In January of 2016 I started a year-long program for yoga teacher certification through Seattle Yoga Arts. By June, it was clear to me that I didn’t want to be a yoga teacher.

In bodyweight training, I tried to create a class that brings in everything I loved about conventional yoga classes and leaves out some aspects that were drawing me away. I tried to create a class with creativity, interaction, and pragmatic teaching.

I also wanted to create a class with a logical structure that students could easily understand and build on.

The result is bodyweight training that includes many movements with common yoga roots, and adds a few new movement categories, like locomotion and power.

The structure includes 3 combo sets of two moves each. This framework remains the same every class:

1 push-ups / locomotion

2 hollow body holds / backbends

3 scales / squats

Within those categories there’s endless opportunities for movement variations. That structure establishes about 80% consistency and 20% change, an environment conducive to measuring progress and, hopefully, long-term motivation for growth.

I still have huge appreciation for yoga, and practice myself every day. The difference between now and the beginning of yoga teacher training is having a slightly more refined understanding of the definition of yoga. The practice of yoga is simply giving attention to what I’m doing. In that sense, all training at Métier is yoga.

Bodyweight training is an especially great example. It emphasizes timed intervals of independent work to encourage practicing more yoga. The hope is that more attention to the work creates more understanding, which creates more joy and ease, which leads to a stronger desire to keep working.

Within the set of all Métier group training – foundation training, lifting, and suspension training – pure bodyweight training is a way to test body control without the use of any added tools. It uses only the body that you’ll be in for the rest of the time spent out of the gym, where true performance is demanded.