u/Portwineandcheese

I’ve been looking around CorePower markets and it’s becoming more and more obvious that C2 is being pushed out for Sculpt. I totally “get” that Sculpt is trending more than C2 these days, and at the end of the day - especially at CorePower Yoga - money talks, but C2 was a GIANT in the industry just 8-10 years ago.

It was by far the best format in studio fitness IMO when it came combining strength, athleticism, cardio, stretching, balancing, and pliability. It was the perfect balance to a weightlifting routine. Sculpt would get you more “ripped,” but if you had longevity and holistic fitness in mind, C2 could not be beat - especially with an excellent instructor.

I keep wondering when CorePower Yoga simply rebrands to “CorePower.” The power yoga element is being pushed out almost entirely. Even the teachers I meet at the studios sound absolutely depressed about its current state, “no one takes it anymore. It’s such a bummer, Gen Z just wants Sculpt, etc.” is something I’ve heard from at least half a dozen teachers the last several months.

At the end of the day, as I mentioned, money talks - especially at CPY. But that doesn’t wash away this feeling I have of “damn, people have no idea how great this thing is that’s dying right in front of them.”

Hear me out. I know this is going to hit the wrong way with some. Bear with me.

I actually think the 200-hour yoga teacher training has become over-bloated, and I wonder if it’s unintentionally contributing to declining interest in yoga, especially among younger people.

Before anyone flips out: I am not anti-“traditional” yoga. I’ve spent plenty of time studying philosophy, the Sutras, Gita, Hatha translations, and the historical and modern history of yoga, and I agree there’s real value in yoga’s historical texts and roots. This isn’t a “throw out the roots of yoga” argument.

It’s more of a “are we training people for the job they’re actually going to do in the modern age?” argument.

The reality is that the overwhelming majority of yoga teachers in the West are leading group fitness classes. Whether it’s heated vinyasa, power yoga, or most “flow” classes - heck, I’d argue yin as well - they’re coaching complex and often dangerous movement in an (often heated!) room full of people. That requires really strong skills in things like:

-biomechanics
-anatomy
-safe sequencing
-cueing
-injury prevention
-regressions and modifications
-managing a room full of students

Yet I feel like many 200-hour trainings spend a disproportionate amount of time on philosophy, tradition, and spirituality compared to those practical teaching skills. The things that matter the most when it comes to not injuring living, breathing humans out in the world today.

Again: not saying those subjects don’t matter. They absolutely do. I’m questioning whether the current 200 hour model is the right structure at all.

For a lot of younger people, in today’s economic environment (which is awful), the idea of spending $3,000 and 200 hours just to see if they even enjoy teaching is a huge barrier. And then we wonder why fewer people - especially younger people - are not interested in diving deeper into yoga.

One thing that got me thinking about this was talking to an instructor at local studio this morning. She mentioned that Yoga Sculpt has become far more popular than any yoga class at her studio, and one reason she gave was that the Sculpt teacher training is much shorter and cheaper. More people become instructors, those instructors bring friends into the community, and the community grows from there. Movement is by far the #1 thing that attracts younger people to yoga in the west. We need to stop fighting that and start embracing it - it’s the primary gateway into yoga as a broader life philosophy.

Now, I don’t think that’s the only reason Sculpt is growing - people clearly like strength-based formats right now - but I do think lowering the barrier to becoming an instructor creates a positive feedback loop.

Honestly, I wonder if a better model would be something like:

-An accredited group fitness certification (ACE, NASM, etc.) that covers the fundamentals of coaching people safely.
-A 75–100 hour (or, simply, a milestone-driven) yoga specialization focused on yoga-specific sequencing, cueing, breath, some philosophy, and the style you’re teaching.
-A practical teaching assessment.

To me, that sounds like it would produce teachers who are at least as competent…possibly more competent, while making the profession more accessible.

Contemporary yoga classes already have so much going for them: community, bodyweight resistance, confidence building, mobility, mindfulness, heated classes, stress relief. Those things align really well with what younger generations seem to want. I think we should make deeper philosophical discussion continuing education topics, not overlapped with what’s often really group fitness concepts. When you do both together, both get watered down, leading to instructors that are often underprepared in both areas. And whether we want to admit it or not, being underprepared for the in-person instruction is far, far more dangerous to today’s practitioners.

I just wonder if we’ve made the path to becoming a teacher unnecessarily long, expensive, and bloated relative to what the modern human overwhelmingly wants. If we’re pearl clutching a bit. We need to celebrate and lean into the little, more approachable things that get people interested in yoga and then let people choose their journey from there. Remember: a yoga “teacher” ~80 years ago had a “certificate” in absolutely nothing.