Respiratory muscle strength training on Cantonese singers

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of respiratory muscle strength training (RMST) on singers in terms of aerodynamic and acoustic measures. Thirty members from The Hong Kong University Student’s Union Choir (HKUSU) who joined the choir for more than one year were selected. All participants were randomly assigned into the experimental and control groups. The experimental group received a standard protocol of RMST, including five sets of five breaths in five days a week. The control group followed the same protocol, except the resistance threshold of their devices was set to 0%. It was hypothesized that the experimental group would see improvement in the pulmonary functions as indicated by aerodynamics and acoustics measures, when compared with the control group. Inferential statistics results indicated a lack of significant interactions between group and time of measurement, and no main effects were found for all parameters between the experimental and the control groups. This suggests that the current data did not support the hypothesis. Future studies are needed to further investigate the actual effects of RMST on singing, or the combined effects of RMST and vocal training on singers. Future studies might include other outcome measures that are directly correlated with singing performance.