What Personal Trainers Know That Yoga Teachers Don’t

"Brainy What-Why-How"

Your weekly nibble of science-backed goodness to help you move better and feel unstoppable.

🧠

What:

Putting a peak pose at the end of class is likely not the be most effective way to build a skill. 

Why:

As I work towards unrolling my new "Handstand Club" (details coming as soon as I can figure out the tech side of it) I've been diving into the science that personal trainers all learned but yoga teachers were....busy chanting?

Put the most technically demanding skill at THE BEGINNING of the class.

When your brain is on.

When your muscles still remember what "firing" is.

When your nervous system isn't dreaming of savasana.

(And yes--I know, yoga isn't about skill development. This is why it's perfectly fine for yoga classes NOT to be totally aligned with what science tells us about skill development!)

But let's say you want to build towards a handstand. In peak-pose sequencing, you'd probably include:

  • warm ups for shoulders, wrists, legs

  • proprioception drills (aka "where the hell is my pelvis?")

  • strength drills

  • and THEN the Big Moment: handstand playtime.

When everyone’s brains are fried from all the work and no one knows their left foot from their hopes and dreams.

How:

Here's the counterintuitive magic:

After a brief warm up, put the peak pose -- the most technically demanding* posture -- towards the beginning when you are fresh.

*Technically demanding = actual strength (grrrr) + cognitive load ("press into my knuckles, keep pushing through my shoulders, don't yeet into the wall").

Put your skill drills here. While you’re fresh, bright-eyed, and only.... mildly confused 😇 

Then serve up the strength work.

The brain-light, muscle-heavy reps where you can grunt and sweat without needing full mental capacity.

I'm building classes that follow this template starting in January with a 6-week handstand course. 

The course will be for people who want a kick up the butt to stay consistent with their handstands, with LIVE zoom calls twice a week (with access to the recordings, as always). 

I promise I'm working on the details and will let you know ASAP! 

See you in the Handstand Club, as soon as the tech goblins stop gaslighting me,

💋 Adell

Want to go way deeper with me? 👀 ​

• Check out my upcoming​ IRL events​ 
• Be part of ​my next NeuroYoga TTC​ where I teach YOU how to blend yoga + neurology
• Join me on Move With Adell -- I upload 2 new videos a week -- often with brain drills woven in -- ​Click here​ to start your FREE trial.
• Check out the courses from Z-health, where I started my education in brain-based approaches: ​Click here​ for my discount codes on their first 3 courses!
• Read my book ​"Too Flexible to Feel Good: A Practical Roadmap to Managing Hypermobility"​

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