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Episode 59: Are You Certain You Need Certifications?
1.2k Plays1 year ago
Welcome to our supersized Episode 59 of the Movement Logic podcast and the final episode of Season 3! In this episode, Laurel and Sarah discuss certifications for movement professionals. Are they necessary? Are they useful? Do they help promote you, or just the brand? Should you be focusing on it so much?
You will learn:
- Do certifications in the movement industry function to a means to ensure quality control and accountability the way that the equivalent does in a regulated industry
- Do the tests measure meaningful and important qualities of a movement teacher or do they measure what is easy to measure
- What are some drawbacks to certifications
- What are some positive aspects of certifications
- The differences between regulated and unregulated industries
- Does promoting a course as ‘safe’ require any proof in an unregulated industry?
- Can a certification course really claim to be a safer form of movement than any other?
- Why are many teachers looking for certification in their continuing education classes?
- The value of longer form, apprentice/student to teacher/mentor relationship versus a weekend training
- That Yoga Alliance is not the evil overlord that so many seem to think it is
- Does having letters after your name make you more credible or trustworthy?
Episode 48: Alignment Dogma - Pelvis
Episode 54: Alignment Dogma - Spine
Episode 58: Alignment Dogma - Shoulders
Visit our website www.movementlogictutorials.com for more paid and free education!
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Transcript
Introduction and Philosophy
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic Podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaversdorf and physical therapist, Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we're here with up-to-date and cutting-edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
Season Recap and Course Success
00:00:33
Speaker
Welcome to the last episode of season three of the Movement Logic podcast. I'm Laurel Beaversdorf, and I'm here with my co-host, Dr. Sarah Cort. Hello. It's 2023. In February, we were in Yalapa, and we were doing season two, and that's when we cooked up our bone density course idea. I mean, I think we were like, it was well underway, and we were like, let's start podcasting about bone density and barbells.
00:01:02
Speaker
And it really got going in Yalapa. And now July, we were in LA together. And we did most of the episodes for season three in LA in July. And now it is October. And this is the last episode of season three, which we're doing just a couple of weeks before this will air, which is unusual. Maybe just two weeks, right? And a lot has happened, Sarah.
00:01:33
Speaker
We launched bone density course, Lift for Longevity.
00:01:37
Speaker
We were thinking it was gonna do pretty well and it ended up just doing so much better than we thought. From my perspective, we were like, okay, fingers crossed, we hope we get X, 40 people is sort of what we were thinking we might get. And we've more than doubled that. And I think, apart from the, thank God this thing is working because it's a big,
00:02:07
Speaker
It's a bit of a risk. We think people are into this. We're getting the sense. We're testing the groundwater. We're getting the vibe. We put this whole thing together and then we're like, are you into it? We had no proof of concept really. We didn't do what everyone tells you to do, which is ask your audience if they want the course. We were like, no, they want it. We're just going to work with it.
00:02:29
Speaker
We're just going to make it further. It's exciting in two ways to me. It's exciting, yes, that it was not a complete garbage can failure because that would have been a really big bummer and we would have been like, okay, back to the drawing board. But it's also very exciting to me that there are so many women
00:02:50
Speaker
who are in the middle period of their life, who feel strongly enough about the need to take care of their bodies and the fact that for the most part, the study of movement and the medical community just kind of
00:03:06
Speaker
start ignoring us once we are close to or no longer childbearing age. And it's just, I love that all these women have just been like, you know what? I'm going to take all of this into my own hands and I'm going to take care of myself and I'm going to take care of my future health and F the patriarchy, essentially. I see this as like 80 women saying F the patriarchy and it makes me very, very happy.
00:03:30
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I mean, so yeah, we were, we were like, okay, remember when we started creating this course and we were like, all right, maybe we should make, you know, we were, we were like, let's make some, some options for people who have dumbbells and kettlebells and oh, let's, let's have a landmine and let's have all this stuff. And like, we started to create the outline and we were like, we don't want to do this.
00:03:52
Speaker
I think basically we were like, this is an unholy nightmare. It's too complicated. There's just too many moving parts. It's too complicated. We really were excited about the simplicity of barbells. And I know that sounds like an oxymoron because barbells in people's minds, unfortunately, seem complicated and dangerous and unwieldy and inaccessible. And that's really largely what we've spent this entire year
00:04:22
Speaker
kind of myth busting around, right? Is that barbells are actually not any of those things. And we were just really excited about this idea of doing barbells as a way to really simplify our offering so that we could distill our offering into something much more potent, right? Which is like not everything in the kitchen sink. No, it's barbells. It's lifting heavy. It's not pink dumbbells.
00:04:51
Speaker
It's the real deal. And people were into it, right? And they weren't confused about what we're offering. And I think that's largely why we were so successful. We were just very clear about what this is, you know? Yeah, and what it isn't. And also, by being so specific about we're using barbells, and there are some people who are joining who are like, I'm going to work my way up, which is totally appropriate and fine. But the fact that we're like, no, no, no.
00:05:19
Speaker
Get in girls, we're going shopping or whatever that meme is from Mean Girls. Get in women, we're lifting four bells. I think that really appealed to a lot of people and I mean, we haven't seen any other course that's doing what we're doing.
00:05:36
Speaker
No, no, no, I think that also made it appealing to people because they're like, this is different. This is not just another program that's like teaching me. I already know how to lift medium heavy things. You know, it's like this is I'm going to acquire a totally different skill. Yep.
00:05:52
Speaker
Absolutely. So thank you to everyone who's signed up. I think we have almost 90 people at this point. We do. So also thank you to everyone who has left reviews. We've been getting some really good ones, and we've been reading the positive ones on air. We're going to do something a little different this episode,
Listener Feedback and Podcast Banter
00:06:09
Speaker
Sarah. We're going to read our
00:06:11
Speaker
Only negative. But it's very special. It's very special. I actually, it's one of my favorites. It's one of my favorite. It's very entertaining. Yes. Because there's three reasons. Number one, it's our first negative one on Apple. I don't know what everyone is saying on the other platforms because I'm only on Apple Podcast. And it's not one star, it's two stars. It was amended. That's my favorite part. So can you read it, Sarah?
00:06:38
Speaker
Oh yeah, absolutely. So, okay. The original review was this.
00:06:42
Speaker
Too much chit chat at the beginning. I am five to six minutes into the podcast, and it's just boring, back and forth, non-relevant information. I prefer to the point, relevant information in an information overloaded world. Please, just get to the points. I love that so much. And then, I don't know what caused them to amend it. You and I both were like, blah, ha, ha, ha, ha. And I think I posted it on social media.
00:07:10
Speaker
but I'm not sure that that's why they amended it. But then they, like maybe a couple of days later, they didn't add more stars. It's still only two stars. They wrote, I would like to add to my original review. They are funny and give very good information once they get into the subject matter.
00:07:27
Speaker
I mean, I just, I think that is just so funny because, you know, they're, obviously this person just wants the, they want the cold hard like content, right? And so, but I feel like, and tell me what you think, like, I feel like it's hard to just digest content
00:07:49
Speaker
Like when it's, it's not like contextualized within like the human being sharing it and like our point of view. And so I think a lot of our banter is just how people kind of get a feel for who we are on multiple planes, right? Not just like the, let's talk about movement science plane, right? Or let's talk about like,
00:08:09
Speaker
how messed up the fitness industry is right now playing, but rather like just goofy Laurel and Sarah and like our relationship and then like our relationship to the movement fields we operate within and then all the funny commentary around that. And then, okay, here's what we're talking about today. I feel like that really kind of gives it more meaning, but I mean, I'm biased, right? Obviously, I think our banter is top shelf. We definitely, there's no bottom shelf banter going on here. This is top shelf.
00:08:39
Speaker
Primo. This is not a store brand. This is brand name banter. But what I wanted to say about it, I mean, I do think we're hilarious, but of course I would. But what I have two thoughts, I do rate one is sort of agreeing with you thought, which is I remember when I was in Glendale Community College doing my college level prerequisite biology, something I think human anatomy biology class, one of the one of the classes. And
00:09:09
Speaker
There's this one teacher from there that I will never, ever forget because what he did that was so good, it was exactly what you were talking about, Laurel. He contextualized it. He would talk about the layers, how there's so much, the dermis on the bottom of your foot is so incredibly thick. And then he illustrated it with a story. And I will never forget that story. It was a very dramatic story, but it also reminded me about how the dermis on the bottom of your foot is very thick.
00:09:36
Speaker
in the sense of giving the facts context, I think that's important. But then the other thing that I want to say is, you know, we do faff. And I don't know if I'm the bigger faffer between the two of us, but I definitely it's kind of just how my brain works. Like I'm always making weird little dumb connections. And sometimes I share them and most of the time I shouldn't share them. So I don't. But I would also say if you're someone who's listening and you're like, you know what, I do like these guys.
00:10:04
Speaker
but I kind of agree with that review. All you need to do is just fast forward the first eight minutes of the show, and then you definitely will be a lot closer to the facts and the point if you don't want to listen to the beginning. I think that's fine. Don't you? You don't have to listen to this if you don't want to. Just hit the 15 seconds forwards a bunch of times. I think most people know that, which is why I'm
00:10:27
Speaker
But you'd be surprised. You think most people would know that, but I don't know. Maybe they don't. The other thing is, I was like, okay, I'm going to critique the critique. I prefer to the point relevant information in an information overloaded world. It's like, well, if the world is information overloaded, wouldn't you prefer a little faff now and again? I mean, I would. But let's just joke a little bit then, right? Listen, you can't make everybody happy.
00:10:57
Speaker
You can't. That's why I love that this person, I'm going to tell you what I really think. Thank you. That's awesome. Respect. Let's get some more of those. Yeah.
Movement Teaching Certifications
00:11:06
Speaker
All right. On to our topic today. Certifications.
00:11:11
Speaker
specifically certifications for teachers of yoga, pilates, kettlebells, barbells, animal flow, gyrotonics, yoga tuna, CrossFit, personal trainers, FRC mobility specialists, just to name a few, which for the purpose of succinctness, we will refer to in this episode as movement teaching certifications or certs for movement teaching professionals, okay?
00:11:40
Speaker
Certifications, right? Typically when a continuing ed or con ed offering is a certification versus a con ed offering that is instead just a weekend of workshops or a training or a class that doesn't certify you, some kind of learning opportunity like that. No certification attached. With certifications,
00:12:03
Speaker
There is a learning opportunity after which you can opt in to receive some kind of official permission to formally or publicly refer to yourself as such and such, meaning the brand name,
00:12:22
Speaker
certified teacher. And in this case, the such and such, right, the brand name, is that movement system or that company that has, quote unquote, certified you.
00:12:34
Speaker
Now, there's also often some kind of a test associated with receiving this certification and it's also not uncommon to have to pay a fee to receive this permission or even a recurring fee annually to maintain a, quote, active certification. These certifications can take place in time periods as short as a day, a weekend, a week, or even months. Now, the purpose of this episode is to critically appraise the role
00:13:02
Speaker
of movement teacher certifications and what they might add or detract when compared to non-certifying con ed or continuing education opportunities. So I named some popular certifications above, but what are some non-certifying con ed opportunities, Sarah?
00:13:23
Speaker
Well, in the world of movement teachers, I mean, not anything that is that is named as such particularly, but like that I that I know of, but you can take workshops with your favorite teacher. That's to me, that's a really great con ed opportunity that you're not going to get a certification from.
00:13:41
Speaker
Just take your take different teachers just taking class is always a content opportunity, right? But it seems to me and you can you can fill me and this might just be me not knowing enough about this anymore It seems to me that most
00:13:54
Speaker
content opportunities, specifically in the movement teacher world, not in the PT world. It's very, very different in the PT world, in the movement world. It seems like most of them are certifications and either it's hard to say, it's sort of like a chicken egg thing. Like are they certifications because that's what people want? Or are they certifications and then people have decided that certifications are what they want?
00:14:19
Speaker
Right. Okay, so I can actually think of a very top-of-mind, non-certifying offering at the moment, which is a bonus-y course. Well, I didn't know you were going to promo our course. You've been podcasting with me for a few seasons.
00:14:40
Speaker
You didn't know I was going to promo our course. Well, our course has, the reason I said that is our course for this year has closed. People cannot join anymore. That's true. That's not to say that they shouldn't be thinking about it for next year. Well, the whole, I think the whole inspiration from my end to create the outline for this was because we did have several people ask us if it was a certification.
00:15:03
Speaker
Right. The bone density course was a certification. Also, my yoga with resistance bands teacher training is not a certification. And there's lots of, like Trina's weekend of workshops, creativity meets science, like she's not a, she doesn't certify anyone. There's lots of opportunities like that out there. So yeah, I guess like the whole impetus for this episode was really to try to look at what people think they're getting from a certification.
00:15:31
Speaker
And then maybe also what they're actually getting from a certification, from a movement teaching certification. All right.
00:15:38
Speaker
Now, we're definitely, definitely not going to go into the details of each of the different certs that I named specifically. Personally, I've heard really good things about most of them and some pretty shady things about a few of them, but that's for another episode. We're not going to review any content. No, not at all. Rather. I thought we were just dishing dirt this episode. I got my popcorn.
00:16:04
Speaker
You know, we're not, we're not doing that. We're rather, through the unfolding of our conversation together, Sarah and I, we've also received some insights from folks in the movement teaching industry over email and social media. We're going to attempt to critically appraise the role and value of certifications in an unregulated industry, like the yoga and fitness industries we're talking about here.
00:16:29
Speaker
the movement professional industry, right? And we're going to think critically about what role certifications appear to play and then what role they might actually play. And our central questions for this discussion are, number one, are certifications in the unregulated movement industry a means by which to ensure quality control and accountability like they are
00:16:52
Speaker
or their equivalents are in regulated industries. Do they function the way that permits, licensures, and things like that in a regulated industry function? And if not, if they don't function that way in an unregulated industry, what purpose are they serving then? And then number two, oftentimes certifications, quote, test you at the end. And these tests vary.
00:17:14
Speaker
And the question we're going to pose is like, are these tests measuring what is meaningful and important to measure when evaluating movement teaching? Or are they simply measuring what is easy to measure and thereby giving the appearance of measuring something meaningful? All right. And then number three, what are some of the obvious and hidden drawbacks of certifications? And then number four, what might some of the actual benefits of certifications
00:17:40
Speaker
in the movement industry. Okay, so Sarah, I think many assume certifications play a similar role for movement professionals as licenses, permits, and certifications play for professionals in regulated industries like healthcare. That's the industry you operate within as a PT. The public teaching sector, my husband was a public school teacher. Aviation, right? Do they? The short answer is no.
00:18:08
Speaker
The long answer is I think people feel like they do and that's why they like them. But in a regulated industry like mine, first of all, you have to go through, I mean, depending on the thing, but you have to go through a very long school process to begin with, like very long. For physical therapy, to get the doctorate degree, it's three years of graduate school. Teaching is more, probably five. If I wanted to, I could get a PhD and that would be five more years of school before I did that.
00:18:38
Speaker
It's the timeframe, first of all, is way more serious.
00:18:44
Speaker
And it's much longer because there's much, much more that you're having to learn because you have to then get a license. And in the United States, your license for PT, I can't speak for anything else, but you have to have a state licensure. So if I moved, for example, to another state, I would not be licensed to practice physical therapy in that state. I would have to pass that state's exam in order to have a license to work in that state. Yeah, it's similar with public school teaching as well.
00:19:13
Speaker
like teacher certifications are issued by state. Yeah, I think a lot of things are. And there's also a very involved ethics and moral code that you must abide by. And if you do not, you could lose your license and you will not be practicing physical therapy or whenever you're practicing again, like the stakes are really, really high. Because we're dealing, I mean, in my industry, we're dealing with health, we're dealing with people's bodies, you have to
00:19:43
Speaker
you have to take on a level of responsibility that you do not have to take on as a movement teacher. You just don't. So that's sort of in a nutshell the big differences that I see, the sort of macro big differences. Right on. I'm going to be super transparent right off the bat and share my bias in creating the outline for this episode, which is that from my perspective, and I know I'm not alone, certifications in the movement world function more so to benefit the entrepreneur, the brand, or the company
00:20:12
Speaker
behind the particular movement system certification, and they don't function how they do primarily in regulated industries such as healthcare, which is really to benefit the consumers by ensuring quality control and consumer protection
00:20:33
Speaker
because there's accountability, right? You can lose your license. Yes. You can also fail out of school and or fail the exam. Right. And a lot of certifications in the movement world, and we can speak more about this later, but we did not see anybody failing. Right. Even if maybe they should have.
00:20:53
Speaker
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And we'll talk about why that is. So I also want to say I'm not anti-business. Sarah, are you anti-business? Hells no. No. And we're not against marketing. We're not against branding. I'm also not pro-regulation, which is largely where certifying entities come into play in regulated industries, right, is to regulate some
00:21:16
Speaker
way of doing business to make it safer probably for the consumer. I'm not pro-regulation of the movement world. I'm not at all. I want to say I'm not against all these things that I just said and I'm not pro-regulation. I don't think that the movement industry
00:21:33
Speaker
the movement teaching industry, if we're just gonna call it that, right, should be regulated by the government. I think there's potentially some good that could come from some oversight and maybe most notably as a means by which to move it more into the public sector, somehow make it more accessible. But basically the decision to regulate or not regulate an industry depends largely on public interest and safety concerns. Okay, that's why industries get regulated.
00:22:00
Speaker
because the public wants it regulated, because there's major safety concerns. And up until now, it appears that there has just not been public interest to regulate yoga, fitness, movement of any kind, perhaps because mountains of research show that it's actually very safe to exercise. The benefits far outweigh the risks.
00:22:21
Speaker
as opposed to seeing doctors who are not actually doctors to treat your illness or getting in flights with pilots who have not actually been properly trained. That's dangerous. We don't want that happening. You sure don't. You sure don't. And the other thing I was going to say is, how do you regulate exercise? How do you regulate movement? We're all doing it all day long. It's so much different than like, I am going to this clinic. I have an appointment with this doctor.
00:22:49
Speaker
there are formal medical forums that I have signed up to be here. It's just a completely different thing to just walk into a class and take it. The only thing that you have to have is money to take the class, right? So it's just such a different functioning world. When you say that there hasn't been public interest in regulating it, I would be surprised if people even thought that they could.
00:23:15
Speaker
You know, I don't think it's a thought that's crossing people's minds. Like, you know what, we should really get this, you know, hit class regulated or something.
00:23:24
Speaker
I think people, at least in the yoga industry, are really confused about what yoga lines' role is in the yoga industry. And I think a lot of them are confused because they seem to think that yoga lines is some type of regulating body when it's not, which we're also going to talk about. Anyway, all right, so exercise is safe. There are many benefits to movement being unregulated, in my opinion. I think that fewer barriers to people entering this space with their movement offerings, fewer gatekeepers to that
00:23:54
Speaker
You know, with people coming into the space like, I'm going to teach hula hoop salsa dancing or whatever. It's like, great. Go for it. No one's going to try to stop you. Do it. Personally, I think that's great. And I don't think someone needs, you know, extensive education or any education, frankly, to be an incredible movement teacher. Like you don't need a bachelor's degree to be a movement teacher. You don't need a master's degree. Certainly not.
00:24:20
Speaker
You know, exercise is so safe, I think someone could be a highly effective movement teacher of any kind and take exactly zero continuing ed as it is traditionally thought of. Exactly zero trainings, seminars, workshops, and certifications. And in fact, a long time ago when people started teaching yoga, they didn't take trainings to do that. They just studied with the teacher.
00:24:46
Speaker
And then eventually that yoga teacher was like, hey, you should teach. And I'm sure that it's been that way across all of these different movement modes, right? Exactly. It's the apprenticeship model. It's one of the best ways to learn to do something. It's one of the best ways to adopt a skill set and become a master of something, right?
00:25:06
Speaker
Absolutely. Sarah, before we get into it, let's compare regulated versus unregulated industries. Just to really clarify what are the differences between a regulated industry versus an unregulated industry so that we're all on the same page about how certifications function and also what yoga lines this role is because we will talk about that a little bit, how certifications function differently in these
00:25:30
Speaker
Industries depending on if they're regulated or unregulated. All right, so share with us some of the biggest differences here All right. So the biggest difference is we sort of touched on this earlier, but regulated industries have government oversight meaning there are actual laws and regulations and Industries that both monitor and control it so for example in my industry in the physical therapy world there is the physical therapy
00:25:57
Speaker
PTBC Board of Certification, I think that's what it stands for. There's like the national one. And then there's the like California only board. And like, for example, my my license is up in November, and I have to pay them some money. But also, I have to make sure that I have taken enough of my continuing education that I'm supposed to take so that in case they ask me about it, I have proof, right? So there's all that kind of stuff unregulated doesn't have that there's not really any government oversight.
00:26:26
Speaker
as much as it's just sort of like the equivalent of a bunch of Yelp reviews essentially, right? So what's everybody into, what's the sort of tide turning towards with the people that I teach yoga with or some groups are more into this kind of yoga and they're gonna practice that and some people are more into that. Some people are teaching really classical Pilates and they do not deviate. Other people have taken Pilates and just exploded it into a bunch of different kinds of things that expand on what the original,
00:26:57
Speaker
style was. Same with movement. I mean, I used to teach for Equinox and all the time there would be like some new, I remember one time there was some new class where they were using like weighted drumsticks like and it was like you're just drumming all over the place or something and I was like that seems kind of cool but there was no government oversight involved in the creation of that class, right? That was just like
00:27:16
Speaker
one of the things that Equinox does, which is they're constantly trying to create new content for their members to keep them excited and think that they're on the cutting edge of what's happening in the movement world. So as a business, and Equinox is a business, they have so much flexibility in deciding how to run their business. They can offer any class they want. They can hire or fire whoever they want. When you're in a regulated industry, like the one that I'm in,
00:27:44
Speaker
There's nothing popular about it. It's not like, oh, everyone's super into hot yoga. Let's go take it. It's not like, oh, everyone this month is super into physical therapy. Let's all go to physical therapy. It just sort of exists. It's humming along in the background. So it's got nothing to do with popularity. And we see, it's funny, in this industry, we see ebbs and flows in terms of the number of people that we
00:28:07
Speaker
like the number of people that would be on my schedule any given week has a lot more to do with the rest of people's lives. Like, is it summer and the kids are out of school and everyone's on vacation?
00:28:17
Speaker
is it September and all the kids are going back to school and all the parents are like, ah, and like are stressed out and can't make it to PT that week. Like it's got much more to do with just how people are living their lives than it has to do with the, the quote unquote popularity or newness or interest market interest because it's about injury for the most part. Right? So that's not a marketable
00:28:39
Speaker
I mean, people use it as a marketing tool, but it's not like if you're injured, you're injured. It's not like, oh, it's really trendy to be injured this month, so I'm going to fall down on my shoulder or something. And imagine that'd be hilarious. And I talked about this a little bit as well, but like in terms of becoming a PT,
00:28:58
Speaker
there is a very high barrier. Like in PT school, the school that I went to, and I think most of them do this, you had to pass every single class in order to be allowed to take the next semester of classes. And if you didn't, you were rolled out. It happened to a friend of mine. You would be rolled out. You would have to wait a year and then you would have to take that class that you failed again. Now with the cohort one year younger than you, and then you join their cohort and you finish. So,
00:29:27
Speaker
It is not for the faint of heart and it is seriously minded and at the end of it, you take this really gnarly exam that I thought I did so poorly on. I was positive that I failed it because it was so hard. I went out and got wasted with my friend at like one o'clock in the afternoon because I was like, well, that's the end of that. I guess I'm just going to have to wait until the exam comes up again. You have to take the exam. People take it multiple times to pass, so all of this is
00:29:54
Speaker
very time consuming, it's costly. And, you know, there's also a lot of like I was saying, there's a lot of continuing education requirement, like I just had to go do my CPR again, because you have to do it every couple of years. In order to maintain my license, I have to take classes on any on laws and regulations in case anything has changed, I have to take a certain amount of continuing education to maintain my license. And
00:30:22
Speaker
That's just not the case for, it is a case in some movement styles, I would say, but it's not a blanket truth across the board. Right. Yeah. There's some personal trainer certifications. Do you require a certain number?
00:30:37
Speaker
of continuing education credits and also CPR AED being updated every two years, I believe. Yoga Alliance has a continuing education credit requirement, but Yoga Alliance is not a certifying body. It's a registry.
00:30:54
Speaker
And they accept continuing education credits from non-certifying bodies, yoga lions does. And so the barriers to entry are much lower in the movement world and also in startups and other public sector businesses where they just don't face the same regulatory hurdles as regulated industries do.
00:31:21
Speaker
But here's an example. So right now, we're asking, should we actually be regulating technology more in this country? We're seriously asking if maybe we should be regulating social media more, if we should get ahead of AI. And that's because we're finding now through the data that these can cause considerable harm. So now public interest is growing for regulation of tech more so than
00:31:51
Speaker
Before so it's just another example of how whether or not something is regulated or not really always kind of boils down to safety. And human rights and things like that so alright so whereas in a regulated industry sarah's in healthcare public education my husband's and was in public education i'm typically something like a certification permit.
00:32:11
Speaker
license would function to ensure quality control in service of consumer or user protection of some kind. That is its primary function. In an unregulated industry, yoga, fitness, mostly this just functions, I think,
00:32:26
Speaker
as a way to influence market forces. It's a business decision. It's a marketing device. It's used to enhance perceived value. A lot of times, this perceived value is sold as safety. But keep in mind, in an unregulated industry, you can sell safety without ever having to guarantee it. Also, keep in mind that exercise is very, very safe. OK?
00:32:57
Speaker
I think the primary role certs play in an unregulated industry like yoga, fitness, is really as a marketing device, as a way to ensure brand recognition. All right. Another thought, this gets to what I see as a root cause of why so many marketing strategies revolve around fear mongering movement.
00:33:16
Speaker
Okay, is that fear sells. If I can make you believe a certain way of moving, let's say CrossFit, okay, CrossFit is often held up as this like really dangerous way of moving, right? If I can make you think or yoga, God, yoga is almost worse than CrossFit. Yoga is so dangerous, right? If I can make you believe that a certain way of moving or a whole exercise mode is inherently dangerous, I can then more easily sell you my certification
00:33:45
Speaker
Where you believe that you are going to be certified to do something safely or safely or my favorite word is functionally.
00:33:56
Speaker
The safety one is I think a really big, it's an eye-catching word because everyone's worried about hurting themselves or hurting a student. And there's been so much, I mean, what's the thing on the evening news? If it bleeds, it leads, right? Yeah, so negative bias, right?
00:34:20
Speaker
Yeah, so we want the reassurance that this certification that we're about to take is not only that it is safe, but what it's sort of playing into is like, what you've been doing so far maybe isn't safe, but come with us and we're going to show you the safe way to do things.
00:34:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like whole movement modes will be developed birthed out of this idea that like, this mode is dangerous. Therefore, this new mode is safe functional is often the word that's used. Yes, this variation, right? Because and I think the the reason why that word is used is for something like yoga, for example,
00:34:59
Speaker
it's hard to argue that there is, you know, if we're taking the word functional to mean applicable to your typical movements in your day, or like, everyone gets really excited about how a squat is really functional, because it's like getting in and out of a chair, which is true. You know, it's a stretch to say that pinch of mayurasana in yoga, like forearm stand is a functional pose, right? Unless you clean the floor with your face. Like, I don't know why I would
00:35:26
Speaker
what the function in the rest of my life is to be able to do something like that. Here's the thing. A movement doesn't need to look like a quotidian movement to prepare you for that movement. You could get good at
00:35:39
Speaker
getting up out of a chair by doing other exercises on machines at the gym like squat to be able to get up out of a chair because there's strength has so much transfer to many different positions that you could be in where you need to be strong in those particular muscle groups. So pinch of my erosina
00:35:58
Speaker
is functional in my opinion. It's a fabulous way to strengthen your triceps. But I would argue that the reason why people don't, the reason why the word functional has this kind of like marketing appeal to it is because it's easy to look at something like Pinchamaya Arasana or what's the one where you're standing, you've got your one leg up and your arms are wrapped around it and your foot is next to your ear or whatever. Do you know what I mean?
00:36:22
Speaker
it's easy to look at the ones that rely on advanced level let's say of balance or flexibility or strength and deem them dangerous and Non-functional right so even if they do in reality have a lot of transferable qualities The you know marketing is like big paintbrush. It's not little detailed brush. I
00:36:46
Speaker
Right. Absolutely. No, it's a buzzword. It's a buzzword and it's a buzzword that's actually come to mean, in my opinion, very, very little. Sarah, now here's where we could just be really transparent. We've definitely used the language in selling our barbell course, like learn to lift barbells safely. Yes.
00:37:04
Speaker
And I think, yeah, our thought behind this wasn't to like suggest that it's dangerous, but really to just meet people where they are, because a lot of people think that they're not safe, right? Exactly. I mean, the thing is, they're safer than flinging a car bell. It's very early in the morning. Okay. You know, we've emphasized a lot how a barbell is, in a lot of ways, much easier to deal with, or
00:37:31
Speaker
work with than something like a kettlebell or even like trying to use two dumbbells. But that is not what is in the public understanding of it. And even in the clinic, I mean, I have people who say, you know, oh, well, barbells are too much for me. They're too scary. They're too dangerous. Like that's just the public perception, especially for women, for women in particular, that they're going to hurt themselves or that you're going to hurt your back doing deadlifts or that
00:37:59
Speaker
The slight aching pain that you have is going to get worse from lifting heavy, all of that kind of stuff. So we did use the word safely in our marketing, but really because we're emphasizing how safe barbells actually are ultimately. And I don't think it's wrong when you're starting a new modality. And for a lot of the people in the course, this is a brand new way of lifting. Or maybe they've started a little bit of barbell work, but they haven't done a ton.
00:38:26
Speaker
it's, I think it's entirely appropriate to seek out someone to teach it to you and how to teach it to you correctly so that as the things like once the weight starts getting harder, you've got really good form to back it up, right? Things like that. So as much as I now just sound like I'm defending our course, we did have very specific reasons to use that word safely.
00:38:46
Speaker
Well, I think the reason really was to meet people where they were in their beliefs and attitudes toward Barbados, which is that we think you think that this is scary. We engaged in a year-long campaign to reverse that idea, right? Because many people in yoga and Pilates are oftentimes women, older women a lot of times too. They think that it's inherently dangerous.
00:39:07
Speaker
In a sense we're actually taking them on the six month journey live follow along classes walking them toward the skill of doing it yes.
00:39:17
Speaker
I would probably say efficiently rather than safely, truly, but that's not the word people are hung up on. They're hung up on safety. But at the same time, and this was our year, we waged a year-long campaign really making this argument, there is no evidence suggesting that lifting barbells is any more dangerous than lifting any other type of freeway, okay?
00:39:43
Speaker
Compared to other forms of exercise, lifting weights is extremely safe. And we'll get into this a little bit more as we go. So I'm really thinking of certification entities. We're not a certification entity either. We're not like, don't do CrossFit. That's so dangerous. Do our certification instead. And we're also not like, don't do CrossFit. That's so dangerous. We're like, CrossFit's great. Come with barbells. Just lift barbells.
00:40:12
Speaker
But there's lots of yoga schools that are like, we teach safe yoga. We teach functional yoga. And we're just rampant fear mongering around bad posture, bad exercise technique that you get from a lot of other movement systems. And there's really no evidence showing people with bad posture or with less efficient exercise technique are more at risk of injury. There's just not. It kind of goes back to some of the alignment dogma episodes where we talk about
00:40:42
Speaker
that sometimes conventional wisdom runs contrary to scientific evidence, and this can create a lot of cognitive dissonance. But the fact of the matter is individuals express a wide range of exercise techniques. You can perform an exercise inefficiently and still receive benefits from doing so. And so this whole idea that this certification program that teaches you a certain way of moving safer than another is probably bullpucky, probably just a marketing device.
00:41:12
Speaker
Back to unregulated industries and their use of certs in some cases There is an extra fee
00:41:21
Speaker
associated with certifying, right? Whether it's a one-time or recurring fee. And in many cases, this could provide additional revenue in the form of certification dues for the company. So the company is going to make more money off of this. So Sarah, have you ever been a part of certifications that charge recurring fees to maintain a cert? Did Yoga Toon Up do this? I know we were both Yoga Toon Up teachers. CrossFit, I think, does.
00:41:49
Speaker
I think FRC might. What does this provide the teacher that they're paying every year to maintain their cert? And then what do you think, does it help the consumer at all? Well, if you are teaching, like say, so I'm going to just use Yoga Tune Up as an example because that's what I certified in and then I paid their annual dues. So as a certified teacher,
00:42:13
Speaker
which you can only be if you continue, because I'm no longer a certified teacher because I no longer am paying my annual dues, even though I still retain all the knowledge and the learning that I got from that training. But as a certified teacher, you can then go and offer a yoga tune-up class at a yoga studio or at a gym or at a CrossFit box or wherever, right?
00:42:37
Speaker
it allowed you to teach a class called Yoga Tune Up. Now whether or not that's a benefit for you as the teacher or if it's ultimately more of a benefit for the creator of the style of movement, you know, who's just you are essentially going out into the world and expanding
00:42:54
Speaker
the recognition of the name and getting more people to hear about it, right? So you're doing that part for them. You may really love and believe in what you're teaching. And so you're like, you know what, I don't, that doesn't matter to me. And I, this is really what I want to teach. And these are the, this is the gateway to be able to teach it is I have to pay this annual fee. So I'm just going to do it. It also allows you to call yourself
00:43:17
Speaker
by the name of whatever the certification is. So you get to call yourself a yoga tune-up certified teacher. And again, that's something where potentially a consumer is going to come along and be like, oh yeah, I took a yoga tune-up class one time. I really liked it. Oh, here's this other person teaching this style. Let me take this class. And so it allows some consumer
00:43:36
Speaker
recognition in that sense. But again, it's also working as sort of a marketing tool, kind of a free marketing tool for not only free, the reverse of free, you've paid them to get the name of the of the course of the brand of the style out there in the world. And then the other thing that you would get was I believe you got to be listed in the yoga tune up registry on their website. So if somebody was looking for
00:44:03
Speaker
like say they were in New York, but they used to live in California, and they're like, are there any yoga tune-up classes in New York? They could go on the website, find them, they might find you that way.
00:44:13
Speaker
I personally didn't find that that happened very much. I don't think that is a very, it's not a marketing tool that gets a lot of eyeballs or use, but that was sort of what was included in the annual fee of being a yoga tune up teacher. No, I took a barbell, barbell rehab is the name of this certifying entity.
00:44:36
Speaker
No recurring fees, and in fact, no additional fee. But we had to pass an open book multiple choice test. That was the test at the end. And so their whole thing was, we're going to list you on a registry of barbell rehab providers, or whatever they call it. And that, I think, marketing opportunity for the individual teacher
00:45:04
Speaker
is something, but it is a much smaller opportunity for the teacher than it is for the entity certifying for that teacher to be advertising for them, basically, advertising for them. The other thing I'm going to say, too, is something like Yoga Tuna or CrossFit, which are really amalgamations
00:45:27
Speaker
of many different entity, many different rather modalities of movement, right? Like CrossFit kind of brings in strength training, they bring in gymnastics, they bring in cardio respiratory endurance activities, right? Like lots of different things kind of put together in a way that has become very, very popular. The coaches coming or the teachers coming to those modalities
00:45:54
Speaker
who are, I think, very successful have probably had lots of other continuing education before that.
00:46:03
Speaker
to really hone their technique, to build their knowledge base, to build their ability to work with people in a movement classroom setting to where, like now, if you're calling yourself, I'm a CrossFit coach, and you're selling your teaching as CrossFit, is it really the CrossFit that people are coming for?
00:46:24
Speaker
Or is it actually your skill as a teacher? So in a way, it's almost like the opposite. Putting your name on a registry, sure, so that people know that you teach FRC, for example. And they're maybe going to do a random internet search and be like, who in Houston teaches FRC? Oh, this random person who I don't know at all teaches FRC. So I'm going to go to them.
00:46:50
Speaker
OK, that could happen every blue moon, right? But what's probably happening is that your class as an FRC teacher or a kin stretch teacher is so freaking popular because you're actually a really good teacher. And you bring a lot to the table, a fraction of which FRC gave you. Right. But you're advertising for FRC. Do you understand?
00:47:20
Speaker
That's what's happening. And I sound like I'm mad about it. I'm not mad about it.
00:47:26
Speaker
I think it's fine too. I think it's fine, especially, I think, for newer teachers who are like, I don't really have a voice yet. I don't really have a voice yet. And this weekend certification gave me a lot to say. And if people like this content and they're going to come to my class for that reason, great, because nobody knows me yet, right? Totally, 100%. Right, exactly. As you were talking, I was thinking, it sort of acts in the reverse
00:47:53
Speaker
like the name recognition of the course will bring people to the course who then learn about you and maybe you are a fantastic teacher but you just don't have a lot of name recognition or whatever that like it can function in in reverse in that way that that more people will learn about you and come to love you as a teacher but
00:48:13
Speaker
I think then that we get into the world of, oh, now I have quote unquote followers or people who really like what I do and they will take my class no matter what it is, right? Or they'll follow me from the studio to that studio and it's got less to do with the style of the class and more to do with the teacher themselves. I think ultimately in the movement industry, because there are so many options,
00:48:35
Speaker
people, it is much more of a kind of word of mouth. People find out about you and they, they like you. And I think the average consumer, if you asked them what FRC was, they would not be able to tell you, but you could, they would say like, Oh yeah, I go to this class at my gym and it's like a mix of like some yoga and then some, you know, this stuff she calls functional. And I just, the teacher's amazing and I really like her. Like I think most consumers are less hung up on like the letters or the degrees or the certifications that the teacher has and more interested in the teacher themselves.
00:49:04
Speaker
100% because do you think people are going to keep going back to a class no matter what it's called where the teacher is really not doing a great job? Like that's not skilled, that it doesn't have interpersonal skills, that doesn't really understand movement, that you know doesn't create a positive atmosphere? No, it doesn't matter what brand name you attach to your class.
00:49:22
Speaker
probably not going to be a lot of people there because this is a public sector unregulated industry where what matters really at the end of the day in a capitalistic economy is the bottom line and how many people are showing up, right? And that has to do with competition, right? Exactly. Okay. But still, Sarah, have you noticed that in the movement world, you know, basically our course is through movement logic, right? When you create some type of continuing education offering for teachers, they want to know if it's a cert.
00:49:51
Speaker
I want to get to the bottom of why they seem interested in a cert specifically. It's con ed, it's continuing ed, right? But they want to cert. What do you think they're, what are teachers looking for? Well, I mean, they are two separate things, the way that you talk about them, but I think a lot of people don't separate them out in their mind, right?
00:50:15
Speaker
I believe Pilates also has requirements for continuing education. Certain yoga studios, for example, will require their teachers to seek out some kind of continuing education to continue to be teachers for their studio. Like I said, in the PT world, there are content requirements, but they are not certifications because that's not what they are interested in. They don't care what it is. They just care that you did it. I think the reason people get excited about certification specifically is
00:50:46
Speaker
they see other people and whether it's movement teachers or clinicians, but you know, for example, if you are a Pilates teacher and you are a certified Pilates teacher, you get to put like PMA after your name or so there's a bunch of different letters. And I think people get very excited about the possibility of putting some letters after their name, right? And being able to call themselves a certified
00:51:11
Speaker
kinstretch teacher or a certified yoga tune up teacher or a certified something. I think the word certified conveys in most people's minds an idea that there is a level of qualification and skill
00:51:27
Speaker
that they had to demonstrate in order to be able to call themselves this. But what I find is that is not necessarily true for a lot of movement certifications. No, because we have to have some kind of feedback loop where there's teaching happening
00:51:48
Speaker
Based on criteria, they're receiving some specific feedback on that teaching, and then they're revising their teaching based on that criteria they're trying to meet, and then they receive additional feedback. This is how school works, right?
00:52:01
Speaker
This is how the writing process works. Remember, you write a rough draft. Then you write a second draft. Then you write a third draft. Then you write a final draft, or whatever it is. And you're receiving continuous feedback and refining the process. This just simply cannot happen in a day or a weekend or even that much in something as long as a week, which would be an incredibly long certification process. But I think that the word certification carries with it
00:52:28
Speaker
a type of credibility it validates in a way. And I think the reason for that is because it gets conflated with what that means in regulated industries, honestly. Yes. In industries, it really means something. It means you slogged your way through a lot of school and you spent a lot of time and a lot of money and you passed some very hard exams and you really did a lot. The smaller movement trainings that I have been a part of where there is a certification process,
00:52:58
Speaker
You would have to punch somebody in the face to not receive your certification. And there have definitely been times, and I'll just say it, where I've sort of looked around and I've been like, I'm not sure that everybody in this room should now be able to call themselves a certified blah, blah, blah teacher.
00:53:15
Speaker
Not that they don't understand the material, but within this timeframe, it has not been processed well enough for them to, I think, then go out and teach it. Yeah, and you're drinking from the fire hose. Basically, the way certification processes in the movement world work is that there's a creator. Somebody has this idea, they put it together, they create a manual, then they usually teach it themselves for a while, and then they're like, I want to expand.
00:53:44
Speaker
Because remember, we're dealing with competition, market forces. The name of the game is usually to expand, like Starbucks. Let's have more of these now. And so then what this creator does is they hire teachers to teach the material for them. And these seminars, these trainings, these certifications, whatever,
00:54:06
Speaker
Are taught typically over the course of a weekend because now we have to pay to send this teacher to various parts of the country or globe so that they can. Take this package material and deliver it.
00:54:20
Speaker
in a short time span because the name of the game here is like, let's reduce costs and maximize profits, right? And that's, that's how it has to work. It's a business, right? So these teachers are traveling here and there, they're leading seminars or trainings and the teaching time is contained usually to a weekend because of the constraints of traveling. These people have families and other jobs too, right? You know, meanwhile, let's compare this to a non-certifying opportunity, right? An opportunity where you still get to learn, still continuing ed for you. This would be like, if you had a local teacher, you went to their class every
00:54:50
Speaker
week or if you signed up for a long form program like bone density course where there's not this time constraint and you're not drinking from the fire hose. Have you ever taken a weekend cert where you just feel like you're being basically pelted with information the whole time?
00:55:06
Speaker
Right? You know that you could only retain 20% of it, but it just keeps coming at full force, right? And so it's like you get all of this information that you would actually probably need a year to really fully digest in two days. Whereas these longer form continuing education opportunities, which could simply just be a weekly class with a skilled teacher, you get to
00:55:30
Speaker
process what you've learned every week. You get it in bite-sized chunks, you go home, you apply it in your teaching, you come back, you get a little bit more. And so this long-term process of integrating the information slowly doesn't necessarily feel as exciting a lot of the times, right? It doesn't always feel as brand new, but it's probably, in my opinion, a more effective way to learn, right? To get skill.
00:55:58
Speaker
Definitely. I mean, then the medical model is, as I'm about to say, and then I'm like, what is the medical model? No, see one, do one, teach one. Yeah. So you watch somebody else do it, you do it, and then you teach it to somebody else. And those are all really great ways to absorb information and people will
00:56:17
Speaker
get more out of one maybe than the other depending on their personal learning style. And this idea of mentor to apprentice, like if you have a yoga teacher that you love or a Pilates instructor that you love and you're taking their class every week and then you go and teach and you're like, oh, they taught this real cool thing. I'm going to try it. Okay, now I'm going to teach it, right? That's an understood method of really absorbing material. But it is a horrible way
00:56:43
Speaker
to market anything. And it's certainly not a money-making opportunity for the person whose class you are taking, apart from the price of entry to the class, right? They're not creating a brand. There's no opportunity for endless growth and profit, right? Right, right. It's much more, you know, this is the way, it's a very traditional way of learning. I mean, yoga initially, my understanding is that it was taught one-on-one. It was not taught one teacher, a hundred person in a worker shop.
00:57:10
Speaker
in a workshop. And it's more in line with the apprenticeship model, which has been held up by pedagogical experts as one of the most effective teaching models. And that's a real slow burn. It's not sexy. An electrician doesn't go get a master's degree in electrician work. They have a master electrician that they follow around day after day after day and watch and do the work for.
00:57:38
Speaker
Alright, so what is it? What is it? We still haven't really gotten to this answer, right? What is it about certs that feels more official to people? So we say, we mentioned like, maybe there's this illusion of a higher level of professional competence. There's this idea that we've been validated somehow by this word certification, even though the word certification really doesn't
00:57:56
Speaker
doesn't mean what we think it means probably in an unregulated industry. I think movement professional certifications provide a way of looking at movement. A lot of times they rely very strongly on a shared language.
00:58:13
Speaker
In fact, I think that's really what's being sold as a language, not a new way of moving. A new language for talking about movement, which gives us, because we think in words a lot of the times, a way of thinking about movement, which is very important actually. It's why these movement certs or any kind of opportunity that gives you language and a new way of looking at movement can be profoundly, profoundly beneficial to you and worthwhile.
00:58:42
Speaker
But at the end of the day, movement is movement. Joint circles are joint circles. Yoga asana is yoga asana. And lifting weights and gymnastics, that's what that is. That's calisthenics. That's what that is. So we give it a brand name, though. Probably what we've done is we've created a shared language for talking about what's happening and explaining why it's beneficial. And a new way of thinking about
00:59:10
Speaker
the human body and human movement that maybe you didn't have before and a lot of the time the way that that is couched is in language that is what you knew before is wrong or you didn't have the whole picture or this is what everyone's saying but the reality is this thing over here is more correct more accurate more real more true and you want to join our group because we're the ones like on the frontier of new thinking about movement and new ways to describe
00:59:40
Speaker
joint circles, calling them cars, right? Or whatever. It is often so much just about like, that one's bad, come over here, this one's good. And that's a very, it sounds stupid, but that is a very appealing concept for people, right? I think a lot of people, especially- Insider, outsider, insider, outsider. Exactly. You're an insider on this new style. And I would say in particular for
01:00:07
Speaker
people who have been taught or came up in the yoga world versus the Pilates world. The Pilates world is a lot more organized, for want of a better word. The Pilates is Pilates, and there are different schools where you can learn from, and then you're teaching slightly different ways. But I've been trained in rehab Pilates, but it's
01:00:30
Speaker
Essentially just taking what you would take in a class and then showing you how to do it with somebody who might have a shoulder injury or something like that, right? So it's there there's less of a oh Well, the Pilates you knew was wrong and this is the right Pilates over here Versus in the yoga world because there's already so many styles of yoga that are so different from each other I think that then leads to oh well, I
01:00:54
Speaker
you know for like for a lot of us i was a gung-ho crazy vinyasa flow yoga teacher and let's just all fling our bodies around and then suddenly i realized like oh wait a minute i know nothing about what to tell somebody when they told me that post didn't feel good on their back you know so some of it is i think in the yoga world in particular
01:01:12
Speaker
a sense of and i don't know if if if consumers care about this as much as teachers do care about this in front of other teachers you know what their reputation is or what they've done but it's like a code language right oh this person
01:01:28
Speaker
Teachers yoga tune up as well as regular yoga. So then if I'm going to their class, I'm going to expect this is not a, you know, level two, three Vinyasa flow style class, things like that, you know, if you know what you have a tune up is. Right. Exactly. I mean, that's that's part of it as well. But but I think that's why I said, like, I think it's more signaling to other teachers.
01:01:47
Speaker
What team are you on? Are you on team fun Vinyasa flow class? Are you on team more Iyengar based really alignment focus? It's sort of a big flag. Shared languages and values result in a type of culture. I've heard CrossFit explained as a culture, for example, CrossFit culture. Now, none of what CrossFit teaches is inherent to
01:02:17
Speaker
CrossFit, right? They draw from Olympic weightlifting, traditional strength training, track and field, gymnastics, athletic training practices that have been around for decades longer than CrossFit. But CrossFit took all this stuff and created a culture, very distinct culture. And this culture, this language, none of this ensures competence. None of it ensures safety. That's on the teacher, right?
01:02:45
Speaker
Movement is just movement. It's how human bodies can move, how individuals express movement under certain circumstances, whether it be under load as fast as possible at end range, whatever it is. And your ability to effectively teach movement depends on so much more than your ability to transmit the values of a movement culture. Speak its language or even
01:03:07
Speaker
understanding of movement on a more universal level because there's an awful lot of people skills involved to teaching skillfully too. Absolutely. This idea of like, I mean, there's a yoga culture as well, right? There's all of these movements, there's a Pilates culture, all of these movements have a attraction to certain participants because of what the physical activity is.
01:03:29
Speaker
But also because of like, you know with CrossFit, it's a there's a huge communal sense to it You work out with people you yell out in class which I had never done this before like what what your numbers were that workout like you are Seen and you are included and you are made you are like whether you want it or not You are part of this group and part of this community. Yeah, you know in the yoga world people sort of signal their yoga ness by wearing certain clothes or restricting their diet in certain ways or
01:03:58
Speaker
their choices around, you know, there's a lot of sort of environmental involvement for a lot of people as well. In the Pilates world, it's also like, well, are you classical or are you non-classical? And there is a
01:04:12
Speaker
There's a huge, I mean, we've talked about this before, but in Pilates in particular, there's a huge prevalence, or I would say emphasis on a certain body type. And, you know, because it did develop out of the world of dance. So there is that leftover for people. So there are, you know, the other thing with the certification is that it gives you a belonging, right? You get to be a member and you get to be a group of a people. And I think that's very appealing for people as well. Absolutely. Have you noticed that?
01:04:42
Speaker
Some of the ways of languaging movement that come out of certs are maybe more reliant on pretty sounding language than on like what's actually happening in the body though, that like ways of describing what's happening, talking about it can actually end up being kind of confusing or complicated, like overly complex. I'm thinking like the classic examples like controlled articular rotations. That is a lot of words.
01:05:10
Speaker
It's really technical sounding. And what it's describing is joint circles. Joint circles done a certain way. There's a lot of ways to circle a joint. But it's the official language. It's the official language. And I think that when this official language is transmitted to teachers, that it becomes, in their mind, sort of elevated. Like now, I'm talking about concepts.
01:05:40
Speaker
that are seemingly universal, right? And I'm using this established way of talking about these concepts. And a lot of the times, these established ways of talking about these concepts are nowhere in scientific literature. Like, scientists aren't using these terms. Like, this is not what's being researched or looked at. Or if it is, it's not like we're not calling it controlled articular rotations, right?
01:06:09
Speaker
So then this language that these certifications are transmitting, which really sets the certification apart as a culture, oftentimes creates, I think, a kind of way of thinking about movement that is lacking in scientific validity or slash is not evidence-based a lot of the time. Another one is myofascial release. Why don't we just say massage?
01:06:37
Speaker
Right? Right. A lot of times I think search create this issue where there doesn't need to be one, which is that in creating a communication style and developing their own special insider lexicon, they create a lot of confusion. Other examples of this are butt wink. I think that's a CrossFit thing. I'm not sure though.
01:06:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think it is. Yeah. And in yoga schools like elbow hyperextension becomes this this it's not it's not like a special way of saying hyper elbow hyperextension like elbow hyperextension is elbow hyperextension probably in the scientific literature as well right like you put a spotlight on something because your movement system has chosen to spotlight this thing
01:07:20
Speaker
When it's, it's a non issue it's literally it literally doesn't matter. Now it does because this movement system has decided it matters. Right and and like buttwink which is for people if you don't know what buttwink is it's the movement of your pelvis when you're doing.
01:07:37
Speaker
a deeper squat perhaps, or it could even happen during like a deadlift, but where your pelvis goes into some posterior tilt has been found to be totally normal and fine and nobody needs to worry about it. But again, it goes back to this idea of safety, right? So if you want to make sure that your students don't have butt wink, you need to come and certify in this style of movement, right?
01:08:00
Speaker
And to your point, in this instance, the research actually shows completely the opposite. But for a lot of things, there's not any specific research around that problematized way of moving or type of moving that it just doesn't hold any water. But again, this goes back to this idea of a certification is at its essence a branding tool for the
01:08:29
Speaker
company or person who has created that style. Being able to problematize things is a fantastic way to sell anything.
01:08:40
Speaker
Right. Right. Because in order to offer a solution, you have to have a problem. Exactly. Right. A lot of times like marketing focuses mostly on talking about the problem, not the solution. Because first they have to talk about the problem because they have to basically that's how they catch the fish. That's how they get their audiences. Basically, they start talking about problems that people think they have or have, right? And they do it in a compelling way and then they get the ears, right? Then they get the eyes and the ears and then they sell the solution, right?
01:09:07
Speaker
There's a really funny old joke from Chris Rock where he's talking about all the ads that you see for drugs on TV, different medications and how they, you know, list all the things that could go wrong or whatever. But his joke about this one medication is that their selling point is, do you go to bed at night and wake up in the morning and you're gonna be like, oh my God, I do, I need this thing, right? It's basically what they're doing.
01:09:34
Speaker
Yeah, completely, completely. Do PTs need certifications to get Con Ed credits? No, they don't. But you do need to get Con Ed credits. Most continuing education in physical therapy is not certification. Got it.
01:09:49
Speaker
But there are some certification courses. I also did the Barbell Rehab course. I did the online version. And I specifically picked it because it did have accreditation for physical therapy. But it's very hard to get that. And most certifications don't have that. The Con Ed courses for PT are most typically offered under one umbrella
01:10:15
Speaker
aggregate source website that has a bunch of different courses from a bunch of different people, but you're not certifying it. I just took one that was about continuing concepts for working with people with multiple sclerosis because I have a couple of patients right now who have MS. It's only useful for me to know whatever is the most recent research about it. I think that's the difference between physical therapy and
01:10:38
Speaker
the unregulated movement world, which is the emphasis is on concepts and learning and research. It's not on a person or a style or a name brand. But you can study and get more, you know, the alphabet soup letters after your name if you want to. There's all kinds of postgraduate level education that you could get, but that that's a totally different thing than just continuing education credit. Okay, got it. Yeah.
01:11:07
Speaker
Well, I'm going to bring up Yoga Alliance now. Every time I post critically on Instagram about what I see as kind of, I'll just call it the dark side of certifications, even though it's not even that dark of a side. I guess what I'm trying to do with this episode, and you tell me what you think we're trying to do here is just to give
01:11:29
Speaker
Maybe, maybe to just think more critically about, like, the role that certifications actually play in the moving world. So when I say dark side of certs, I'm not like, Oh, certs are bad. I'm just saying, like, Why certs? Why are we certifying? What are we certifying? What are we ensuring? You know, what's the accountability there? So I want to talk about yoga lines here, because a lot of times, when I post about certs on Instagram, someone comments about yoga lines.
01:11:52
Speaker
Like a couple weeks ago, a studio owner commented that they no longer perpetuate the continuance of Yoga Alliance as a studio owner or trainer. And this was in the comment section. I asked for a follow up about what they mean by that. And I was like, feel free to DM me. I didn't get a follow up. And I'm confused because Yoga Alliance doesn't certify. You're not a certified yoga teacher. You're a registered yoga teacher.
01:12:16
Speaker
yoga teacher, right? And so I do kind of understand, though, because Yoga Alliance does have studio owners or teacher training providers over a barrel in the sense that they do require that you meet certain standards for your training to be called a 200-hour or 300-hour teacher training as it's outlined by Yoga Alliance, right?
01:12:43
Speaker
And if you don't meet those requirements they won't. Recognize your training and so the people who come out of your training who want to then be our yts through yoga lines won't be able to because you won't be a recognized. Teacher training through our it so.
01:13:00
Speaker
You know, that's yoga lions saying, we need you to meet these minimal requirements for time spent talking about these topics. And I've looked, and it seems really, if anything, I would be upset that it wasn't more, right? Like, I wouldn't say that it should be less. It should maybe be more. So I want to know what this teacher means by the perpetuation of the continuance of yoga lions, because yoga lions is literally a registry. They have a scope of practice. Again, I think it's pretty reasonable.
01:13:30
Speaker
And they're requiring that you meet minimum standards for teacher trainings. I mean, maybe we should do an episode just about Yoga Alliance, but anyway, Yoga Alliance is not a governing body. It's not a government agency that it doesn't regulate anything. If you deviate from their 200-hour TT, you might have trouble getting it approved. People might not want to sign up for it. If you are a teacher that breaks their scope of practice,
01:13:56
Speaker
you might be taken off the registry, but you probably should be taken off the registry. Do you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I mean, I wanted a full disclosure. I was involved in creating the scope of practice. However many years ago that was, I was asked to like, and it was a very broad group of people with very differing, you know, backgrounds and interests and, but the entire thing about creating the scope of practice was really about helping. The idea was that it was going to help people understand that they,
01:14:24
Speaker
were not in a field where they get to diagnose or things like that. All regulated bodies have a scope of practice as well. I have a PT scope of practice. There are certain things that I cannot do.
01:14:40
Speaker
And I don't and sometimes people ask me to do them and I say I'm sorry I can't you know like I'm not really supposed to give super involved nutritional advice and It gets a little bit, you know Gray area with that, but the thing is well with yoga line. So so yeah again It's a registry like you become a RYT and that isn't again that's a set of letters that you get to put after your name that maybe a consumer would recognize but more importantly is
01:15:08
Speaker
My you know pre it where I don't know if it's if it's this way anymore But when I got my initial teacher training and I was in RYT that meant that I could then go to other places and say hey I'm a yoga teacher. I am a registered yoga teacher via yoga Alliance which confers if to your point a very low level of requirements and The the fact that I passed my yoga teacher training does not confer any other
01:15:37
Speaker
particularly level of skill because I don't think anybody didn't pass from what I can recall there might have been one or two people but I was in a hundred person class right pretty much all of them got to call themselves RIT so this idea that yoga alliance is somehow like this big evil whatever
01:15:56
Speaker
It's just not it's not accurate because you can you can do whatever you want because it's an unregulated industry it might confer some Recognition if you were to try to teach somewhere other than the place that you were certified But at this point, I mean my friend was telling me who works at equinox. They're no longer even Caring if you're a certified yoga teacher or not not registered yoga teacher or not. They literally don't care and frankly They shouldn't care. That's the thing. It's what people people are I think upset
01:16:24
Speaker
Studio owners are like training providers are upset because they think that their future customers care because their future customers care if their future employers care but the My thought is that I actually they shouldn't care you shouldn't care if someone is a registered yoga teacher You should care after seeing them teach right and let's actually have you start teaching here and see how it goes Yeah, I mean like I really think that
01:16:55
Speaker
At least if you do have a 200 hour or 300 hour teacher training like there is but there is some expectation you could reasonably have for this person's understanding of just like a
01:17:07
Speaker
a baseline ability to teach, I guess. That's very different than a weekend or a week. 200 hours is a long time. It's a relatively long time. It's longer than a weekend. It is longer than a weekend. The fact that yoga Alliance tried to create some accountability through their scope of practice where they even put the idea that some teachers
01:17:26
Speaker
maybe didn't have in their head yet that there is a scope of practice, I think is a good thing, right? I agree. That like, no, you can't actually tell people that yoga is going to cure their cancer like that. That's a
01:17:40
Speaker
a fireable offense from the standpoint of, we'll take you off the registry. The question of how valuable is it to be on the registry, I think it used to be a lot more meaningful than it is now because people have started to realize that it is just a registry. That's all it is. But the time when we created that scope of practice, people went mental. They lost their
01:18:04
Speaker
god damn minds and we're very upset about it and i just remember there was a there was a group of very very vocal people about it on facebook and they joined me to a group i did not join they joined they found me they joined me to a group that was called basically like we don't like this and then they said explain yourself
01:18:25
Speaker
And I just said, I don't have to. And I left the group because I don't have to say like, the iron for me to do that. The irony is that a lot of times these same people are complaining about how poor the quality of yoga teaching is, right? So then they're taking something like yoga Alliance and going like, you're, you're trying to make, you're trying to create some accountability. We don't like that. Yoga is not about accountability. But meanwhile,
01:18:56
Speaker
Yoga teacher trainings are awful and terrible and teachers don't know what they're doing. It's like, well, what do you want? Do you want accountability? Like there's only so far yoga Alliance can really reach in and make any difference in this industry, the registry, but they've tried to a little bit and I don't think they're very effective, but I also don't think that they're like causing it.
01:19:17
Speaker
really nearly the amount of harm that some people think. Let's talk about these tests that you sometimes have to take after certification.
01:19:26
Speaker
I've heard from a couple people about some various ways that places certify you or check to see that you should receive certification. The CSCS, which is the personal trainer certification I took, was all a test. There was no moment in which I had to actually personally train anyone and receive feedback on that. So that's almost like the opposite of what most certifications are, which is that you take a weekend training or you take a
01:19:53
Speaker
week-long training and then there's some teaching opportunity that happens in there or at least you're in the same room with people and someone's showing you how to teach the movement or demonstrating that to you, right? Yeah. DSES is literally you in a textbook.
01:20:08
Speaker
And then you go to a testing center and you take a multiple choice test. That's what it is. With yoga tune up, depending on if it was the weekend ball training or if it was the yoga tune up level one, there was some type of teaching example that you had to submit. And then with the level one, there was a
01:20:26
Speaker
I think like a multiple choice short answer test, right? YogaWorks was similar. YogaWorks, there was a 200 hour training, 300 hour training. There was some type of submission of some type of work that you've personally done, like whether it's teaching something or with the 300 hours, some kind of project, final project that you did. And then there was usually 200 hour, there was two tests. There was a long answer and a short answer test.
01:20:50
Speaker
So yeah, so then barbell rehab was just like a multiple choice open book. The kettlebell cert that I took was the same thing, multiple choice open book. Do you have any other examples of these tests? No, I think that's pretty standard. Yeah. And so I'm just going to speak from the standpoint of like a student, right? A lot of times, I think these tests, if they're like short answer, multiple choice open book,
01:21:17
Speaker
I guess are just really like checking to see that you weren't totally checked out like on some other planet the entire time you were there. But even then if you were, you just open up the book and find the answers, like read and find the answers and mark down. I'm not really sure what they're doing other than they might be necessary to be able to give continuing education credits. Like I do think that there's something about like the NSCA that goes like, okay, if you're going to be a con ed provider, you have, there has to be some sort of test that they pass at the end, right? I know that that's the case with ACE.
01:21:47
Speaker
because my training resistance band 101 that I did with Yoga Journal, we made it ACE continuing ed course, and I had to create a test, right? As a trainer, putting trainees through some type of test, I always thought of as just really like a celebration of what they could do. And I rarely, I failed a couple of people at YogaWorks because they just legit failed the closed book test.
01:22:16
Speaker
You know, they got like 50% on it. And that's easy. Then it's like, you don't know this material. You need to go back and study and retake the test or something. I've never watched someone teach, whether it be on video submission or in person and gone. You know what? I'm afraid I can't pass you. I'm afraid I can't give you like this certification or allow you to use this name on your resume or whatever.
Certification Challenges and Realities
01:22:40
Speaker
Because that wasn't up to snuff. You have? I have. How about how many people have you certified and how many people have you failed? The fail rate is extremely low. It's probably like 2%. We've got an outlier here, right?
01:22:56
Speaker
Yes, it was, it was, uh, it was yoga tune up and it was, you know, it's a, the level one, which is a week long training, which is, you know, it's, it's pretty intense. It's definitely like a fire hose experience and you don't, you know,
01:23:13
Speaker
again it's not regulated in any way it was sort of left up to the teachers who are teaching it but i did have conversations with jill about it and it's it wasn't just like oh if you feel like it you know failed them but the the people that i did not pass were people who
01:23:28
Speaker
You know, the idea with Yoga Tune Up is that it's a completely different teaching style, most likely than what you are currently teaching. And by the end of the week, you would want to see that the person is at least grasping some elements of that style, whether it's the language they're using, whether it's the way that they're teaching, you know, all these different aspects. And the only people I ever failed were the ones where I was like, you know what, this person
01:23:50
Speaker
from the beginning of the week to the end, I did not see any comprehension or any sense that they took in what we're saying and then use that to teach in a slightly different way. Like their teaching demonstration was essentially like just the way they already taught. So that's the, that was the kind of thing where I was like, well, if you were to go out in the world and call this what you're teaching a yoga tune up class, it would be very inaccurate because it's not containing
01:24:16
Speaker
The elements that we are that we are saying is part of being a yoga tune-up teacher, but yeah again the fail rate is extremely low yeah, I mean I I always felt like you know, okay, you didn't you didn't absorb what I just Tried tried to help you absorb in a weekend. It didn't come through in your teaching Exactly. I don't feel comfortable saying then in that moment. Like I don't think
01:24:46
Speaker
even though you paid four figures or whatever you paid for this that I can certify you because I'm usually I'm pretty sure that like you're going to figure it out with a little bit more time. And also what's the worst thing that could happen?
01:25:04
Speaker
You're just probably not going to have too many people in your class, honestly. It comes down to the skill level of the teacher is not quite there. It's true. They're not going to be able to really teach. It doesn't matter that they couldn't really teach yoga tune up well. They're probably not going to teach movement very well. They're not going to probably hold on to a whole lot of students in that class for very long.
01:25:25
Speaker
when there's so many other teachers probably that those students could go to instead do you see what I'm saying like it kind of it's coming down more to like just your ability to be frankly competitive as a teacher and I never had any like really horrible I had one woman once who was who was like son was like getting into really big trouble or something and she was like out all night like trying to figure out what happened with him and like
01:25:49
Speaker
Her teaching was like way off and I had to redo it. I was like, let's do it again. And I want you to focus on these two things. And then it was better. And I was like, great, you're certified. That's fine. That's all I need to see. Right? Like the instances where I didn't pass someone the first time, it was then followed up. Thank you for making that point. It was then followed up by, let's have you do these few things and then you'll be certified. Like it just, it often just meant a little bit extra work.
01:26:13
Speaker
Yeah, and if there was a attendance requirement and someone didn't meet that, that was easy. I was like, no, you didn't come. You weren't here. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. In that case, let's just have you make this up, and then we'll give it another shot. OK. So I think we've talked about how the tests that people undergo are oftentimes not really measuring what's important to measure, or they can't, because there's not enough time. Certifications don't really
01:26:40
Speaker
hold people accountable to the same degree that certifications do in regulated industries. And the barrier to entry is much, much lower. And therefore, what are certifications doing? But are there other potential benefits to certifications? I'm thinking, do they offer next level continuing ed or professional development or even networking opportunities that non-certs don't?
01:27:04
Speaker
There's a whole community around animal flow, for example. There's a whole community around CrossFit. There's a whole community around Yoga Tune Up. And these people are talking to each other. Are they potentially helping to elevate each other professionally in some way? I think possibly, right? Absolutely. You and I wouldn't know each other if it weren't for Yoga Tune Up. Or we may never have met. Maybe we would have.
01:27:25
Speaker
you were in New York and I was already in Los Angeles, in a sort of professional circle, we were not in intersecting circles where we would have met each other. So it does definitely expand your community and it expands it into a community of people who are like-minded and who are thinking about movement the way that you are, which might be different than you were previously, or being around them, going to their classes, asking questions, participating,
01:27:53
Speaker
in a lot of ways is only going to make you a better teacher, but that's not because you took the certification. It's because you're around the people that were attracted to that style of movement. Okay, so we have discussed how it is difficult to fail someone in a movement cert, given the constraints of learning in such an environment. And this is for tests where it would actually be harder to pass, which I would say would be like,
01:28:21
Speaker
close book long answer tests and or close book tests, like the CSES actually has a pretty high fail rate. And that way it's like a computer grading you, right? There's no like subjectivity there really. But when someone submits a teaching sample, right, whether it's video or in person, it's very rare that you would like
01:28:46
Speaker
not pass that. And I think one of the reasons for that is that it's fairly difficult to take information you've just learned and represent your understanding of that information through like a high level of teaching. And so depending on the experience level of that particular teacher, how they learn, like also it's not everyone's learning style.
01:29:10
Speaker
Also, it's freaking nerve-wracking to get up in front of a room full of your peers and teachers and teaching this completely artificial scenario where you're being evaluated. All these reasons make it so that we're probably going to pass the vast majority of the people who even give it a try, and yet,
01:29:31
Speaker
I would pray to God that that is not true for doctors in red school and pilots in aviation school. I hope they aren't up to snuff, that they do not pass. I hope they fail. They do not pass. They do fail. They fail. That's the difference in barrier of entry, completely different.
01:29:48
Speaker
And to your point about different people are better or worse at either taking tests generally or taking certain kinds of tests. For PT school, it's also similar to the CSS, but just worse, I think. It's a five hour, 250 question, multiple choice exam.
01:30:10
Speaker
which tests how well i take a five-hour 250 multiple exam right 100 percent there's nothing about it that tests what is the you know the soft skills that are so important in physical therapy you know it doesn't test anything about you're faced with a problem you've done all the things you know how to do
01:30:30
Speaker
and nothing's happening what would you do here right it's just very much in this scenario what is the correct test what is the correct treatment and it's a lot of just sort of wrote memorization of those things and then you know tends to spit out pts who. Either do what i did which was be like lol i just learned it and then.
01:30:48
Speaker
kept the valuable stuff and ditch the rest and added in other things that i knew or just keep get gives you pts who only know how to you know with a is the problem b is the solution and that's why you get sometimes not great physical therapists
01:31:03
Speaker
Oh, yeah, of course. And like, you're there's not great everything out there. There's not great MDs. There's not great public school teachers God knows like everybody has probably encountered these these individuals. But the difference is that yes, okay, tests rarely measure what's important to measure, they almost always measure what's easy to measure, right? Then that's the constraint of the test. But there's a difference between what happens to you when you operate outside of scope of practice. And what happens to me, if
01:31:31
Speaker
if I operate outside of scope of practice, literally nothing happens to me. Unless yoga Alliance gets word of it and is like, Oh, you're not on our registry anymore. Right. Right. Yeah. And so, okay, fine. Like literally no one will care. Literally nobody cares. Other than like, if I, if I'm a guest teacher in a 200 hour teacher training, then okay, maybe right. Or I can no longer be a continuing education provider, which could hurt my bottom line.
01:31:56
Speaker
But like, for you, what happens? Oh, I mean, it depends on the severity of the infraction. I always get the words infraction and infarction confusing. Infarction is a stroke. So it doesn't depend on the severity of the, maybe I've had a stroke and that's why I suddenly can't do my job correctly. But it does depend on the severity. But like we had, for example, separate from that five hour, 250 question exam, we had a whole separate, and this is just in California,
01:32:26
Speaker
the state that has one of the hardest tests to pass, yay, they have a separate legal exam that's, I believe, 50 questions long in a couple of hours, and you just have to memorize. It's literally like, if you do this thing, how many years would you go to jail? Or if you do this thing, what is the maximum fine that you can be? My feeling with it, and again, it was a lot of just memorize it and spit it out. I don't remember any of it. I mean, I remember
01:32:54
Speaker
don't do these things, but I don't remember exactly what the punishment is because my feeling is like, well, if I did it, I'd find out, right? Like, so I don't need to, the memorizing of the punishment is not what, is not what's going to stop me from doing it. I'm just not going to do it because it's not what you're supposed to do. But, you know, the worst case scenario, you lose your license and there is potentially like some sort of legal lawsuit against you and it happens, you know? Right. And you would be, you know, barred from
01:33:23
Speaker
either be, you know, again, depending on the severity of it, you might be barred from being a physical therapist in your state, or you might be permanently barred from being a physical therapist. So there are there are absolutely very real consequences to a lot of things. And, you know, like, for example,
01:33:41
Speaker
The other day I have a patient who is an older teenager and his mom comes in with him and sometimes his sister comes in with him as well. And the mom asked if while I was doing my session with her son, her daughter's ankle was feeling a little funny and could I just put some laser on it or something? And I was like,
01:34:03
Speaker
If I was working as a movement teacher, I probably would have, but in this role as a physical therapist, I cannot treat somebody who I have not evaluated. As much as the likelihood of anybody finding out if I did do it was basically zero, I still, I have to abide by this
01:34:24
Speaker
you know stepwise procedure because it is it is against my the it's against the ethics of my job to just like throw some laser on an ankle when i have never uh evaluated it at all and let's say i mean this is would be extremely unlikely but let's say then i did that and they went home the daughter's like oh now it feels worse
01:34:45
Speaker
if the parent was a, you know, suing kind of a person, they could absolutely go after me, right? So they wouldn't be in trouble for having asked me to do it. I'm in trouble for having done it. So I said no, because, and I was like, I'm really sorry, I just can't. And, you know. Are you more likely to be sued as a movement teacher? Are you more likely to be sued if you are not certified in the thing you're teaching? So like a personal trainer is a great example of this.
01:35:15
Speaker
And it's timely too, because I think a lot of yoga teachers and potty teachers are starting to use weights with their students. And they're not certified personal trainers. They haven't done that yet. And I was training people before I had my official CSCS. The question is, are you opening yourself up to being sued? And Sarah and I don't really know the answer to that question, because we're not lawyers. We're not telling you yes or no. But what do you think?
01:35:43
Speaker
While you're saying opening yourself up more to being sued if you are certified versus if you're not certified? If you're not certified. If you're operating as a personal trainer but you are not a certified personal trainer. I don't think honestly it makes any amount of difference because the certification does not protect you in any way from someone going after you and suing you for injuring them, right? Then it also becomes a question of like, where did it happen? If you're a trainer working at a gym,
01:36:10
Speaker
they might decide to go after the gym because you were working at the gym at the time. If you're teaching them out of your house, there's no professional whatever. There's only personal liability or whatever insurance you might have. I mean, my thing is just like, just make sure you have good insurance. Yeah, totally. But that's a different story. But yeah, no, certified or not does not change anything about whether or not someone could sue you.
01:36:34
Speaker
I don't think so either. I don't think so either. Meanwhile, you could easily be sued as a PT operating as a PT who doesn't have a license to operate as a PT. I mean, that- Oh, right. I don't think you would-
01:36:49
Speaker
You wouldn't get very far because you couldn't really do it, especially successfully for particularly long, just like calling yourself a physical therapist in this country. You'd be lying. You'd be a fraud. There's so much regulation around it that somebody would find out eventually.
01:37:07
Speaker
Right, you basically you'd be saying I'm a PT and you're not a PT which is just fraud. I think right. I remember hearing a story about this is not PT but a woman who tried to sue her yoga teacher because her Kundalini was awakened too rapidly.
01:37:23
Speaker
Are you serious? Yes. I'm not making this up at all. My understanding is that it was thrown out of court. That is hilarious. I've asked this question before too. If someone were to become injured in a movement class, any kind, including strength training, right?
01:37:41
Speaker
What type of evidence would need to be presented in court to show that it was the teacher specifically that caused the injury? The only thing I can think, because injury is multifactorial, right? There's a number of reasons why someone gets injured, including like how much sleep they got the night before, right?
01:38:01
Speaker
Yeah. So how are you going to prove, of all the things that can contribute simultaneously to the event of an injury, how would you then isolate out just this teacher's influence? The only thing I can think of is if there's video camera in the room and the teacher gives a very aggressive hands, or literally just goes and knocks someone, kicks someone. I can't think of where this happens. But I think there's a lot of fear around it for movement teachers. That's why everybody's protecting their ass, because we live in a very litigious society in the United States. People get sued all the time for stuff.
01:38:30
Speaker
But here's the thing, this is the thing that I always think of as like my daughter plays soccer.
01:38:35
Speaker
and the coaches coaching her in soccer guarantee you they're not certified soccer coaches, right? I'm sure they know a little bit about hydration and I'm sure they know they might know CPR and AED, pediatric CPR and AED, right? I hope so. They probably played in college or high school and they know the game and that's the only, and they like kids and their kids are on the team and that's it, that's all they need. And everyone thinks like, oh yeah, I'm gonna send my kids to soccer, right? And they don't ask, are these coaches certified?
01:39:03
Speaker
Okay, but but all you're gonna go you're gonna go train students to lift weights. Don't you need a personal trainer certification for that? Do you know the difference between the safety of lifting weights and the safety of playing soccer? Do you know what it is? I do actually, but I'm gonna let you tell me. Okay, soccer, 35 injuries per 1000 hours of participation.
01:39:23
Speaker
Powerlifting, which is heavy strength training, right? It's just one way of heavy strength training. Less than six injuries per 1000 hours of participation. Running is 12, right? Powerlifting is six. Bodybuilding is even lower than that. Bodybuilding is like twice as safe as powerlifting.
01:39:41
Speaker
So heavy strength training is two times safer than running and six times safer than soccer. And everyone's like, Oh, you got better be a personal trainer for you personally train anyone. And my kids playing soccer. Isn't that like not a second thought on that, right? It's just so funny.
Professional Impact of Certifications
01:40:01
Speaker
Anyway, okay, we're talking
01:40:04
Speaker
about what people believe certifications give them. Do they give them additional liability protection? Sarah and I are not lawyers, but we doubt it. Do they help teachers have community and receive further continuing education? Yes, potentially. Do they help teachers network? Potentially, yes. Do certifications help teachers niche down? Do you know that there's this
01:40:30
Speaker
Kind of idea in the marketing world that like in order to really be successful at. Any type of entrepreneurship but now we're in the movement teaching world so it's like really to be successful you could really have to niche down to search help you do that. Thank you and i mean that's what yoga tune up ended up doing for me because. I.
01:40:50
Speaker
when I was part of the community, it was sort of early-ish days and Jill was creating an anatomy course that was, the idea was it could be inserted into any yoga teacher training or you could just take it separately and she needed people to teach it and I started teaching it for her and so then
01:41:12
Speaker
That in a lot of ways started i mean i was already interested in it but that that sort of gave me a push to have to really like know what the heck i was talking about if i was gonna start i remember her asking me to do it in march and the first time the first course was gonna be in october and i was like i will be i was like i'm not ready now but i will be ready by october.
01:41:31
Speaker
Because that's usually how I do things is I make it really hard for myself and then I force myself to go through it. But in a way, it's like, I'm glad that happened that way. Because then I began teaching my own anatomy and I became I sort of developed a bit of a reputation in that yoga tune up world in particular of being a teacher who knows anatomy or people would send private clients to me because they knew that like, Oh, this person is a little bit more to handle than I can. But Sarah knows more about anatomy. So maybe she's going to be able to work with them better things like that. So
01:41:59
Speaker
I definitely found that to be true. I wonder, was it the certification of Yoga Tune Up that made that possible? Or did it just happen to be that Yoga Tune Up was a certification? Because a similar thing happened to me with Teaching Anatomy for Yoga Works. I mean, it wasn't that Yoga Tune Up said, with our certification, you will become an anatomy teacher. It just happened to be the means by which
01:42:21
Speaker
you know, I could have taught that first class and then be like, you know what, this isn't for me, and then change my mind. But as it turned out, it really was for me. And I'm sure I believe that Jill sort of, you know, saw that and knew that. And so it helped sort of propel me on my way ultimately propel me on my way to PT school.
01:42:37
Speaker
But certainly in the beginning really got me sort of more of a reputation and more work and jobs based on being a anatomy teacher, not just like a yoga teacher who teaches a lot of alignment in their classes, but this person can actually come into your teacher. I mean, I still teach in yoga training, in a yoga training here in LA, I've taught in it for like the past eight, nine years, I go and teach their anatomy. And that is a repercussion of
01:43:04
Speaker
the studio owner knowing Jill and meeting me through Jill and then wanting to employ me in their training. Well to me this sounds more like your relationship with Jill then. I mean because it could have been something like it could have been a studio, right? Like a well-known studio that knew you and figured out that you were good at teaching anatomy and then other people associated with that studio might hear about it and then want to work with you, right? Like I don't know that a certification
01:43:30
Speaker
The certification in itself did not do anything. There's a lot of crossover between Kinstretch FRC type work and Yoga Asana. And so some teachers who have taken those certifications through FRC and Kinstretch start to bring in those movements and those ways of talking about the movement, languaging the movement into the yoga class. And they become known as the teacher who teaches in this particular way. Same thing happened to me with
01:43:59
Speaker
with self massage balls that I learned through the role model method through through yoga tune up right and and I became the teacher who uses the balls right now I did end up getting certified in yoga tune up so I guess in that way I was a certified yoga tune up teacher but I could have also just brought the balls in
01:44:19
Speaker
and taught the stuff with the balls and people would have been like, you're the person who brings in the balls and teaches the stuff with the balls, right? They didn't call me the yoga tune up teacher, they called me the ball teacher. And so I guess like the thing I see happening when teachers niche down is that they develop a more
01:44:41
Speaker
developed point of view and a little bit clearer reasoning for doing what they're doing. And because of that, because of their ability to more specifically offer solutions, people with more niche problems start to become attracted to those teachers. And like, ultimately, nobody knows what you teach if you're not one teaching and two talking about what you teach.
01:45:05
Speaker
So really, I think the way we niche down is we teach, we get in front of people, we share something specific with a point of view, which definitely certifications can help you find, but so can non-certifications just as easily, right? And then you talk about what you teach, right? The real way you niche down is through marketing, right? If you're talking about what you do in a specific way to a specific audience. All right, what about credibility?
01:45:33
Speaker
We talked about how certifications on a resume or after a name or the letters that you put or whatever it is, don't necessarily ensure professional competence.
01:45:45
Speaker
but they might lend some perceived credibility from students or from studio owners. Are you generally viewed as more credible or trustworthy when individuals see that you have these certifications, that you've taken these certifications? What do you think? Yeah, I mean, to a point. I think if you were taking a Pilates class and the person was not certified in Pilates,
01:46:15
Speaker
you would probably be pretty nervous about getting on.
01:46:18
Speaker
let's say if it was a reformer class, getting on this machine that has all these pulleys and thing and like, they have no idea like how many springs to use for whatever move, they have no idea what to do on there. Like you'd be kind of like, or like if you took a yoga class and then the person was like, Oh yeah, I just did yoga for the first time yesterday and I really liked it. So here's a class, you know, there's, there's sort of that base level where you want the person certified. And even though there is no requirement per se to train as a personal trainer in order to
01:46:47
Speaker
train people as a personal trainer, I do think having some level of qualification is comforting to people because they know at least you know something a little bit about what you're talking about. Beyond that kind of initial categorization, I think the rest of it is kind of like we're all just dressing for each other.
01:47:07
Speaker
You know when they say women don't dress for men, they dress for other women. Have you ever heard that expression? Yeah. I dress like I'm a tomboy because I don't give a shit what other women think. Or maybe they think it looks good. I don't know. But the idea that the rest of the specialty, that kind of meshing down stuff, the yoga tune up and the kin stretch and the FRC. And if you asked anybody walking down the street what any of those were, they would have no idea. But if you said, do you know what yoga is, they'd be like, yeah. Right? So there's a certain level that we're doing for the
01:47:36
Speaker
general population who are going to be students and clients. And then there's another level that we're doing that is kind of messaging the people in our professional community like, Hey, I'm the kind of teacher that teaches yoga tune up because I use balls around the kind of teacher who mixes in the kin stretch, or I'm the kind of teacher who's completely classical by the book, I teach yoga also, and I teach nothing else, right? We're developing a brand
01:48:01
Speaker
and our own image, but we're not. But we're not. Well, no, no, no. But we're developing an image that we think of as personalized, but it is in a lot of ways. We're developing someone else's brand in images. Let me finish. Let me finish, please. OK, OK.
01:48:19
Speaker
We're creating a, maybe not a brand is not the right word, but a self identity. We're identifying ourselves as like part of a group because we like as humans to feel like we're in a group of humans. We don't like to feel like we're separate and different and weird. So we are aligning ourselves with a group.
01:48:36
Speaker
And, you know, I don't think, I didn't consciously think, Oh yeah, if I do yoga tune up, then what I'm going to be doing is like spreading the brand. Like I thought of it more as, Oh, it's going to make my teaching better. And maybe I'll teach some classes called yoga tune up. And I think that's what most people think. They don't think of it like, Oh, I'm going to do FRC so that I'm like helping FRC grow as a business.
01:48:57
Speaker
but that is actually what's happening. Yeah, and this is like not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. Yeah, it's just a thing. I just want it to be a conscious choice for people. Do you know what I mean? It wasn't a conscious choice for me. Yeah, me neither. I didn't know what with Yoga Tune Up I was really signing up for. I was like, okay, basically what I thought I was doing was agreeing to not teach the stuff I was learning in the Yoga Tune Up training in any other context other than in a Yoga Tune Up class.
01:49:26
Speaker
And I believe we had to sign some type of agreement that we if if we were to teach like certain percentage more postures within a class that were actually taught in this yoga tune up training that we that class then had to be called yoga tune up. Yes, which I actually don't think is enforceable at all. Like I don't I don't think you can know I don't think I would hold up in court because basically you can't you can't own movement in that way. And we're going to talk about that. But like,
01:49:54
Speaker
I don't know. I had this feeling a little bit like, okay, I'm over available because if I teach this stuff, I have to call it Yoga Tune Up. Meanwhile, I brought a lot of myself to the teaching of Yoga Tune Up that I got from my years of studying that I did before
01:50:10
Speaker
teaching yoga tune-up so in a sense it almost felt like I was like, they were kind of taking ownership of me. Do you know what I mean? As a teacher. Right. And it felt kind of uncomfortable and I couldn't put my finger on why it felt uncomfortable and then I was like, oh actually what I can't do is I can't call my teaching yoga tune-up if I'm not certified.
01:50:32
Speaker
Mm-hmm and Certification means that I have to do these things right so and then I was a trainer for yoga tune-up And I was telling other people this as well and like it started to make more sense to me as a trainer I was like listen. It's pretty simple. You know you were you're either Not calling your class yoga tune-up or not calling your class yoga tune-up if you call your class yoga tune-up You have to be a certified yoga tune-up teacher That's a trademarked
01:50:56
Speaker
system right like you can't just take someone's trademark and and say that what you do is that if it's not something that you have actually gotten permission to say and then it was like okay fine i got it now but at first i didn't really get it i didn't get it as a student on the student end i was like oh god what am i signing up for here oh what if i get sued and i felt really nervous and agile and jittery about it and like scared almost you know and then because like as a yoga teacher too you're just not used to being confronted with these long
01:51:23
Speaker
contracts. And I think this is maybe the case for like other certifications, not just yoga, tune up. It's just that I'm very, very familiar with yoga, tune up and like kind of the steps that you had to go through to be a yoga, tune up teacher. And I'm sure it's very similar with CrossFit. I'm sure it's very similar with FRC. I'm not sure the extent to which it is though. And like, I guess it's just good to know what you're actually agreeing to here, right? Which is pretty standard. Like you can't copy their manual.
Legal and Ethical Considerations
01:51:52
Speaker
That's copyrighted material. And you can't call yourself a this or that teacher if it's a trademark system and they've actually trademarked that name. Yep. That's it. Once you understand that, I feel like you have a lot more control over the decisions and confidence over the decisions you make about sharing the things you learned or not. Right? So
01:52:18
Speaker
I think that's really what I'm trying to also get at in this episode, which is that you can't own movement or movement teachers.
01:52:26
Speaker
certifications have some good sides to them, but they can also be really confusing in people's minds. The pluses that are currently standing out for me is the community component, the networking component, the potential continuing ed component, like Jill would do coaching calls. And I'm sure there's this like built-in free continuing education component to a lot of these certifications where, especially if you're like re-upping your certification every year,
01:52:51
Speaker
The question, fairly enough, should be like, what do I get for doing that? Like, what's in it for me? And a lot of times, there's this ongoing continuing education, which is great. And like you said, I met a lot of really amazing people through a yoga tune-up. You and I started a whole business together from a tune-up, right? Obviously, she's from a yoga tune-up. So I think that there's a lot of good in that. Do certifications ensure professional competence? No.
01:53:18
Speaker
mostly because the tests only test what's easy to measure rather than what's important to measure. And there's not enough time logistically for continuous trial and error type feedback that would need to happen in a longer program to really develop a teacher, right, to really develop an approach.
01:53:41
Speaker
Do certifications help you avoid being sued? Probably not. Not in the movement world. Do certifications help you niche down? They might a little bit, right? Like they're going to definitely give you, especially the ones that are really well done. And I mean, I thought yoga tune up was really, really good content, you know, they're going to give you a perspective and an ability to articulate that perspective. And that could be really helpful for helping you figure out in your mind,
01:54:08
Speaker
what it is you want to be doing and don't want to be doing. Finally, Sarah, can you think of any other pluses or minuses to certifications when compared to non-certifying continuing education opportunities? Well, I mean, I don't think this is an actual real bonus effect, but I think people mentally
01:54:32
Speaker
value them higher and therefore might enroll more likely in something if they're getting some sort of certification out of it, right? We're sort of programmed in a way to want that little piece of paper that says that you certified in blah blah blah or you, you know, now you're allowed to teach this kind of work or whatever it is. And the actual value of that is I think we've
01:54:58
Speaker
sort of proven or discussed over the past, however long this conversation's gone on for, questionable. And it's got so much more to do with how well do you take that information and absorb it and use it in your own work? Or is it something that was so far beyond your understanding or so
01:55:16
Speaker
felt wasn't taught especially while you had such a hard time with it that you just never end up using it. I mean, one of the things that we see happening a lot for all kinds of movement teachers is that they just take training after training after training, certification after certification after certification, and then don't end up actually using any of that on a day-to-day basis, right? Most recently I did this past year a couple of courses that are rehab Pilates courses. Because I'm a physical therapist, I do not then have to submit a video of myself
01:55:46
Speaker
to get a rehab Pilates certification in order to be able to use what I learned in the clinic. If I wanted to call myself a rehab Pilates teacher, I would have to get the
01:55:58
Speaker
certification, but it doesn't matter because my prior training surpasses everything, right? But that's a very specific circumstance. Well, no, I think that is the case though. You can't own movement. What that means is that when you go to a certification and you take their programming or you take their classes and you're there the whole time and you learn to move in certain ways and then you go
01:56:22
Speaker
and teach that and you do that as a non-certified teacher of that proprietary method, they can do absolutely nothing to you for doing that. So you could go and take like, lift 100% of the movement you learn in a yoga certification or a animal flow certification.
01:56:45
Speaker
Not certified at all. Start calling your classes something adjacent to that. Not those, not those trademark names, but something else. And primal animals, right? Or whatever it is. Teach exactly the same stuff.
01:56:58
Speaker
And they could do nothing legally to you because you can't own movement. Certs don't give you permission to teach the movement you learn from them. They may imply a trademark brand name, copyrighted manual, all that, right? And this is because, and we know this is true, there's precedent in the court for this because there was a landmark case known as the Bikram Yoga lawsuit in which Bikram Choudhary, founder of Bikram Yoga and
01:57:24
Speaker
accused rapist, attempted to claim copyright and trademark protection for the specific sequence of yoga poses, and he argued that he had a legal right to control and license the use of this sequence.
01:57:39
Speaker
He attempted to sue various yoga studios and teachers for copyright and trademark infringement for using his yoga sequence, not his name, his yoga sequence. They would call it hot yoga. Their yoga studio would call hot yoga, but then they would teach the Bikram sequence in there, right?
01:57:57
Speaker
And he tried to sue them for using his yoga sequence without his authorization, and he lost this case. He sure did. The court's ruling essentially stated that yoga sequences, even if they were developed by an individual, could not be copyrighted.
01:58:15
Speaker
Right. And thank God. Yeah. Because you imagine if you were like just sitting in a particular position like rabbit pose or something, you're just like hanging out and like someone could just sue you for that because that movement, someone owns that movement.
01:58:32
Speaker
Like, or you're teaching a yoga class and you have to say, okay, the sun salutation, this is from this training. Okay. Now warrior one, I got this from this other training. Okay. Now triangle pose is from this training. Okay. Now, like, no, no, this is perfect because one argument I've heard for why search should exist. Like why you should be able to like own movement, for example, like require that people say like this movement is construct or whatever is that.
01:59:01
Speaker
if you didn't do that, people would just steal the ideas of these creators and use them as their own, right, which would be stealing. And so certs are really aware to protect a way to protect the creator's intellectual property. And I think that people who steal other people's ideas and don't give credit are jerks. Yes, I think when you're not a jerk, and you got this idea from this very specific source,
01:59:28
Speaker
You credit that person. I said so many times in my yoga work classes.
01:59:33
Speaker
that like this comes from yoga to not this comes from Joe Miller's work. I learned this from Joe Miller. Yeah, right. And or even if there's another teacher like I did this really fun sequence with Jenny Cohen and I loved it. So and this is I kind of took it and ran with it. And this is what inspired this class things like that. But you could also take the certification and then just put it in your class and lie about it like the certification in and of itself doesn't stop someone from being a jerk. So no, in my head, I made a little poem, it goes,
02:00:01
Speaker
Don't get assert, just don't be a jerk. Give credit where credit is due.
Conclusion: Beyond Certifications
02:00:08
Speaker
Yes, I wrote that poem. To the individual, right? And do you have to do that for every single movement that you learn from every single course that you learn from? No, no. Exactly. But do it where it feels appropriate to do it, and definitely give credit where credit is due.
02:00:27
Speaker
But the good news is that if you come into Triangle Pose in the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York City, no one's going to sue you because nobody owns Triangle Pose. This is really about getting clear about what we're signing up for when we decide that we want to be a certified such and such a teacher.
02:00:46
Speaker
I think the best reason to get a certification is because it's really good content, which I think most of them are really. The famous ones probably really are because the people, again, there's a reason people want to get CrossFit certs and there's a reason people want to get FRC.
02:01:03
Speaker
It's been put together in a way that's very smart. But understand that what you're probably benefiting from the most is the community, is the opportunities to be a part of that community, whether it's an online Facebook pages, platforms, free conferences, free continuing education programs, to remain under the influence of those thinkers and creators. I think that's a good reason to do it.
02:01:30
Speaker
I think the less good reasons to do it are that it gives you some type of credibility. It really doesn't a lot of the time. That it's going to protect you against lawsuit. Not really, right? That you have to in order to teach the movement. No, you don't. And I think once we have this clear in our mind as teachers, as independent entities, we can potentially feel like we have more control and autonomy.
02:01:57
Speaker
right? That it's really up to us what we're doing with this. We don't belong to anyone or anything, right? We enter into partnerships, right? Creative partnerships, learning partnerships. Hopefully it feels that way with the people that you get in the room with whether or not they're certifying you, right? Yeah, absolutely.
02:02:20
Speaker
Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode and that you make sure you complete at least 10 certs a year, plus get a doctorate in movement. Otherwise, you probably are any good at teaching movement. So just kidding. Seriously, I hope you are dying of curiosity for the thing that you teach, that you're a continually devoted student of what you teach. And because when you are these things, when you are just blowing your own damn mind,
02:02:46
Speaker
and constantly curious about the things that you are putting out there. I don't think there's any greater joy than being a teacher because it's just a constant state of creativity, discovery, connection, and learning. It's never boring. That's right.
02:03:06
Speaker
All right, you can check out our show notes for links to references we mentioned in this podcast. You can also visit the Movement Logic website. And finally, because this is the last episode,
02:03:17
Speaker
of season three. We want to thank you so much for joining us and listening in to the episodes that we're putting out there. And if you feel so moved, it helps us out a lot. If you could subscribe, rate and review on Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your podcasts and get in touch with us, stay in touch with us. Let us know if you have any requests for future episodes, because guess what? Sarah and I are going back into episode planning mode.
02:03:46
Speaker
where we're going to start thinking of ideas for next season's episodes, researching them. If you have something you want us to research and talk about more in depth, you can leave that in a review because then you do two things at once or you can email us off our website or on social media. All right. See you next year.