Trains, planes and automobiles – traveling to presentations

I’ve trained a lot of speakers and I know a lot of people who speak as part of their work (or for fun!). I barely know any who don’t have to travel to get to their presentations – certainly it’s not unknown for me to be up at the crack of dawn (or even before the sun) and not see my house until the sun’s well down again.

Everyone knows that traveling is tiring – why else would you need a day after your holiday to recover from it!? :) But does it hold special issues for a presenter (or trainer)? I think so, based upon my experiences recently. For me the three big issues are

Being tired isn’t just about not having had enough sleep. Not just. Obviously that’s not going to help but it’s also about when you sleep, not how much you get. I can go to bed early the day before a big presentation and get the ‘recommended’ seven or eight hours of sleep, but if I have to get up at, say, five in the morning, it doesn’t feel like it. :) Essentially, my body-clock is messed up and it’s not until the time I would normally be up and about (an hour and a half later) that I find myself able to wake up fully… no matter how many cups of tea I drink to get me going!

I find I need to watch that – tea’s a diuretic (like coffee, the other common stimulant drink) and drinking a lot to get you going (or to keep you going at the other end of the day) will dry your throat out, making it harder for you to sound like a confident expert when you get on stage to make your presentation. My advice would be to drink it if you need to but to make sure you take on board as much water. You don’t need to drink the five litres a day that was claimed a few years ago (research failed to substantiate that assertion) but you do need to have plenty on board.

Drink it in advance of your presentation, not during, because by then it’s too late. Water can’t lubricate your vocal folds; it shouldn’t go down that way… and if it does, you’re drowning (not recommended, even for the most demonstrative of presentations!). What water does, is give you what you need to produce the lubricants for your throat and vocal folds during your presentation – and it can’t do that directly or instantly. Getting the water in in plenty of time for your presentation means drinking as you travel, not as you start presenting.

I’ve blogged elsewhere about the fact that the water shouldn’t be chilled, either, particularly if you do drink it close to when your presentation starts.

Don’t under-estimate the effects of dehydration when you travel! Planes, trains and cars all suck the moisture out of you!

Being cold is a tricky one – particularly in the depths of winter. Don’t forget that even just a chilly room for your presentations can tighten your shoulders and throat up so that your voice sounds strained… making your presentation sound less credible. Tricks I use are a simple Buff for when I’m traveling (very flexible and well worth the money!) and although I personally don’t wear vests, I’d know speakers who find them useful. When you’re presenting, you’re performing – and you can’t do that to your best when you’re inhibited by even a slight chill.

Consider a warm up – not a full marathon, but just a simple something to warm your muscles up before your presentation. If you’re nervous it’ll help with that too, by using up some of your adrenalin, perhaps, and certainly using up some of your time… taking your mind off things.

It’s particularly important to keep your lips and neck relaxed and warm, so when you warm up, consider making a point of spending a minute or two to get your lips working properly – there’s nothing worse for an audience than a speaker who mumbles… and if you’re coming in from the cold, that’s what you’ll do. Of course, you might find it a little bit on the embarrassing side to do your lip warm-up exercises on public transport but hey… it’s your job. :) Better to look silly on a bus than on stage!

Going back for a moment, to look at the issue of being tired, I remember an athletics coach telling me that performance on the day was less to do with the amount of sleep an individual athlete got the day before the big event but rather more to do with the amount of sleep in the previous four or five nights. Sadly, I can’t reference this at the moment (so if you can’, please drop me a line!) but it seems reasonable to me – and if so, it’s important to take it into account as you do you public speaking gigs. A business presentation on Monday might be spoiled by a night on the town on Friday and Saturday. Now there’s a sobering thought…..