Athletes don’t become great by doing just one exercise.
A runner lifts weights. A tennis player works on agility. A swimmer stretches. A football player may take ballet to improve balance, coordination, and footwork.
So why should public speakers train by doing only one thing?
If you want to become a better speaker, of course, you should practice speaking at every opportunity. Rehearse your presentations. Record yourself. Polish your content, delivery, and body language. Work with a speaking coach to elevate your confidence, presence and impact.
But there’s another way to develop your communication skills that may be more interesting and fun: cross-train.
Borrow from other disciplines that strengthen the same skills great speakers need: voice, breath, movement, presence, storytelling, spontaneity, and connection.
Here are six forms of cross-training that can make you a stronger, more versatile speaker.
1. Singing: Train your instrument
Your voice is your instrument. (In my last TEDx talk, I said your voice is an instrument of power.) Singing can teach you how to use it more effectively.
You don’t have to be a great singer or even carry a tune. You don’t even have to sing in public. But vocal exercises can help you explore pitch, resonance, projection, articulation, and vocal range.
Many speakers get trapped in a narrow vocal pattern. They speak at the same pitch, volume, and pace from beginning to end. The result can be monotonous, even when the content is excellent.
Singing helps you discover more of what your voice can do. It also teaches you an important lesson: your voice is physical. It needs breath, warm-ups, practice, and care. In fact, voice is part of the nonverbal transmission of information that far outweighs the effects of your words alone.
2. Breathwork: Control the engine
When speakers get nervous, breathing is often the first thing to change. The breath becomes shallow, the heart races, the voice tightens, and the pace speeds up before you run out of breath.
Breathwork teaches you to become more conscious of your breathing and use it intentionally. Better breath control can help calm your nervous system, support your voice, and create natural pauses. A well-placed breath can also improve the rhythm of your delivery. Instead of rushing through your words, you learn to let your ideas breathe.
For speakers, breath is more than oxygen. It is the engine that powers the voice.
3. Yoga: Build body awareness and presence
Great speaking is a full-body activity. Yoga can help you become more aware of how you stand, where you hold tension, and how you occupy space.
Are your shoulders raised? Are your knees locked? Are you collapsing into yourself? Are you physically grounded? Yoga develops balance, alignment, flexibility, and body awareness, all qualities that contribute to presence.
It can also teach you to become comfortable with stillness. Speakers sometimes confuse constant movement with energy. But true presence often comes from being grounded enough to stand still, make eye contact, and let a powerful idea land.
4. Dance: Get comfortable taking up space
Many speakers are uncomfortable moving in front of an audience. They either freeze in one spot or pace without purpose. Dance teaches a different relationship with movement. It builds awareness of rhythm, timing, coordination, and space.
You begin to understand that movement can have intention. You can move toward the audience to create a connection. You can step to a new position to signal a transition. You can use your body to reinforce an idea rather than a distraction from it.
Dance can also help you become more comfortable with something many speakers struggle with: taking up space. You belong in the room. Your body should communicate that before you say a word.
5. Theater: Bring your stories to life
Public speaking is not acting, but speakers can learn a great deal from actors. Theater teaches storytelling, emotional expression, character, timing, and audience connection.
Actors learn that words on a page are not enough. Meaning comes from how those words are delivered, such as the pause before a sentence, the change in tone, the facial expression, and the emotional intention.
Speakers can apply the same principles. Don’t simply tell us what happened. Help us experience it. A presentation becomes more memorable when the audience can see, hear, and feel the story.
6. Improv: Become comfortable with the unexpected
Improv is one of my favorite forms of cross-training for speakers because it develops skills that are difficult to learn from a script. I’m doing Improv Level 4 training and eager to share the techniques with my executive speaker clients.
Improv teaches you to listen deeply, think on your feet, collaborate, adapt, and respond in the moment. And perhaps most importantly, improv teaches you to become more comfortable with mistakes and the unexpected. It could be a difficult question, a technology failure, brain freeze, an audience reaction you didn’t anticipate, or any glitches that ordinarily would throw you into a tailspin.
Great speakers aren’t great because everything always goes according to plan. They’re great because they know how to stay present when it doesn’t. Improv helps build that muscle.
Build a bigger speaker’s toolbox
You don’t have to become a singer, dancer, yogi or actor. The point is that every discipline can teach you something that traditional presentation practice may not.
Singing can expand your voice. Breathwork can calm your nerves. Yoga can strengthen your presence. Dance can free your movement. Theater can deepen your storytelling. Improv can sharpen your spontaneity. Each one adds another tool to your speaker’s toolbox.
So, if you want to become a better public speaker, don’t just practice your next presentation. Try something different. Take a singing lesson. Join an improv class. Try yoga. Learn to dance. Explore breathwork. Step onto a theater stage. Or experience a multitude of other disciplines that can bolster the physical and mental agility you need to communicate effectively.
