What Does a Sustainable Practice Regimen Look Like?

There's no getting around it. Practicing sucks. Seasoned pros hate it too.

It's like working out. You have to plan it out ahead of time and also find a regimen that is a reasonable time commit for you and your goals. For example, I'm a sprinter. I have tried once in my life to train for a long distance run. For about 4 months, I dedicated myself to gradually upping my mileage. I got up to 9 miles and absolutely burnt out. I also jacked up my achilles.

I was trying to run a half marathon because I thought it was a "cool-looking" accomplishment. But when I was honest with myself, I honestly didn't care to run that much. And I like running! However, my efficiency and technique rapidly decline as my mileage exceeds 4 miles at any given time. I have a short attention span for it: I like to go fast and get it over with it. And that's totally cool.

I also loath spending more than 45 minutes on a workout. I enjoy a workout if it's well-planned and on the shorter side. I'm not ashamed. I know myself.

So what does this have to do with my practice regimen? Well, as you can imagine, I have a really short attention span for practice as well. This is certainly not a bad thing since my primary instrument is voice and the voice can only handle consistent singing for up to an hour, 1.5 hours max. So I structure a "singing" practice session as I would structure a lesson:

• Physical warm-up (making sure my back is stretched and all joints are mobile; I do usually three sun salutations)
• Releasing air (on unvoiced consonants (i.e. hissing on s) and voiced consonants (z))
• Coordinating my onset (initial sound) on vowels in my speaking range (C-G4)
• Sighs to the extremes of my range, ending in vocal fry on the low end
• Making various noises (calls for music theater, lofted yawns for classical passaggio)
• Lots of descending 5th exercises, adding in consonants
• Staccato arpeggios 1-3-5-8-10-8-5-3-1
• Messa di voce exercises 
• Coloutura exercises, if my big horn is feeling up to it
• Targeted sections in music I'm working on (usually 8 measure phrases)

Now, this may blow your mind.... but you don't have to sing or play to practice. Yup. Practice can take on other forms, like the following:

• translating a foreign language (writing it in your music)
• figuring out all the rhythms in a song via clapping and counting
• conducting to another singer or player singing/playing a piece
• doing a character analysis (writing it out)
• researching the show (what the plot is based on, if it's fiction or non-fiction)
• cueing a singer before phrases (thanks, Bill Hite)
• playing the inner voices or bass line on piano

I do not use my voice every single time I practice. When I was in grad school, I was practicing about 5 times per week and my weekly scheduled usually looked like this:

As you can see, my approach was NOT to sing every song I currently had from beginning to end and be done with it. I surely would have made minimal strides. And I probably would have burnt out or gotten bored. I had to dedicate specific days for specific goals and activities to preserve my voice but also my sanity.

Practice with purpose and share your regimens!