I’m joined by the wonderful Selina Tannenberg, an Australian voice physiotherapist with a special interest in vocal health and performance. In this episode, we’re diving into vocal load management—what it is, why it matters, and how applying sports science principles can help singers prevent fatigue, avoid injury, and build long-term vocal strength.
Selina shares practical strategies for tracking vocal load, improving stamina, and making smarter training choices so you can sing stronger for longer. If you’ve ever felt like your voice was “overworked” or wondered how to better support your vocal health, this episode is packed with insight.
What You'll Learn in This Episode:
✅ What vocal load actually means for singers
✅ How to manage your voice like an athlete manages their body
✅ Easy strategies to reduce strain and increase vocal resilience
✅ Why vocal technique alone isn’t enough—and how fitness and recovery play a role
1:18 What is overuse
3:23 Acute incidences of overuse
4:00 Chronic incidences of overuse
6:00 The overuse prevention "Magic Trio"
9:00 The importance of ongoing training and prevention
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Hello, everybody. I am so excited today to have a guest on my podcast.
the fabulous Selina Tannenberg. Selina is a physiotherapist, for those of us in the States that is physical therapist in Australia, who has a special interest in the voice. So she really works with those principles of exercise and sports science and how they relate to singers because we are vocal athletes. And she's gonna be talking to us today about vocal load management. So welcome, Selina, and thank you for being here.
Selina @Voice_Physio (00:36)
Thank you very much for having me on your podcast. Before we start, have to say I love your podcast. I listen to it regularly. Usually after I finish running, I'm stretching out. listen to your podcast. I get so much value out of it. So to be a guest on one of my favorite podcasts is a big honor for me. Thank you for having me.
amber cathey (00:41)
⁓ thank you.
thank you. Well, I'm so thrilled that you're here. as you know, since you listen, it is 10 minutes or less. So let's jump in so you can share all of your juicy goodness with our listeners.
Selina @Voice_Physio (01:06)
Awesome, awesome. we want to talk about vocal load management and why do we want to do that? What is it? And to start, we want to first talk about overuse. Now a lot of singers have heard about overuse, the dreaded O word, but what is it? How do you get it? And how do you prevent it? And spoiler alert, the vocal load management is part of the prevention piece.
So, overuse, simply put, is when you exceed your body's capacity to doing something and you experience negative effect. At any given time, you have various capacities to do various things. Today, I have the physical capacity to run five kilometers or lift 20 kilos. Today, I have...
my vocal capacity to say sing these 10 songs two nights back to back. That's a capacity thing. Now our body is awesome. It is robust. It is adaptable. We can expand our capacity and to do that, we do need to give it a challenge, an appropriate challenge. That is true. It is also true that
Our body can handle a bit of misuse provided that it is not crazy and it is only temporary. And then you allow your body to recover fully. What gets people into trouble is when this challenge and we can think of the challenge as the load on the body or the demand on the body, when the load is inappropriate and when it's ongoing.
And that can look like you are doing something you don't have capacity for yet, which can be like you trying to sing way too demanding songs Than what you can handle right now. Or you may have the capacity to do something, but you don't rest enough. So you never quite replenish what you've spent and eventually you run into trouble. What that can look like is that
amber cathey (03:08)
Mm-hmm.
Selina @Voice_Physio (03:14)
you can start to have tissue changes on a cellular level. So let me give you an example. I think this one we can all relate. Say you bought a new pair of shoes, like a smashing hot pair of high heels. You dress up, you go out, you're fine in the beginning of the night, but at the end of the night, you have blisters on your feet. Your feet have been subjected to an under-custom load. You can't handle it.
and you end up with a tissue injury in the voice that can look like someone going to the football game screaming and shouting they might be drinking alcohol they scream and shout and then suddenly no sound comes out because their vocal folds have hemorrhaged so those are acute incidents of tissue injuries the majority of overuse injuries are chronic you are overdoing things over time
amber cathey (04:06)
Mm-hmm.
Selina @Voice_Physio (04:08)
to get the overuse, they sneak up on you unawares. And what that can look like in the body is that you can have your tendinopathies type thing. tennis elbow, achilles tendinopathies. For the voice, that's when you get vocal cysts, nodules, polyps, that kind of stuff. And those are the things that singers are like, my God, we don't want that. Even though the medical management these days are fantastic,
It's still better not to have it, right?
amber cathey (04:37)
Yeah.
just was gonna say I love too, Selina that you talked about it in relation to any other tissue in the body. I use the analogy a lot. I think what's so tough for singers is you can't see your instrument. So I tell some of my singers, if you could see the overuse that is occurring, like you said, because you are chronically going above and beyond your vocal capacity, your vocal load, if it's like an ankle,
Selina @Voice_Physio (04:46)
Yeah!
That's right.
Hmm.
amber cathey (05:05)
and you could see that it's bruised and swollen and irritated, you wouldn't think twice. You'd be like, get off that sucker, elevate it, put some ice on it, but we can't see it. And so I think a lot of people, even though their body's giving them all kinds of signals, just think like, I'm gonna power through. So I love that you brought up like it's no different than like a rotator cuff or a problem with your elbow or carpal tunnel. It's just.
Selina @Voice_Physio (05:12)
Yes!
Mmm, yep.
Mm-hmm.
amber cathey (05:30)
It's
repeated, repeated, repeated motion, like you said, chronic stuff, and the voice isn't any different.
Selina @Voice_Physio (05:36)
Exactly. And I love what you said about your body will tell you because it does. We just need to learn to listen. And that's all part of it comes under the prevention side of things. So now that we know what overuse can cause let's have a look at how can we prevent it then. And I have three keys, which is what I call the magic trio. So the first one is learn and use good vocal technique.
Technique is important. Technique helps you use your voice safely and efficiently. However, the biggest lie singers have been told that I have seen in forums, blog posts, on the internet, is that when people tell singers that if you have good technique, then you won't injure your voice, which is 100 % complete and utter bullshit, because as we have just talked about, it is a capacity issue. You can have
amber cathey (06:30)
Yes.
Selina @Voice_Physio (06:31)
splendid, flawless, ample technique, you can still exhaust your capacity. Just like you can have $2 million to spend, you can blow it off. So technique is important, but it is not the only thing. There are other pieces to this puzzle. So the second piece is to build a strong, limber and fit body. Because your voice is not just your vocal folds, it's your entire body. We are literally using our whole body.
to make beautiful sounds. So having a strong, limber and fit body helps you use your voice easier, makes light work of it, lighter work of it. And so it's like, if you have strong legs, you can walk up flights of stairs and not blink. So when you have better capacity, so you are spending less per day, it also helps you recover easier because you spend less. Just like you buy a new phone, it has a better battery.
amber cathey (07:09)
Yeah, yep.
Selina @Voice_Physio (07:27)
So instead of draining till down to the last 5%, it goes red, you have 50 % left by the end of the day. So you have a better reserve for rainy days, for the unexpected. Maybe someone come to dream collab come knocking and you can handle it. And you also can recover, you recharge faster. So that's the second piece. And the third piece is vocal load management. So so far, we talk about improving your technique,
and strengthening your body, they relate to your capacity to sing Vocal load management is the other side of the equation, is the demand side of things. So how much you use your voice, we wanna make sure that this stays in a good, healthy balance and not blowing out. And this is where the science comes into it because in sports, we have really effective tools for load management. This is how athletes figure out how much to train.
when to train, how hard to train, how much to rest. And they also use these tools to manage their training so that as they lead up to a competition, they arrive in top form, they are fresh and with low risk of injuries. And like you said before, Amber, we are vocal athletes, so we can use the same tools to manage our vocal load so that we can have optimum voice quality, help us prevent overuse injuries, and
to promote healthy, sustainable, lifelong singing. So that is, in a nutshell, Vocal Load Management and why I think every singer should learn how to do it.
amber cathey (09:00)
Yeah, well, I love all of this, Selina I love so much of what you said, and I love that you just were talking about if you are a high level athlete, you train in a way so when the big game comes, like you said, you are ready to perform at your absolute highest with the least risk of injury. And what I see happen all the time is singers who maybe are not regularly training, regularly working, which like you said, increases your capacity.
Selina @Voice_Physio (09:24)
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
amber cathey (09:28)
a big
opportunity comes up, that big collab comes knocking, you get a big audition, you get asked to open for somebody major on a tour and you're like, my gosh, I have to do it. And they shove so much in at the last minute that they go into the tour, they go to the audition below 100 % because they have pushed so much. And that's where like the ongoing prevention, ongoing load management, ongoing training, I know it's not.
Selina @Voice_Physio (09:47)
Mm-hmm.
amber cathey (09:56)
what people love to hear, but it's just the reality.
Selina @Voice_Physio (09:58)
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely, and just a quick tip there, any sudden spikes in vocal load, that's what throws people off. That's the kind of stuff that can blow out the balance, and especially if you have a spike and it is sustained. So if you have a show, if you're going on tour, you rehearse, rehearse, and then you ramp up your rehearsal, and then you go on tour, and you know when you are on stage, you give more, like you put more into your performance, so the intensity is higher.
It's not just about how much, it's how much intensity it takes you because I can talk to you for 10 minutes on this podcast and it doesn't require a lot of effort. But if in this 10 minutes, I want to belt define gravity back to back two times, it's a different thing, right? It's a different spending of my vocal capacity. that's why you need to prepare.
amber cathey (10:43)
Yeah, yeah.
Yes, yep, absolutely. This has been so great. tell everybody how they can reach you. I'm gonna put all your contact info down in the show notes. And you've also got a freebie for people to kind of just help them with exactly what we've been talking about. So can you share a little bit of that so folks know where to find you?
Selina @Voice_Physio (10:57)
Thank you.
Absolutely, I am most active on the Instant m-gram and you can look me up at voice underscore physio That's probably the best place to find me or you can go to my website Which is movemedics .com.au and the free gift I have for you guys is a vocal load starter guide There's some tips to help you get started learning vocal load management. And if you want a deep dive, I've run master classes
amber cathey (11:29)
Awesome.
Selina @Voice_Physio (11:32)
two times a year so get on the freebie so you will then be notified when the next master class happens.
amber cathey (11:38)
Yay, I love it.
Thank you so much for being here and thank you guys for listening and we'll see you all in the next episode.
Selina @Voice_Physio (11:46)
Thank you.
