This has sort of veered off into the land of societal esthetics, but for the record I was talking about fitness, not being skinny. More in terms of, should a singer really be spending time at the gym lifting weights, have the lung capacity and stamina to run five or ten miles, have a muscle ratio of X and a bodyfat percentage of Y... that sort of thing.
I don't think being "fashionably thin" belongs in the world of singing (unless you're one of the small percentage of naturally skinny people -- the tall, gangly bass stereotype). I think all teachers should know how to recognize the signs of the wrong kind of weight loss in their students -- loss of breath support, a thin, shrill (brittle) top, lacking the stamina to get through pieces that were formerly easy... yes, (says my teacher, when ranting about her "fashionable" students) you may regain that girlish figure, but you start to sound girlish, too. I would bet that some of our professors here have had to deal with students at a lower, weaker weight than their potential should have allowed them.
One of the students in my teacher's studio looked into a modelling career to supplement her income. Her agent told her she needed to lose about ten pounds. I was shocked the last time I heard her. She sounded like she did as a teenager -- a major regression in the quality of her sound. She said it's like you can't physically get enough air into your body -- your stomach and lower torso won't expand -- so you end up sucking it all into your upper lungs and grabbing for breaths whenever you can. Hopefully she'll soon realize that $300 a photo shoot isn't worth her career, the very thing these photo shoots were supposed to be helping.
No, I more wanted to start a discussion about how *fit* a singer should get... how much time and energy we should be putting into the cardio and the weights, and whether that time spent getting fit is worth the time it pulls away from singing and studying. There is also a constant rumor that singers *shouldn't* weight train -- that it makes them musclebound and tightens up the wrong things (same goes for singers not doing crunches or situps, too). I know there are some iron-pumpers on the list -- has it made a difference, making the extra effort to get into really good shape?
Or, another tack: How do singers with careers remain fit, or at least avoid sliding into out-of-shape? It's commonly said that singers have the worst lifestyles in terms of health -- always travelling, usually not eating right before a show and then being famished and having a big dinner (usually at a restaurant, with food whose fat/calorie levels you can't control, especially outside the US), then going to sleep. Even if you don't eat late at night, you still can't control how healthy your food is. I read an article that said Rodney Gilfrey takes a jump rope with him and works out in his hotel rooms, but I would be that he's in the minority. How do singers manage to keep themselves as healthy as they can, when 90% of the time you are away from home with bad eating habits?
Back into the land of singing...
Isabelle B.
===== Isabelle Bracamonte San Francisco, CA ibracamonte@y... ibracamonte@y...
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