We are creating the HARDEST, ELITE Acro Teacher Training...

We have joked several times now that we want to create the NAVY SEALS of acro teacher trainings!

By having the lowest pass rate of a teacher training!

We think it would be a funny statement if we can say "only 30% of students pass our teacher training".

But in all seriousness there is a reason behind this, and it's not that we are mean and want to fail people, but quite the opposite.

So hear me out as I explain some of our ideas and guiding principles behind our vision of an acroyoga teacher training, and why we want to make the NAVY SEALS of acro trainings.

So first and foremost we have taken an acro teacher training ourselves several years ago, and honestly weren't particularly impressed with what little we learnt from it.

Plus we have seen many people become certified teachers on that training and in general in the acro world, that are not of the highest standard of teaching.

Which is fine, many teachers take teacher trainings without the intention to teach acro.

But that is part of the problem we see in the acro teacher training world.

Many students join teacher trainings to level up and improve their practice, but that shouldn't be the main aim of a teacher training.

That is what a training program or intensive course is for, to level up your skills and practice.

A teacher training should be for learning how to teach.

The other thing that is happening is teacher trainings are becoming shorter and shorter, both in the yoga world and in the acroyoga world.

Yoga trainings used to be 28 days for a 200hour course, with 4 rest days so 24 days of teaching content, which works out to around 8.5hours of content per day.

Nowadays you can do a 200hour yoga teacher training in as little as 15 or 18 days, meaning 13+ hours of content per day to make the 200 hour total.

But the actual reality is most yoga teacher trainings are just shortcutting, when you actually look at the schedule and content hours it works out to about 130hours on average.

This makes sense from a marketing and business perspective, making trainings shorter means its easier for people to join, and by delivering less hours you make more profit having to spend less on teaching time, food and accommodation rental etc.

But the big problem with this is it all just devalues the students experience, the quality and amount of time students have to learn is much less.

This doesn't lead to creating great teachers, and doesn't give the space and time needed to learn something as nuanced as teaching.

The same thing is happening with acro teacher trainings as well, there are many out there nowadays that are 10 days or 12 days long, which in our opinion is just not enough time to become a good acro teacher.

Another thing that is happening in the acro world is the lowering of pre-requisites and entry requirements to join a teacher training.

We had several students on the tt that we joined who had done little to no acroyoga whatsoever.

There are other acro teacher trainings out there with very minimal pre-requisites also.

The concept of learning to teach something that you don't actually understand or are not yet able to do yourself is a baffling one.

It's one thing to learn a skill yourself and a completely different thing to learn how to teach it, and one builds upon the other.

Just to be clear, this is not saying all acro teacher trainings are bad.

There are great teachers leading trainings, and some hold good standards I am sure, and no doubt students will learn useful things in every training regardless.

But the overall trend in the yoga and acro industry is focussed on shortening and speeding up the process and making more money, resulting in lower quality.

And we want to do the opposite!

Hence our idea is to create the most elite acro teacher training.

We believe that it takes about a month to form strong habits, it requires enough repetition and space and time for the body and brain to learn and conceptualize things.

So with our teacher training we plan to make it 4 weeks long.

We also most importantly want to focus on the teaching, and turning students into incredible teachers.

Of course, there will be an element of maintaining and refining your own practice, but you shouldn't expect to learn tonnes of new acro skills.

Our current plan is to have a focus for each week of the training, that builds upon each element of teaching as we go.

So for example in the first week the focus will be mostly on coaching, cueing and how to be a great 1 on 1 coach, quickly finding the most valuable cues to help adjust or correct students problems.

In the second week we can build upon this by focussing on classroom demoing, explaining and showing and all of the beautiful nuances of how to demo, how to explain and teach to an audience etc.

The third week will build upon this with classroom management, teaching partnerships, adapting to different students, how to structure a class for different time lengths. 

And in the last week it will be combining this together, going further into how to adapt to difficult teaching situations, understanding the business element of being a freelance acro teacher and getting jobs as a teacher and more.

We are really trying to have in mind that if we have a student who meets the pre-reqs and has a decent skill level in acro, but little teaching experience, how can we in 1 month turn them into a professional skilled acroyoga teacher.

How can we impart the most valuable knowledge, experience and information that we have gathered as teachers, and fully pass that on to them.

Because we most of all want to feel proud of teachers that we certify.

We want to create incredible teachers that share acro in a safe, fun, and impactful way.

And to ensure this we intend to have a rigorous and strict testing process at the end of the teacher training, so that we do potentially end up with a lower pass rate than the near 100% that currently exists in the yoga industry.

We will of course offer ongoing support after the training to help teachers continue to improve, and provide support to re-test or rejoin a training if someone doesn't get certified.

Importantly we think if we take this approach and put quality and exceptional standards above everything else.

That will create the right mindset, and create exceptional teachers.

And it will also help to attract the right students.

Students who are serious about becoming a great teacher. 

And we hope it will overtime build a reputation of quality and that if you are an AcroSpirit certified teacher that it will mean something in the industry and be valued.

It's defnitely not the easiest or most profittable pathway, but it's the one we will feel good about when we sleep at night, knowing we are putting good quality acro teachers out into the world.

If you made it this far thank you for listening to my rambling ideas!

It's honestly a really fun, but also daunting process creating a course of this magnitude, so writing and sharing about it whilst we are having so many ideas bouncing around feels very helpful.

Plus maybe if you have ideas or suggestions for us to consider about the teacher training we would be happy to know!

That's all for now, but watch this space as I'm sure we will have more ideas and updates about the tt in the future as we continue to develop it.

Cheers,

Cas