Ian trains his voice to give a champion performance

2:07pm Tuesday 25th October 2005

By Carla Delaney

Paralympic judo silver medallist Ian Rose has not only been limbering up in readiness for the World Judo Championships, he has also been giving his larynx and face muscles a dose of speech therapy at a "voice gym".

The father of two, from Hicks Farm Rise, High Wycombe, launched into a professional speaking career to run in tandem with his ambitions to be in the 2012 Paralymic Games. He turned to accomplished voice coach David Templeton, who lives in Hedgerley, near Beaconsfield, to help him fine-tune his voice and performance.

Ian said: "One of the problems I had was that because I am visually impaired I have difficulty with the sound levels of my voice.

"I sometimes find it hard to judge how far I am from the audience and over-compensate. There was a tendency to shout when I first became a speaker, especially if I was talking over film clips."

He began a speech training course with Mr Templeton who is an international people performance trainer specialising in team effectiveness and management development training.

Mr Templeton explained that message impact is made up of seven per cent words, 38 per cent voice and 55 per cent body language, adding that content alone is not sufficient to make a great performance.

Voice coaching is one of the areas he covers to help executives improve business presentations and communication. He believes it is important to provide a process for teams and individuals to build on their strengths and face obstacles that need addressing. He showed Ian the importance of breathing and posture and gave suggestions about pacing and phrasing for better impact.

"In order to improve the voice, work has also to be done on posture. So, working with the voice can have a huge effect on the overall impact of the message being delivered," Mr Templeton said. "Credibility is improved if we can produce our natural' voice; the one that we were born with the one free of habits which have developed through our lives, the one produced without any unnecessary tension in our bodies."

In no time the coach had Ian pulling bizarre faces to control the facial muscles. It was just as well they were doing it in the privacy of a consulting area otherwise people would have thought they were mad.

David is convinced coaching will instil confidence and bring about the change the Wycombe athlete needs in his quest to be a top professional speaker.

Ian said: "I felt more confident when I completed the first session with David. He showed me techniques that I know will help me improve my public speaking.

"I have been given a series of voice, body and mind exercises to do and I have been busy practising them every day. Some will also come in useful for my sports training."