Tip # 1 - Launch the first sound

Even though we often stutter in the middle of a phrase, a speech impediment typically begins with the first sound.

Let's take a couple of phrases. The first phrase for us is "What time and where do we meet tomorrow?" In this phrase, the very first sound might be hard. "Where," "do," "meet," and "tomorrow" also can create difficulty.

So, my general suggestion is to work on the first sound in a phrase. That's where we want to create the airflow for our speaking piece.

A great exercise is to get tense and relax on the first sound giving yourself time and putting power back as you have relaxed. In this exercise, we turn tension into relaxation and put power into our speaking.

Another phrase that I suggest to play with is "Actually, I don't know where we meet tomorrow." In this case, "actually" goes as a filler word we often use to kind of create fluency in our speaking. Such filler words don't require much airflow so we tend to use them frequently.

What in fact happens - we say "actually" and stop the airflow. We create the foundation for our stammer at "I don't know."

In this case, we also want to start with the first sound. We want to put a bit more substance to "actually" to create a powerful airflow for the whole phrase. If we stop the airflow after "actually" or "I don't know" that's not a problem. In this case, we want to launch and put a bit more substance to the first sound in "I don't know" and "where we meet tomorrow."

In any case, we want to take full control over the phrase right from the start. And re-establish that control in every speaking piece.

Tip # 2 - Breathing and voice exercises

Breathing and voice exercises help us increase the capacity of our airflow. It's great to feel your ability to say a lot in one go. Not rushing anywhere but still staying in one breathing out and feeling the support of the airflow.

A good exercise is to stay the whole phrase in one go staying much longer on connecting words (actually singing them).

Here I went live in Free From Stutter Facebook group straight from my singing lesson - showing voice exercises 😊

Voice training exercises

Great exercise to develop your diaphragm

Easy exercises from the voice coach

This one is a bit crazy but I love the concept

The tricky thing about developing your voice and breathing exercises is that they don't seem to have any immediate effect. But please don't underestimate them.

Tip # 3 - Consistency with the training speech

The truth is all our tricks don't work in real life.

So you want to have a training speech that you use consistently in your daily life. I'm preaching about the hand stuttering technique where we use hand to synchronize all the speaking processes together.

But we want to be consistent with it. If you use your training speech 5% of your speaking and 95% you use your current speaking pattern then guess what? You'll stick to your current speaking pattern that holds stuttering. You won't be able to use your training speech in a stressful setting if you don't use it in your comfort zone.

Developing and mastering your training speech is a huge topic. Even though we say that we just want to restore the inner structure of our speaking using the training speech is a big challenge. If you want to go deeper into that you're welcome to my free training.