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Planning a 200 or 300 hour yoga teacher training schedule can feel a overwhelming. And though 200 hours can sound like a lot of time, it actually gets eaten up very quickly!
As an instructional designer, yoga teacher, and teacher trainer, and I love helping studios and teachers create excellent educational experiences. When I help someone build their yoga teacher training schedule and curriculum, I find it best to start with the big picture: How much instructional time do you have, how do your students want to participate, and how can you organize those hours to support learning rather than simply fit everything onto the calendar?
Before you jump into scheduling, consider your students. Ask your community what kind of schedule they can realistically attend.
Every community has different needs. A group of students working Monday through Friday may prefer weekends, while parents may find every weekend difficult. Another community may include retired students or people with flexible work schedules who would happily attend several mornings each week.
Surveying your community also has a secondary benefit: the survey introduces your upcoming teacher training before you formally begin marketing it. You can let prospective students know that you are considering a training, invite their input, and begin creating some investment in the program before registration opens.
Based on your student research, determine the overall structure of your program.
Consider:
Map those delivery methods first so you know exactly how much time you need to schedule in the classroom (and by “in the classroom,” I am including in-person as well as synchronous online hours).
If you register your school with Yoga Alliance, make sure you work from its current standards rather than older (pre 2020) distinctions between “contact” and “non-contact” hours. Yoga Alliance currently allows Registered Yoga Schools to offer in-person, online, or hybrid programs and requires at least 15% of program hours to take place synchronously. For an RYS 200, that requirement equals at least 30 synchronous hours; an RYS 300 requires at least 45. Yoga Alliance also requires program hours to relate directly to its educational categories.
Once you understand your total instructional hours and delivery format, you can begin putting the larger schedule together.
I have to be honest: weekend formats remain my favorite option for 200-hour and 300-hour yoga teacher trainings because students can participate without leaving weekday jobs. It’s also a great format that is also easier on the trainer.
To give you an idea of what you’re looking at, let’s do some simple math:
Ten consecutive weekends create a very different student experience from ten weekends spread across five or six months. Every-other-weekend formats give students more breathing room for work and family obligations, while weekly meetings create stronger momentum.
An easy way to make the schedule more accessible (without having to create a ton of asynchronous content) is to integrate synchronous Zoom sessions once a week. This helps shorten your weekend hours and keep consistent connection with your students.
Once you’ve determined how you will account for all your training hours, you can start building out your training topics.
Intensive yoga teacher trainings can create tremendous momentum because students remain immersed in the learning process from day to day. However, for a 200-hour program, an intensive represents a substantial commitment. (Think: 8.5 hour days x 24 days.) An intensive format allows students to build skills without long gaps between training sessions, which can create a cohesive and immersive learning experience. However, long consecutive training days also demand significant energy from students and faculty.
As a studio owner, you don’t really want to be cancelling a bunch of classes to run your YTT.
In some cases, you can intentionally incorporate an existing class into the educational experience, IF a member of your teacher training faculty teaches that class and it contributes meaningfully enough to the educational experience to be considered a contact hour.
For example, your trainees might attend a Saturday morning public class taught by one of your faculty members and then analyze the experience afterward. You can connect the class to discussions about sequencing, cueing, classroom management, observation, or teaching methodology.
But note: the public class must serve a genuine educational purpose rather than simply filling hours and be taught by one of trainers.
Once you determine your overall calendar, you can start plotting out the topics for your individual training days. Here is where thoughtful scheduling will have the most impact. Varying your topics and activities throughout teach day will help your students (and trainers!) have the best experience.
Quick story: in the first YTT I took, anatomy was taught by a local expert over two weekend. Though interesting, it was brutal! Having a mono-subject over one weekend is a fast track to learning burnout. A better model is to vary your topics and activities throughout the day so the students stay fresh.
Students (and trainers) need variety to engage meaningfully.
A well-paced training day might move from a philosophy discussion into anatomy, followed by practice, asana lab, and then practice teaching. Changing modes between movement, lecture, discussion, partner activities, asana labs, and practice teaching give students opportunities to process information through different learning modes. Even better: you can stack your subjects to reinforce key learning form a different angle: the anatomy reinforces the asana lab, which reinforces the sequencing, which applies to the practice.
Consider student (and trainer) energy levels. I like make the morning sessions slightly more academically demanding and a bit longer because students usually have more cognitive energy earlier in the day. I’ll schedule a substantial yoga practice before lunch so students have time to reset from savasana. Students can then eat lunch, rest, and return without needing to begin vigorous physical practice immediately after a meal. The afternoon is a great time for integrating the morning’s subjects in practice teaching.
Small scheduling choices like these can significantly improve the experience of a long training day.
Here’s one of my favorite tips: bookend the beginning and end of each training day with a little space.
An old learning tip says, “Tell that what you’re going to teach. Teach them. Tell them what they learned.”
Bookending the day is a way to give students an overview of what the day will hold and a recap to help them organize new ideas in their minds.
For example:
Faculty availability, studio logistics, technology, and student schedules will inevitably influence the structure of your yoga teacher training. However, the calendar should ultimately support the educational experience. Organize your topics logically to create a learning pathway from A (the beginning) to B (graduation).
Feel free to reach out to brainstorm scheduling ideas!
Rachel supports yoga teachers and studios around the world to create transformational education experiences that help them thrive in their business, share their passion, and inspire more people to practice yoga. Her extensive knowledge and experience include: earning two masters degrees, authoring three books, leading 4,000+ hours of TT, building a teacher training college for a national yoga company, and working behind the scenes in yoga studio & teacher management for more than fifteen years. As a writer and speaker, she continually wrestles with the juicy bits of life: relationships, authenticity, and discovering meaning in this crazy, wildish world. E-RYT 500, YACEP, BA, MFA, MSci. Learn more about Rachel.
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