voice
Thursday 21st March 2024, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM (London Time)
Deeply embedded into voice care, interventions such as stretching and exercise have a simple premise: stretch what’s tight and strengthen what’s weak. Tight and weak muscles are often seen as culprits needing remediation, but what goes into these interventions? Though pleasantly simple narratives, the mechanisms behind such interventions are nuanced and variable. This short course will guide the learner into a deeper understanding to provide a more straightforward path to client instruction.
Paralleling problems in more general research, outcome-based studies often fail to thoroughly examine the traditional underlying explanations for why a problem exists and how change occurs via the intervention. Those mechanisms are the gap between a problem and a successful outcome. Witness the myriad of approaches claiming success with various aspects of voice. Based on a general complaint, each method tends to claim problems (tightness, weakness, poor form or technique, sub-optimal posture, incorrect breathing, etc.) and set forth to devise a study to remediate the problem. When the problem is helped, the work is seen as a success, but the logic used often falls into post hoc fallacy issues.
Fully vetted and accepted mechanisms of action for voice interventions are rare. How an intervention works is nuanced and can be viewed from various perspectives. Each model tends to be not wrong but also not entirely correct. Does this sound confusing? Join me as we explore this uncertainty and clear a path forward.
Walt Fritz
Walt Fritz, PT, has evolved traditionally taught tissue-based approaches into a unique interpretation of manual therapy. This approach advances views of causation and impact from historical tissue-specific models into a multifactorial narrative, leaning heavily on biopsychosocial influences.
Attend this course for as little as £22 as part of the Voice Professional Training CPD Award Scheme.
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We have plenty of upcoming short courses coming soon. See details of some of them below or look at the full list of short courses.
Friday 12th June 2026
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
(London Time)
Learning together: group singing and choral pedagogy
Dr David Cane
The benefits of group singing are well documented and well known. Singing together can foster a sense of social connection and community as well enhancing wellbeing and mood. However, group singing is not only a shared cultural and artistic experience, but can also be a powerful site of learning. While many of the developments in voice pedagogy have tended to centre around the one-to-one model of teaching, this course with Dr David Cane explores the pedagogical (and potentially the political) potential of teaching and learning to sing collectively.
Monday 15th June 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Tuesday 16th June 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Wednesday 17th June 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Thursday 18th June 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Friday 19th June 2026
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
(London Time)
Introduction to Postgraduate Academic Skills - Summer Bootcamp - Join Live!
Debbie Winter
Hosted by our very own Director of Studies (Debbie Winter), join our comprehensive Introduction to Academic Skills course, designed to equip you with essential tools and strategies for success in higher education. Perfect for bridging the gap between undergraduate and postgraduate study, this course offers a pathway to our full MA for students without an existing degree. We offer both live, interactive sessions and standalone, pre-recorded content.
Thursday 18th June 2026
9:00 PM - 11:00 PM
(London Time)
Body wisdom for vocal performers and educators: What the heart and lungs can teach us about sustainable and joyful vocal practice!
Dr Mark Seton
Join Dr Mark Seton as he discusses his recent research with creatives (260 participants) on how many are seeking to be more empowered in their personal and professional lives, as well as more embodied and enduring in the midst of rapidly changing life and work. This foundational and interactive workshop takes us on an embodied journey into how the actual heart functions and its crucial partnership with our lungs. In this course we’ll learn from their collective wisdom how to remain healthily ‘opened’ and ‘closed’ at the same time, to breath in and breath out, allowing time for both refreshment and recovery between each beat of our hearts, and each drawing of breath.