(upbeat music)
- Welcome my friends to the Bob and Brad podcast.
My name is Mike Kenitz I'm a PT assistant,
and today I'm coming up need by-
- Bob Schrupp.
- This guy over here.
Today we're interviewing Sierra Corbin
who is a speech languish pathologist from Oregon.
Is that how she said it?
- Oregon, right.
- We were saying it wrong.
She corrected us.
She also has a YouTube channel called Sierra Speech
where she offers free speech video program.
So if you wanna work on your speech at all
you can go check it out there.
So without further ado, here's Sierra.
Going on our last question of do you have any suggestions
for Bob to work on his speech?
- Yeah, for those that don't know, I'm obvious.
I've had trouble with my speech due to my cerebellum.
One of the problems that I have is I do better
when I speak slow
but when I'm with people, they're speaking fast.
So I want to speak fast.
- Yes. Is it hard to get your turn in a conversation?
- Yeah, but I feel like-
- He's good at interrupting.
- Okay. (laughing)
- No, I feel like I, like when I'm on video
I want to be speaking fast
because people don't want to wait around for a slow speaker.
- Yeah. I will say that when we have a speech disorder
and we slow down, it feels to us like it's very sluggish.
- Right.
- A good listener they can actually understand you better
and they probably appreciate it.
- Sure.
- So, just keep that in mind.
- Yep. And I feel like I'm running outta air.
- Yep.
- Yeah.
- So learning to take more sips of breath.
- Sure.
- And you're so, yeah.
So, learning how long you can go before you need to
take another sip of breath,
which is cognitive you have to actually think about that
and integrate it.
It's a lot of work.
- It is.
I gotta think about everything.
- Yes.
- You know, relaxing, speaking slower, trying to get air.
- Yep. So, what Bob is experiencing is in coordination
the cerebellum has to do with fine tuning our
our motor movements.
So when it's initiated in the brain,
it goes to a lot of different places
so that we don't have to think about what we do.
And the cerebellum's the one that says
don't move your arm as much, your lips are over here.
Move 'em over here.
Slow down.
You know, they help with that.
And so that's why with ataxia,
you have this slurred speech, it's uncoordinated.
There's distortions with not just consonants
but vowels too.
And vowels are huge.
When you get your vowels wrong, that's when people really
struggle to understand you.
- Sure.
- A lot of information in vowels and you can eventually get
mono pitch and mono loudness.
So not a lot of variation there.
So, I would say surprise, surprise.
- Can you help me?
(laughing)
- Yeah, there's different methodologies.
Honestly, there's a positive research
for motor speech disorders.
Unfortunately, a lot of folks will work on
symptom focused treatments.
So, let's work on your breath, let's work on your porosity
and see how high you can get with your pitch.
- So you shouldn't?
- No, you can, you can do that.
There's just not a lot of research that says
this definitely works.
It'll work with some people and maybe not others
but the best evidence is actually with LSVT.
- I've been doing some of that.
- I read that with your daughter.
- Yeah.
The ahs and the reading phrases and-
- Yeah, that's great.
- Gotten better with, with the ahs.
I started off, I go about six seconds
now I could go up to 10.
- Oh wow.
- Yeah. - That's great.
- How often do you do it?
- I try to do it daily.
- Cool. For how long?
- Probably 20 to a half hour.
- Oh wow.
- Is that too long? - That's great.
- That's good for you.
Well, you are a physical therapist, so you know how
important it's to do your home exercise plan.
- Right.
- What I like about LSVT and Speak Out is that
you don't have to work on each individual
part of your body.
You just work on the one concept.
I'm gonna be loud.
And that automatically, you take a bigger breath
so you're working on your respiration
you automatically slow down, get loud,
all of those things that you need to be able to do.
And when you slow down, you usually are more intelligible.
- Sure. - Let's practice Bob.
- Okay. I'm willing.
- Show me what you got.
- What you want me to do?
- I'm gonna share my screen.
Your daughter isn't certified in LSVT, right?
So she doesn't have the book or anything?
- Well, she got certified.
- Oh, she did?
- She has, but- - Oh, that's great.
- But she works in school normally, so.
- Okay.
- She has, you know, I'm her only patient.
- You're her only, right.
Well let's see if this is any different.
This is the Speak Out lesson book
and we're gonna do just the warmup for now.
It's may-me-my-moe-moo.
And what I want you to do is I want you to speak
with intent and-
- Okay.
- Be thoughtful about what you're doing.
Pick a spot in front of you,
either into the next room or at the back of the room
and pretend that you're speaking to that.
And it's gonna sound like this
may,
me,
my,
moe,
moo.
Can you try?
- Sure.
May...
Sorry.
May,
me,
my,
moe,
moo.
- Excellent job.
Very good.
How did that feel?
- Not bad, a natural.
(laughing)
- Sound like a cow? - Did say unnatural?
- No, I said I'm a natural.
I'm a natural.
- Oh, you're a natural.
Excellent.
- I haven't done any of these yet.
- You haven't done these?
- No.
- Yeah, these are a little bit different than LSVT.
Let's do counting.
I've gotta go back to nighttime.
Figuring out this stuff on the spot.
Okay. Now let me go back to you.
So, same thing, we're gonna keep them connected
and super strong all the way until the end.
We'll do the top line.
It sounds like this.
- Sure.
- One,
two,
three,
four,
five.
Now you.
- One,
two,
three,
four,
five.
- Good. Now this time I want you to elongate it.
One,
two.
One more time.
- One,
two,
three,
four,
five.
- Great work.
How'd it go?
- It felt better.
Yeah.
- Now say that with intent, Bob.
- It felt better.
- Okay, thank you.
So remember, this is a strengthener
but we're then integrating intent into our conversation.
- Sure.
- I'm gonna hear everything that you say
and how you say it.
Okay.
- You sure do.
- Good.
One more thing, we'll just do some reading.
Just this side on the left.
- Sure.
- With intent.
So, this one has words highlighted or bolded
and that means those get extra intent.
- So... - Gotcha.
- Hi there.
- Good. - Hi there.
- How are you?
How are you?
- Good. Keep all the words strong.
How are you?
- Gotcha.
What a beautiful day.
- Good.
- What a beautiful, what a beautiful day.
- Good intent.
- What a beautiful, oh, I'm sorry.
What a beautiful day.
- Strong.
- What a beautiful day.
- Nice.
- My name is Robert Schrupp.
My name is Robert Schrupp.
- Well done.
- My name is Robert Schrupp.
My name is Robert Schrupp.
- Nice.
How did that feel?
- That felt great.
- Good.
- I like that, I like that.
- Yeah.
- That's a good exercise.
- Say it with intent Bob.
- It's a good exercise.
- Thank you.
So that's the whole thing right there.
And then you do cognitive exercises and conversation
and things like that too.
- Sure.
- But you did well, yeah.
And then through time, hopefully you would
get stronger and stronger and articulations
get a little bit easier.
- Sure.
- So.
- I would say you're a little more clearer
talking now than you were earlier.
- Then I was earlier on, right.
Because, yeah.
- Yeah.
- You fixed me.
(laughing)
- I'll often see an improvement after one session with.
- I believe it.
- Because just the act of thinking about it helps a lot.
And I use it too.
I mean, I use intent when I know I need to be-
- Sure.
- Understood better, so.
- Well, thank you, Sierra.
- You need to slow down when you're doing your videos, Bob.
- No, Brad needs to slow down.
(laughing)
- Yeah, Brad's pretty wild too.
He gets worked up.
- Sounds like everyone can use intent.
- That's right.
- All right.
Is there anything else you wanna add about
speaking or speech or tips or tricks?
- Do you wanna mention her YouTube channel?
- Yeah.
- Do you wanna mention your YouTube channel for us?
- Yeah, yeah.
So, I created an online voice program for folks who just
wanna change the way that they sound.
And it works on all of those things we talked about today
but in greater detail.
And it has specific exercises
and it is backed up by the research and the evidence and
you know, the science that...
- Supports it?
- Supports motor change, sorry,
that supports, again, I have an 18 month old,
I don't sleep very well.
- Sure.
- But...
- Understood.
- So it uses dosage and specificity and all of those things
but it's really simple to understand and to do.
And it's super fun.
I even brought on a friend who is a professional singer
to do some of the modeling and...
Yeah, it's on my YouTube channel.
- How long is it?
- I wanna say the videos themselves are about two hours
but they're in little videos
so you can pick and choose which ones you wanna hear.
- I gotcha.
- It's totally free
to anybody who wants to improve their voice.
There's a PayPal link if you wanna support it.
- And your channel is called Sierra Speech on YouTube?
- Yep.
- We'll link that for everyone watching this episode
or listening. - Sure.
- Thank you.
- All right, well, is there anything else we can do for you?
- I was so happy to get to do this.
Thank you so much.
I love your channel.
- Well, we love you.
- Thank you.
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