Want to get nerdy with me? 🤓
Don’t lose sight of the real reason people show up to your classes.
Seth Godin, in his book This is Marketing, talks about how someone shopping for a ¼” drill bit doesn’t actually want a ¼” drill bit. They buy the drill bit so they can make a ¼” hole in the wall—a hole that will accommodate the expansion bolts needed to hold up a shelf. That shelf will give them somewhere to put their books. When they get those books off the floor, their space won’t feel so cluttered. When those books are put away, they’ll feel like they’ve accomplished something important. They buy the ¼” drill bit because they want the feeling that this little piece of hardware helps them achieve.
This example is one of my favourite analogies of why we show up to do anything.
People aren’t coming to your class to stretch their hamstrings or master a certain pose. They’re coming to your class because what you teach lets them do more of what they want in life. You help them feel strong and capable. They want the confidence and freedom to move through life with fewer restrictions.
To help people find that confidence, we have to work backward.
➡️ Confidence comes from ability.
➡️ Ability comes from breaking down complex things into more accessible parts or components.
➡️ To explore each of those components, we need the right tools.
In a movement practice, those tools are the actual things you get people to do in your classes—the wrist prep, the hip hinges, the shoulder rotations, and the yoga poses.
Those tools guide people toward experiences—experiences like a pain-free backbend or an unshakeable single-leg balance pose.
Those experiences lead to the confidence and freedom your students are looking for in the rest of their lives.
As a movement educator, it’s your responsibility to choose the tools that will best meet the needs of your students.
Each time you step on the mat to teach, ask yourself:
- What does this pose demand? Understand what the joints are doing. What range of motion is the pose expressing? What muscular effort is required to create stability in that range of motion?
- How can I help my students have the best possible experience in this pose? What are they most likely to get hung up on? How can I anticipate their challenges/restrictions with progressive sequencing and cueing?
When you can balance the demands of the pose against the needs, goals, and current abilities of your students, you become a better teacher. When you can leverage the tools you've amassed as an instructor and wield them with expertise, your ability to nurture those feelings of confidence and freedom in your classes will be limitless.
I’ll be helping a small group of people get better at that 👆 during a live call next week. It will be an interactive session designed for those who want to ascend to the 🤓 highest level of nerdom 🤓.
Looking at movement through this hyper-focused lens will make you want to jump off the call and apply what we cover to your classes immediately. It might even spark an excitement in teaching that’s been missing for a long time.
It all goes down Friday, September 15th at 10am PT/1pm ET.
To claim a spot in this small group (or receive the recording afterward), click here.
Cecily
Welcome to the Detour
Subscribe to receive posts like these directly to your inbox.
I had a therapy session yesterday. I’ve been seeing someone about once a month for the past year or so. More often than not, I go into our sessions thinking there’s nothing to talk about.Thirty minutes (or less) later, I’m uncovering all kinds of sh*t I didn’t realize was under the surface, bubbling away.Yesterday’s appointment brought out the realization that more often than not, our lives won’t look like what we imagined them to be.Our relationships won’t be like those we see in the...
Hey Reader, I'm going to say something that might seem obvious to you. But based on first-hand experience lately, I can confirm it's not obvious to everyone.Here goes...When you’re in plank pose, your wrists are in the position of extension.What? Were you expecting something more dramatic 😉?No drama here. I just want to make sure we're on the same page about what our wrists are doing during a movement practice.Any weight-bearing pose—like downward dog, handstand, or wheel—puts our wrists into...
I came out of hiding on Instagram this week and made a post about squats. The post highlighted the difference between initiating a squat from the hips (sticking your butt out and sitting back as the first movement) vs. initiating it from the knees (driving the knees forward before letting the hips move).A few commenters said that the knee-dominant movement looked painful or dangerous.Too much load on the knees.Too much weight going forward. Sit back to protect the knees.Pushing the knees...