In my spare time I’m a singer, and I’m currently preparing a solo for a choir concert in the autumn. It’s the sort of vocal line that is high, utterly exposed and needs to sound effortless and floaty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ4fK7PGhWo
There’s something odd which happens when you’re aiming for a top note in a phrase, as if your brain expects it to be hard and somehow gives up, meaning the note loses tone and can drift flat.
So I’ve been turning to a favourite trick of mine which is to practice the phrase without stopping at the high note – instead, carrying on to sing a few even higher notes afterwards. The strange thing is that even though the high note is just as high, when it’s the middle of a phrase that still has higher to go, it feels easier. Practicing it this way means that when it comes to doing it as written, I can hold that mental idea of carrying on up the scale and keep the sense of ease needed to float up there.
It’s the same with our efforts in life and in our training. If we convince ourselves we’re reaching the limits of our capacity, we are likely to partially give up and not make that extra effort needed to really give our best.
I have been finding this a lot with my personal training clients – people seem to artificially limit themselves, and here I can help them by giving just a bit of encouragement to discover that it’s possible for them to go that bit further than they originally thought was possible.
Of course there are real limits which need to be respected. But they’re rarely where we think they are.
Aiming high is vital if we’re going to go beyond our imagined limits and discover what we can actually do.
Leave a Reply