Hey future yoga teacher!

Before you hand over your credit card and commit 200 hours of your life to a yoga teacher training, let's talk through the seven most common mistakes that thousands of dedicated practitioners and aspiring teachers make every year - and how to avoid them all.

I've made most of these mistakes myself. I've wasted money on a training with a famous teacher where I learned nothing. I've suffered a knee injury that still affects my practice because my teacher didn't understand anatomy. I've chosen trainings based on recommendations from people who'd never done another YTT to compare it to. But you don't have to learn these lessons the hard way.

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You can read the article and you can also get a free 90 minute podcast workshop where I go through all of these mistakes and explain how to find the perfect YTT for you in much more detail. Check it out on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Scan the QR codes above to listen open the apps.

Mistake #1: Skipping Your Homework

I joined my first YTT based on a friend's recommendation. Zero research. Zero comparison shopping. Just signed up.

If you're going to invest 200 hours of your life into a training, spend at least a couple hours doing your research. The fact that you're reading this means you're already on the right track. Keep going.

A reality check about reviews and recommendations: When it comes to YTTs, 5-Star reviews can be misleading. Here's why: most people only do one teacher training in their life and so they don't have a basis for comparison. Unlike restaurant reviews (where reviewers have eaten at many different places), a five-star YTT review might just mean 'I had a good time'. Not necessarily 'This training gave me the education I needed.'

Also, be skeptical of 'Top 10 YTT' lists online. Most are pay-to-play: schools pay commissions to get featured. (We do this too - we have to.) That doesn't make them bad trainings, but it means those rankings aren't objective.

What to do instead:

• Learn what actually makes a training excellent

• Try before you buy - attend a sample class or workshop

• Don't be shy to ask questions about the curriculum

• Read between the lines of both marketing copy and reviews

Mistake #2: Choosing the Wrong Teacher

This is the most important decision you'll make. Your teacher matters more than location, more than price, more than whether it's online or in-person. 200 hours is a LOT of time to spend with someone. A great teacher makes your training life-changing. A mediocre teacher - or even a good teacher you just don't vibe with - will make it feel like homework.

Keep in mind that famous ≠ good educator. Just because someone can do crazy poses doesn't mean they can teach you how to do the same, let alone teach you how to teach others how to do the same. What to do instead:

• Check their credentials and experience

• Try to attend / watch at least one full lecture or class before committing

• If you want to teach professionally, pick someone who has taught more than just studio classes (workshops, retreats, corporate, privates, online)

• The more diverse their teaching experience, the more you'll learn about how the yoga world actually works

• Trust your gut - if something feels off in their free content, it'll feel worse after you've paid

Mistake #3: Obsessing Over Price (In Either Direction)

Price isn't a strong indicator of quality in the YTT world. The most expensive training isn't automatically the best. The cheapest isn't automatically low quality.

What to do instead:

Think about YTT as an investment, not an expense. Ask yourself:

• If this training transforms my teaching ability, what's that worth?

• If this training deepens my practice and changes my life, what's that worth?

• If this training sets me up to earn income teaching yoga, what's that worth?

Once you know what you'd pay for your ideal training, forget about price until you've narrowed your options to 2-3 programs. Then let price be the tiebreaker, not the deciding factor.

Mistake #4: Falling for Business-Success Promises

"Learn the secrets to getting millions of Instagram followers!" Sounds amazing. But those secrets don't exist.

Building an audience takes consistent, quality content. You can't hack your way around that. Don't get me wrong - business skills matter if you want to teach professionally. But they're secondary to being a great teacher.

What to do instead:

Look for a YTT that makes you an amazing teacher first. If there's a business module included - great! Just make sure it's a bonus, not the main event.

There's more than enough material to fill 200 hours with things yoga teachers need to know about yoga. You can always add business training later. But you can't go back and learn proper anatomy or philosophy if your foundation is weak.

Mistake #5: Dismissing Online Trainings

Before Covid, online YTTs barely existed. Now they're everywhere. But many people still assume in-person is automatically better than online because yoga is physical practice. In my opinion, it's the other way around. Online trainings have real advantages over in-person programs: Practical benefits:

• More affordable (no travel, accommodation, or facility rental costs)

• More flexible (no need to blow 10 weekends or 4 weeks of vacation)

• Better content quality (teachers can prepare for each lesson instead of teaching 10 hours per day)

• Better for learning (you can actually absorb information instead of cramming for 10 hours straight)

• Money-back options (especially valuable if it's your first training)

• Better for the environment (no flights)

I wrote a detailed comparison of online and in-person yoga education if you want to dive deeper. What to do instead:

Don't rule out online options automatically. Focus on finding the best education from a teacher you trust. Format is secondary to content quality. That said, if you strongly prefer in-person for community or accountability reasons, honor that. Just make sure you're choosing in-person for the right reasons, not just because you think 'that's how it's supposed to be.'

Oh, and don't listen to anyone who tells you that if you 'only' did an only YTT you won't be able to find a job as a teacher. If you are an excellent yoga teacher, you'll have plenty of job options. Because a) most yoga teachers aren't nearly as good as they could be. And b) studio owners care about skills, not where you got your certificate.

Mistake #6: Choosing a Training That Doesn't Teach Movement Properly

My first 200-hour training in India was an incredible experience for many reasons. And I'm very grateful for this program. But it was also severely lacking! We had zero lessons on anatomy or movement science.

Our teacher would just get on stage, call out pose names, and we'd copy him. No cues. No explanations. Nothing. One day he decided to 'help' me go deeper in Lotus Pose by pushing down on my knees with his full body weight. His 'assist' tore my medial meniscus and this injury still affects my practice to this day.

After this training, when friends asked me to teach them, I couldn't answer basic questions:

"Why can't I straighten my arms in Cobra?"

"Why won't my heels touch the floor in Downdog?"

I just had no idea.

So I signed up for an anatomy training hoping that I would learn the missing pieces. But that course just taught me to remember the names of muscles and bones. It was textbook anatomy. Not yoga anatomy.

Then I joined another 200 Hour YTT (this time in the US and with a teacher who focused on alignment and technique). This time around I learned tons of cues and I felt great. But years later I later discovered that the whole system that I learned in this course was based on outdated ideas about yoga anatomy.

The point is: Even though every training has a 'yoga anatomy' module in the curriculum, what you learn varies dramatically from one training to the next. And, unfortunately, most YTTs don't teach you everything yoga teachers should know about the human body. To help you find a proper training, I made a short list with what you can expect to learn about movement and the human body:

• The ins and outs of 100+ common yoga poses (what matters, how to enter and exit the poses etc.)

• Which cues to use and which outdated ones to avoid

• Human anatomy as it relates to yoga (not just memorizing muscle names)

• How human variation affects practice (we're not all built to do poses the same way)

• How to use props to help every body thrive in yoga

• How to spot compensations and offer modifications

Mistake #7: Choosing a Training That Treats Philosophy as an Afterthought

The thing that separates yoga from Pilates, CrossFit, or any other physical practice is wisdom. You could also call it philosophy, mindset, worldview, or spirituality. Whatever word you use, it's the secret sauce of yoga. If you want to truly understand yoga - and especially if you want to teach it - you can't just focus on the physical dimension of the practice. You need to understand the wisdom tradition of yoga too.

My first training in India (the one that didn't tach me anything about movement) was transformational because of the philosophy I learned. We meditated for hours every day starting at 5am. We had daily dharma talks. We learned breathwork and tried different rituals. After four weeks, I left the ashram as a completely different person. The teachings helped me deconstruct my identity, let go of attachments, become more resilient and compassionate. My entire life changed - not just my yoga practice.

But in every Western training I took afterward, philosophy was an afterthought. Teachers taught it because they had to check a box. It was dry, rushed, and quite superficial. The other students didn't know what they were missing. They thought, 'Ah, okay, so that's yoga philosophy. Pretty boring. Not my thing.'

But actually the teacher was the problem. Not the content. So when you find a YTT leader, make sure they genuinely care about and have a thorough understanding of authentic yoga philosophy.

Your Next Step

Okay, I hope that walking through these 7 common mistakes has helped you find more clarity. It was the 'what-not-to-do' part of choosing your YTT. If you want to learn more about the 'what-to-do' part, I recommend that you take a look at this simple 5-step framework for how to find the perfect yoga teacher training for you and your situation.