Imagine having to lift a moderately heavy box. It’s on the floor, ready to be moved. Suddenly you get a phone call and you decide that you could probably carry on a conversation and lift that moderately heavy box with one arm. So, with the phone in one hand, you cheerily chat away, lean over, bend your knees a little bit, get that arm around the box and use your lower back and neck muscles to lift up. At that point, you realize that you may have misjudged this particular moderately heavy box and that it required more than one arm, it required two. That little bend in your knee should’ve been both thighs stretching and flexing. Not only that, but you probably should have used your glutes, back and chest to do the job properly.

And, just as suddenly, something is not right with your body and you are injured.

I’ve rehabbed a lot of singers’ voices. A Broadway/Pop Belt requires concentration, focus, trust and athleticism. After all, we’re talking eight shows a week on Broadway or six shows a day at a theme park or a four-hour minimum SAG/AFTRA recording session. What we do sounds difficult, but with concentration, focus, trust and athleticism, it is a relatively simple operation. All it requires is daily practice.

So, if you lift that same box incorrectly every day, you do not necessarily get stronger, you only risk further harm. Like that misjudged moderately heavy box, you don’t develop an unbreakable voice by breaking it every day. If it hurts when you sing, you’re doing it wrong.