3 Acting Warm Up Exercises to Elevate Your Performance
Acting goes beyond memorizing lines—it’s a full-body craft that demands preparation. Just like an athlete warms up before a game, actors must prepare their bodies, voices, and minds before stepping into a role. A solid warmup routine helps release tension, improve vocal clarity, and provides the foundation to fully embody your character—whether performing on stage or in front of a camera.
Skipping a warmup can lead to stiffness, vocal strain, and a disconnected performance. However, with the right techniques, you’ll dramatically increase your odds of doing work with confidence, presence, and the ability to adapt in the moment.
Why Warmups Are Essential for Actors
Think of yourself as an instrument—your body, voice, and emotions all need tuning before you perform. Without a proper warmup, you risk stiffness, vocal fatigue, and a lack of emotional & personal connection, making it harder to deliver an authentic and dynamic performance.
The Benefits of a Consistent Warmup Routine
Releases tension – Loosens muscles for natural movement
Enhances vocal clarity and variety – Supports breath control, resonance and agility
Sharpens focus – Organizes you back into the present with emotional availability
Prepares you for collaboration – Ensures you're responsive to scene partners
Now, let’s dive into three acting warmups that will elevate your performance.
1. Active Breath: The Foundation of Every Performance
Breath is the key to staying present, engaged and emotionally connected. The Active Breath technique fosters a continuous breath cycle, removes unnecessary holds and blocks and promotes natural airflow.
How to Practice Active Breath:
Begin with light movement—jumping jacks, running in place, or dancing to your favorite song.
Once your heart rate rises, cease the cardio movement and simply focus on your breath.
Let your breath flow naturally, in and out, without trying to control or slow it.
Observe how your body inhales and exhales without pause or hesitation.
Allow your breath cycle to slow to a non-cardio pace.
Maintain this unceasing and continuous inhale-exhale pattern absent pause or hesitation.
By integrating this breathing technique, actors can stay adaptable, engaged and fully immersed in the moment—leading to performances that feel effortless and alive.
2. Jaw Release: Unlock Your Natural Resonance
Jaw tension can hinder vocal clarity and clear articulation, and even cause headaches. By massaging the temporalis muscle—connecting the skull and jawbone—you can release tension and enhance vocal resonance.
How to Perform the Jaw Release ("Moose") Exercise:
✔ Place the heels of your hands (the base under your pinky fingers) just above your temples.
✔ Massage in circular motions, applying gentle pressure.
✔ If your shoulders tense up, lean your elbows on your thighs or a table while massaging.
Benefits of This Exercise:
✔ Creates more mouth space for improved resonance
✔ Increased space allows the internal articulators to operate more freely
✔ Relieves jaw tension, allowing for greater expressiveness
This simple yet effective warmup helps unlock a more open, powerful voice with ease.
3. Tongue Pull + Breath: Expand Vocal Flexibility & Range
Tension in the tongue—especially at the back—can limit vocal clarity, restrict pitch movement, and hinder articulation. The Tongue Pull exercise works to release this tension, improving vocal flexibility and range.
How to Perform the Tongue Pull Exercise:
Grab a wash cloth or high quality paper towel (we love Bounty). You will need this to hold your tongue.
Stick your tongue out of your mouth as far as you can without pain.
With both hands, place the cloth or paper towel as far back on the topside of your tongue as possible.
Place your pointer fingers on the topside of your tongue and your thumbs on the tongue sides.
Gently tug the topside layer of your tongue towards your front teeth and sustain the pull.
Importantly, pull no part of your tongue other than the top, and certainly do not pull the bottom.
The further back you can get your pointer fingers, the more root stretch you’ll feel.
Breathe as you sustain the tug, it is likely you’ll feel that part trying to pull back into the throat.
Attempt to relax that part of the tongue so much that it ceases pulling back and releases forward.
Do this exercise for 45 seconds.
Finally, make a “ha” sound (or any other H+vowel combos) without pulling your tongue back.
Becoming aware of tension in this area allows actors to develop a new "normal"—one where they can speak and perform without unnecessary gripping, leading to smoother transitions and clearer articulation.
Elevate Your Acting Skills with These Warmups
Implement these three techniques—Active Breath, Jaw Release, and Tongue Pull—will help you:
✔ Move freely and eliminate tension
✔ Speak with greater clarity, power, and resonance
✔ Stay emotionally connected and fully present in scenes
Consistently incorporating these warmups into your routine will help you step into every role with confidence and authenticity.
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Final Thoughts
Acting demands physical, vocal and emotional readiness. Making these warmup exercises a consistent part of your preparation will create the foundation to propel you into a performance that is grounded, connected and dynamic. Whether stepping onto the stage or in front of a camera, a strong warmup routine will set you up for a freer, more authentic performance.
So, are you ready to elevate your acting? Start incorporating these warmups today, and watch your performance skills improve!
FAQs
How long should an acting warm up take?
This entirely depends on the purpose of the warm up, the component parts, and the available time you have to do it.
All things being equal, a daily warm up to start your day that addresses your mask (jaw, tongue, lips, soft palate and throat), your breathing coordination (ribs and abdominals), sound making (vocal folds and articulators), expressiveness, and some light stretching can be accomplished in as little as 20 minutes.
What if I don't have time for a full warm up?
If you have less time, you can abbreviate the number of exercises you do in each area–mask, breath, sound, expression, stretch–but do try to hit every area.
Can I do these warm ups before the auditions?
Absolutely! Highly recommended! If possible, do a more elaborate warm up in a private setting (at home or in a practice studio). Then perform a few “check-in” movements as you wait in the waiting room or even in a bathroom stall–perhaps the moose, tongue pull and an active breath check in as you get that breath moving and in a flow state.
Can these warm ups help with stage fright?
These warm ups can help with most any fright that doesn’t actually exist in the present moment. Meaning, while it might feel like a tiger is about to eat you, there is likely no real tiger present once you start relating to present information.
An effective warm-up can be similar to a meditation in its relationship to presence building. It is an opportunity to leave your past behind, leave your future alone and be with the moment to moment reality of your breath cycle.
We know now that the ancient sages were onto something with all this talk about breathing, breathing, breathing and its relationship to calm, ease and balance. When in this Active Breath cycle, it is more difficult for the mind to “organize and analyze” in a way that calls into the past and future.
For many of us in stressful situations, the inclusion of past and future can spell doom as our imaginations easily slip into “what isn’t.” The building blocks of sustainable creative energy usually begin with the component parts of “what is.” This is one of the reasons presence is so powerful.
Should I warm up differently for voice acting?
Absolutely not. The voice is an extension of our internal experiences–a broadcaster of experience in motion. The nuances that can accompany a vocal experience are first instigated by a fully embodied experience…or not.
Warming up the entire body enhances and supports the possibility of a complexity and nuance that delivers so much more information on the voice than simply the semantic meaning of a word. It can deliver our embodied point of view with clarity and specificity, which is an essential ingredient to compelling work.
How often should I practice these warmups?
Daily practice will yield the best results. Even on non-performance days, incorporating these exercises keeps your instrument—your body and voice—flexible and ready for performance.
The athletic rule of thumb for overall development is that smaller chunks of time more often are more impactful than longer chunks of time less often.