3 Speech rehearsal secrets to help you nail your next presentation

Have you ever drawn a blank in the middle of a presentation? You stand there like a goldfish in a staring contest with nothing but painful silence between your ears. Ouch! Technique in speaking goes beyond formulating and crafting a good speech—memory and strong delivery is where it all comes together. And that depends on using the right speech rehearsal techniques.

In this article, I will share with you three speech rehearsal tips you can apply right away! These speech rehearsal tips will reduce how long you take to practice while increasing how effective your practice sessions are. Ready? Let us begin.

Speech rehearsal Tip #1 – chunk it down

Let me ask you a question: which is easier to remember – a list of 7 items or a list of 1200?

“Anthony” I hear you say, “are you kidding? That’s a silly question”

“Is it? Well, what’s the answer?”

“Seven of course,” You say.

“You’re right! But then why are most speakers, maybe you too, opting for option 2?”

7 or 1200?

A 10-minute presentation will contain, on average, between 1200 and 1600 words. And what do most speakers do? They write out the whole speech and then, in speech rehearsal, they try to memorize every single one… in order.

There is a better way.

Rehearse in chunks

When rehearsing your speech, chunk your entire presentation down to a maximum of 7 coherent paragraphs.

Emphasis on coherent.

These paragraphs ideally should start and end a single thought or point. Even when you have moving parts within them like side-comments or humorous quips, the whole should still be harmonious. This has two important advantages.

First, it makes your presentation easier for you to process visually because the paragraphs are easier to distinguish than the former endless sea of words.

Second, and more importantly, it will also make it way easier to memorize because you have a clear and coherent start and ends to each chunk.

Having chunked it down, you can proceed to name the chunks. You can name then generically – point 1, point 2 or chunk 1, chunk 2. I recommend using specific names like – Story about the visit to India or Explanation of how exercise improves brain function. These become the “7” items that your brain needs to remember instead of the 1200 words that make up these units.

And then when you actually start your speech rehearsal, practice in chunks. Master each chunk individually, link them with a few connecting phrases and boom! You're set. Now, on game day when you deliver the speech, you only have to remember 7 things.

The genius you will discover in yourself here is that you will find yourself effortlessly delivering each chunk near perfectly because there is so much less stress on your short-term memory as you present. Try it and see.

Speaking of delivery, let us move on to the second tip.

Speech rehearsal tip #2 – One delivery element at a time

In speech rehearsals, many speakers make the mistake of trying to practice all the delivery elements of their speech at once. They want to move, use their voices, use their facial expressions and coordinate their gestures all at once… with every pass at the speech. It feels intuitive, but it is wrong.

It is wrong because instead of focus, it leads to dispersion. It ends up taking many times as long to make any noticeable improvement because you are burning the candle of attention at too many ends. Again, there is a better way.

Harnessing muscle memory

Perhaps you have heard of the term muscle memory. It is the phenomenon that leads performers, after proper and adequate practice, to go through often complex muscular routines (like swimming or weightlifting) without much conscious effort. The thinking is that their muscles “remember” and kind of take on a life of their own.

The reality is that muscle memory resides in just one “muscle”—the brain. Muscle memory is brain memory resulting in muscle symphony. It is actually a program running in the brain that produces the observed muscle routines. But what does this have to do with speech rehearsal?

Muscle memory is brain memory resulting in muscle symphony

Well, the accuracy and power of that program in the brain depend very much on how the programmer (you) went about encoding the message. When done properly—practicing with one delivery element at a time (say vocal variety for example)—you maximize your brain’s resources deeply encoding that one element. And then you do it again for the next element, say your gestures, and then the next…and the next… and the next…

By the time you are done, you will find yourself harmoniously executing many complex elements without thinking too hard about it. Why? Because you encoded each one deeply when you rehearsed it as your single focus. It also usually ends up much quicker than the other way. Oh, by the way, you will be doing this with each of the chunks you created from tip #1

Speech rehearsal tip #3 – Start early, Sound it out and Space out your sessions

This last tip is critical. Ok ok, you got me. It is actually 3 tips masquerading as one. But they are all linked so read on...

Starting your speech rehearsals early using the techniques above is the key to truly mastering your presentation. Most speakers want to wait until their presentation is "complete" before they start rehearsing. This is a mistake.

It may seem counter-intuitive but in fact, your rehearsal should start once the content of your speech is about 40% ready. This is because performing the speech out loud (sounding it out) in rehearsal early on in development can give you ideas as you get into the flow of your own thoughts. Whole paragraphs have emerged out of thin air for me countless times as I start rehearsing my speech. It can work for you too.

...your rehearsal should start once the content of your speech is about 40% ready. This is because performing the speech out loud in rehearsal can give you ideas as you get into the flow of your own thoughts.

Starting early and sounding out also helps because you convert the presentation from a written format (visual) to the medium it will be delivered in (sound). After all, the audience will not be reading your speech, they will be hearing it.

You will find that hearing yourself out early will lead to important revisions that will make your speech flow much better. As a bonus benefit, as you practice, you hear yourself and this greatly amplifies your retention and recall.

Space out—in a good way

Cramming might have worked in school for written exams, but you did not have to be on stage with tens or hundreds of people staring at you, spiking your adrenaline as you penned down the words from your all-too-fragile short-term memory. As far as public-speaking goes, it is much better to space out your preparation and allow time for things to settle. Spacing out rehearsals will help your unconscious mind develop and ruminate on the content in the background.

I recommend a day or two off after a day or two of intense practice. You will find that when you come back to rehearse again, you will be fresh and rejuvenated and your recall will be better too.

A bonus tip

As a bonus tip, I recommend that, as you get closer to the delivery day, rehearse intently just before bed. Why? you ask. Well, one of the functions of sleep is memory consolidation.

There is an important mechanism that operates in sleep whose role is to help move information from short-term to long-term memory. Does that sound like something you would benefit from as a speaker memorizing your presentation? I’ll bet it does! Especially when you remember that long-term memory is more stable and less likely to fail when all the stresses of being on a stage set in.

So rehearse, then go to bed.

Don’t fall into the common trap

Most speakers have a habit of procrastinating their speech rehearsal until very close to the delivery day. Maybe they do this as an avoidance tactic due to a fear of public speaking. In this case, working on their public-speaking apprehension is a good step to take. If that’s you, this article is a good starting point.

Others procrastinate or even skip thorough preparation altogether because they believe they are more effective when they “wing it” or “just speak from the heart”. Rubbish! This kind of thinking is a trap and a way to hide from the responsibility of doing the work to present your best. It also often ends in disaster at worst, or subpar performance at best.

Wingers and heart-speakers

Being a good “winger” just means you would be even better if you prepared.

Also, “winging it” is difficult to consistently replicate. It lies in the domain of chance and blind luck. This means it can go horribly wrong. Maybe you have witnessed this yourself.

At this point you might be thinking – hey Anthony! What about improv artists?

Well, for people who have built a style out of “impromptu” speaking like improv artists, don’t let the seeming effortlessness fool you—you might be surprised to learn how much prep goes into these “off the cuff” performances.

As for “speaking from the heart”, well it does not need to mean being unprepared. You can do both. And you probably should if you want to be effective. In fact, putting some thought and preparation into your speech from the heart will help you speak louder, clearer and more powerfully from said heart.

Boost your confidence... and credibility

Preparing adequately before a presentation is a sign of respect for your audience. It is also a huge confidence booster for you. And when you go up and nail the delivery, the feeling can be near euphoric.

So, which one of these tips speaks to you the most and which one will you use? Until the next post, speak with skill.