The 7 Most Common Mistakes When Choosing Your YTT - And How To Avoid Them All

For most yoga practitioners worldwide, yoga means movement. They get on their mats to stretch, flow through poses, and work with their bodies. As a teacher, you absolutely need to understand how bodies work in yoga.

Without solid knowledge of anatomy and modern movement science, you can't properly support your students. You won't know how to help someone deepen their practice, adapt poses for pregnancy or different body types, or work around injuries. Worse, your cues or assists might actually cause harm.

My Painful Education in What NOT to Do

Remember that knee injury I mentioned from my first training in India? Here's exactly how it happened, and why it illustrates the biggest problem with most movement education in yoga teacher trainings.

Our teacher had decided we weren't progressing fast enough. His solution? Use force to push students into poses their bodies weren't ready for. He walked around the room sitting on people's backs in forward folds, lifting students into wheel pose, and generally using what he thought were "adjustments" but were actually just dangerous manipulation.

When he got to me during Lotus Pose - one of the deepest hip openers in yoga - my knees were nowhere near the floor. According to him, this meant I was lazy and mentally weak. So he put his hands on my knees and pushed them down with his full body weight until they almost touched the floor.

I felt something tear in my left knee immediately. It was my medial meniscus, and that injury still affects my practice almost two decades later.

The Problem: Most Teachers Don't Know Movement Science

Here's what makes my story even more tragic: neither my teacher nor any of us students understood how wrong this approach was. We didn't know what we didn't know. He was teaching the way he'd been taught, and we assumed this was normal because it was our first training experience.

Even though our curriculum officially included "Yoga Anatomy," we studied exactly zero anatomy. Instead, our teacher just called out pose names while 50 students copied whatever we saw him do. No cues, no explanations, no understanding of how different bodies work in poses.

Most yoga teacher trainers today still don't have adequate movement education themselves. That's why so many programs just teach you to memorize lists of bones and muscles - information that's essentially useless when you're actually teaching.

My Second Training: Better But Still Outdated

After realizing I couldn't teach the physical practice safely, I signed up for a second training focused entirely on alignment and technique. This time I learned detailed alignment rules for every pose, which gave me confidence as a new teacher.

The only problem? Everything I learned was completely outdated.

This training was based on B.K.S. Iyengar's approach from the 1960s. Iyengar was an incredible practitioner, but he had very specific body proportions - super long arms, broad chest, short torso, and short legs. This configuration made poses that are challenging for most people look effortless for him.

Unfortunately, he wrote his instructions as if every body was built exactly like his. When that approach became the "gold standard" for yoga alignment, it created a one-size-fits-all system that actually works for very few people.

For years, I taught these precise alignment cues thinking I was giving students the best possible instruction. When students still struggled, I figured it wasn't my problem - I'd given them the "correct" cues, after all.

The Game-Changing Realization

Everything changed when I discovered modern movement science and the simple but revolutionary idea that humans have unique bodies - not just unique personalities and faces, but unique bone structures, muscle lengths, and joint mobility.

This means one-size-fits-all alignment cues don't work for most people. The "perfect" forward fold for someone with long legs and a short torso looks completely different from the "perfect" forward fold for someone with short legs and a long torso.

I was excited by this revelation but also incredibly frustrated. Why hadn't anyone taught me this before? How many more hours and dollars would I need to invest to get a complete yoga education?

What Excellent Movement Education Looks Like

After years of seeking out additional training and studying on my own, I finally felt prepared to help students thrive in their practice. Here's what every quality YTT should teach you about movement:

1\. Deep Understanding of 100+ Poses

You don't need to learn every yoga pose ever invented - that's impossible in 200 hours. But you should understand about 100 fundamental poses really well.

What does it mean to know a pose well? You need to understand:

• How to get into and out of the pose safely

• What actions to cue and how to cue them effectively

• What to look for in your students

• How to modify the pose for different bodies and abilities

• What really matters in each pose versus what's just stylistic preference

2\. Outdated vs. Helpful Cues

Many yoga teachers still use cues that modern movement science has shown to be unhelpful or even harmful. Your training should teach you which cues to avoid and why, plus give you better alternatives.

For example, telling everyone to "straighten your legs in downward dog" ignores the fact that some people's bone structure makes this impossible or even harmful. A better approach teaches you to recognize different body types and give appropriate cues for each.

3\. Anatomy for Unique Bodies

This is huge. Every person has different bone structures, muscle lengths, and joint mobility. Traditional alignment instructions don't work for most people because they assume everyone's body works the same way.

You need to understand how these differences affect yoga practice so you can help each student find their version of poses rather than forcing them into some imaginary "perfect" shape.

4\. Props Mastery

Props aren't for "weak" students - they're powerful tools that help everyone access poses more effectively. Unfortunately, props have developed a bad reputation in many yoga communities.

An excellent teacher training teaches you to use blocks, straps, blankets, and bolsters creatively to help students find stability, length, and ease in poses. When you master props, your students will love you for it.

Red Flags in Movement Education

Watch out for trainings that:

• Focus mainly on memorizing anatomical terms

• Teach rigid alignment rules that apply to everyone

• Don't address body diversity and modifications

• Skip over props or treat them as afterthoughts

• Use outdated cues without explaining why they're problematic

• Don't provide hands-on practice with real feedback

Questions to Ask Potential Teachers

Before committing to a program, ask about:

• Their approach to teaching anatomy (practical vs. memorization)

• How they address different body types in poses

• Their stance on traditional vs. modern alignment cues

• What continuing education they've done in movement science

• How much time is dedicated to props and modifications

Why This Matters Even If You Don't Plan to Teach

Even if you're taking a training purely for personal development, understanding how your unique body works in yoga will transform your practice. You'll stop forcing yourself into poses that don't work for your structure and start finding variations that actually serve you.

The Bottom Line

Most yoga teacher trainings won't give you adequate movement education because most trainers haven't received it themselves. But when you find a program that teaches modern, science-based approaches to yoga anatomy, you'll graduate prepared to help students thrive rather than struggle.

This knowledge sets you apart from the majority of yoga teachers who are still using outdated methods. Your students will notice the difference immediately, and you'll have the confidence that comes from actually understanding what you're teaching.