Misplaced Priorities: Why I Only Lead My Own Teacher Trainings

I used to try to be diplomatic about this but let me say this plainly.

I don’t only lead my own teacher trainings because I want control.

I lead my own teacher trainings because I refuse to participate in misplaced priorities.

Over the years, I’ve been inside enough programs — consulted on them, taught within them, observed them — to see a pattern.

Most modern teacher trainings are built around what is scalable, marketable, and low-liability to a studio’s ecosystem.

Not what actually builds great teachers.

And at some point I had to decide:
Do I keep lending my name to systems that produce the bare minimum?
Or do I build something that reflects what I actually believe about education?

I chose the second.

I used to say things like, “Every training has value,” or “There are many paths to becoming a teacher.” And while that’s technically true, it’s also a polite way of avoiding the real conversation.

The Factory Model (And Why It Bothers Me)

There is an engine running in the modern movement industry. It’s smooth. It’s profitable. It’s highly replicable. It turns enthusiastic students into certified instructors in record time and keeps them tethered to a specific studio ecosystem.

On paper, it’s genius.

In practice, it often produces teachers who can:

• Memorize choreography.

• Recite low-risk cues.

• Deliver branded class templates.

• Offer enthusiastic but vague encouragement.

But ask them to build a sequence from scratch?
Ask them to adjust for a hypermobile student next to a post-op knee next to a brand-new beginner?
Ask them why they’re programming something?

That’s where things get quiet.

We are not lacking teachers. We are not lacking enthusiasm. We are lacking hierarchy.

We’ve built programs around what is sellable and manageable instead of what is foundational and necessary. And the result is predictable: teachers who can perform a sequence beautifully but cannot construct one intelligently; teachers who sound knowledgeable but cannot actually see what’s happening in a body.

This is not a critique of new teachers. They are doing exactly what they were trained to do.

It’s a critique of the system producing them.

The Real Hierarchy of Teacher Development

If we were honest about what actually builds competent, adaptable, employable teachers, the structure would look very different.

And it would not start with choreography.

1. Self-Practice Awareness

Before you teach others, you need to have practiced your modality long enough — and seriously enough — to understand your own compensations, biases, and movement patterns.

Not just “I take class sometimes.”

I mean real embodiment.

You should know where you grip. Where you rush. Where you avoid load. Where your ego tries to take over. You should have struggled with the very mechanics you are asking other people to refine.

I cannot tell you how many classes I’ve taken where the teacher could not physically execute the movement with clarity or control, yet was confidently instructing 20 people through it. That’s not a personality flaw. That’s a foundational gap.

Embodiment is not optional.

Teach from what you can do. Teach from what you can adjust in your own body. And let that humble you. Let it shape what you offer. There is far more integrity in depth than in range.

If you haven’t embodied it, you don’t fully understand it.

And if you don’t understand it, you cannot truly teach it.

2. Anatomical Understanding (Yes, It Matters)

I don’t mean memorizing Latin terminology to impress your class. I mean applied biomechanics.

At the end of the day, whether you label it fitness, Pilates, yoga, functional training, or “mindful movement,” you are working with human physiology.

You are influencing:

• Joint mechanics.

• Tissue stress.

• Force production.

• Nervous system response.

• Load tolerance.

This is not spiritual abstraction. It is biology.

Understanding how joints articulate, how force is produced and transferred, how tissues respond to load, and how fatigue alters mechanics is what allows you to make intelligent decisions in real time.

This is what lets you:

• Regress an exercise without panicking.

• Progress a student without guesswork.

• Layer complexity appropriately in a mixed-level room.

• Protect someone without infantilizing them.

There is no excuse in this day and age to avoid anatomy. We have access to research, continuing education, biomechanics resources, mentorship, and cross-disciplinary knowledge like never before.

If you are teaching people how to move their bodies better, you have a responsibility to understand how bodies function.

Without that? It’s choreography with vibes.

3. Principle-Based Thinking

Movement is governed by principles, not trends.

Stability before mobility.
Proximal control before distal load.
Position before power.
Breath before bracing.

These aren’t aesthetic preferences. They’re biological realities.

When teachers understand principles, they can build anything. They can deconstruct a sequence, reorganize it, and rebuild it with intention. They can adapt on the fly because they understand the “why” underneath the “what.”

Without principles, teachers become dependent on scripts.

And let’s be honest — most scripts are diluted, liability-safe, and stale. They are designed to be repeatable and brand-consistent. They are not designed to cultivate critical thinking.

This is part of why we see so much churn in studio audiences. Classes start to feel repetitive. Surface-level. Predictable. The teacher is bound to the template, and the template is not evolving.

Principles create longevity.
Scripts create dependence.

Why I Walked Away

I reached a point where I had to ask myself: Am I participating in a system that truly develops teachers, or one that packages them?

When speed became more important than depth, I felt it.
When liability concerns watered down anatomy discussions, I felt it.
When creativity was handed out before structure was built, I felt it.

Mastery is slower. It’s harder. It’s less glamorous. It’s not as scalable. And it doesn’t produce instant “ready-to-teach” graduates in 200 tidy hours.

But it produces professionals.

I don’t want to churn out teachers who can only survive inside one branded studio model. I want teachers who can walk into any room — or build their own — and know exactly what they’re doing and why.

That requires hierarchy.

Self-practice first.
Anatomy second.
Principles third.

Only then do observation skills, precision cueing, intelligent sequencing, and creative expression make sense.

Creativity belongs at the top — not the foundation.

When you build from the top down, the structure collapses under pressure. When you build from the ground up, creativity becomes powerful, informed, and sustainable.