Prerequisites from a Student’s Perspective
As a learner, one of the best AcroYoga intensives I’ve attended enforced clearly stated prerequisites. They required a video submission demonstrating applicants had a good handle on certain material.
It was intimidating to pull this video together. And sure, I had anxiety I wouldn’t make the cut. But during the program itself, knowing the instructors had used these pre-req videos to vet all participants allowed me to commit to difficult and sometimes dangerous material in a way I wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing if I hadn’t done so.
In contrast, I remember dropping into a class in a city I was traveling through for a night. We were asked to do spotted backflips as a warm-up exercise. I’m nearly 50, assuredly not a gymnast, and, importantly, I didn’t know these people and their fluency with spotting. I wound up declining the exercise, with the last factor being the greatest. I’ve also seen similar situations at national AcroYoga festivals. You’re eager to try challenging material from one of the big national teachers, but sometimes wind up in a group of folks you don’t know.
Prerequisites from a Teacher’s Perspective
While no single thing can wholly remove risk, prerequisites can help in these situations. The whole situation gets a lot safer when instructors clearly state the necessary component skills and students practice honest self-assessment.
A big obstacle to common use of prerequisites is instructors declaring too many classes as “all-levels” in an attempt to get more bodies through the door. This robs both the newer and more advanced students of the instructor’s full attention. They skip between basic and sophisticated material, giving neither group the focus they should. It can also lead to newer people to put themselves and others at risk. They can be pulled along by social gravity, nascent self-assessment skills, and the urge to insert themselves into material they’re really not ready for.
This has led to pre-reqs being used so rarely in many class descriptions that some students become immediately intimidated at the sight of any pre-reqs whatsoever. Recently when I listed ‘Star’ as a pre-req for one of my classes, I had a friend who I fly in Star nearly every weekend tell me “Oh, I’m not sure I meet the pre-reqs for your class.”
As a teacher, I’m not expecting you to be a flawless master of a pre-req skill. But remember, this skill listed as a pre-req because it’s starting point for what we’re actually going to do in class. Not having some consistency with that skill is unsafe and slows the class down.
Pre-Requisites: Consider This
If you can get into a pre-req skill consistently with some ease, then you’re ready to use that skill in class. Are you breathing? Could you pause during transitions and still retain control? If it feels like a ‘Hail Mary’ each time you do it, you need a little more practice first. Consider choosing a different class option for now.
Pre-reqs aren’t there to immediately defeat you. They challenge you to ask these questions of yourself, and really listen to the answers. Seek out material at the upper end of what you’ve mastered, and push that edge just a little.
As our local acro scene develops and we see more learners of varied levels, I hope to see more use of prerequisites by teachers in class descriptions, and a culture of honest self-assessment among students in response.
Stay safe and have fun. See you at the jam!
Written by Scott White. Scott is an AcroYoga Montreal-certified teacher and a founding director of Austin Acro Advocates. He teaches as part of Freeflow Acro and documents his adventures on his masked heavy metal parody YouTube channel, Evil Acro.
