How a Class Is Built

Every well-taught class has the same underlying arc, and each phase exists to solve a problem created by the one before it. Once you can see it, you can tell within ten minutes whether a class has been thought about, and you can build your own.

The six phases

1. Arrival — 3 to 5 minutes

Seated or lying. Breath awareness. Perhaps a few minutes of simple movement with the eyes closed.

The problem it solves: people walk in from traffic and email. Without a boundary, the first fifteen minutes of the class happen to a body whose attention is elsewhere, and that is where injuries occur.

What good looks like: a teacher who does not rush this and who says almost nothing during it.

2. Warming — 8 to 15 minutes

Spinal movement in all four directions, then something that raises the temperature: sun salutations, or a repeated sequence of a few shapes.

The problem it solves: cold tissue behaves differently. Range is lower, and the tissue is less tolerant of load. Everything in phase four goes better after this.

What good looks like: the spine visits flexion, extension, rotation and lateral bend before anything demanding. And a genuine rise in temperature — you should be breathing harder.

3. Standing work — 15 to 25 minutes

The Warriors, Triangle, Side Angle, Half Moon, Chair, balance poses.

The problem it solves: this is the strength and structure of the class. Standing poses load the legs and hips through range, which nothing later in the class does, and they need to happen while you are warm and not yet tired.

What good looks like: poses held long enough to do something — five breaths minimum, and one or two held considerably longer. A class that flows continuously through standing shapes at one breath each is a cardiovascular class, which is fine, but it is not building what standing poses build.

4. The peak — 5 to 15 minutes

The hardest thing in the class. A deep backbend, an inversion, an arm balance, a long-held demanding shape.

The problem it solves: it gives the class a shape. Everything before it was preparation and everything after is resolution. A class without a peak feels like a list.

What good looks like: the peak is prepared. If the peak is Wheel, the class should have opened shoulders, opened hip flexors, and warmed the spine into extension progressively. If those elements were not in phases two and three, the peak is unearned and the teacher has not planned the class.

This is the diagnostic for a well-built class. Look back from the peak and ask whether everything before it was pointing here. In a good class it obviously was.

5. Cooling and counter — 10 to 15 minutes

Floor work. Seated forward folds, hip openers, twists, mild counter-shapes.

The problem it solves: phase four has left the body loaded asymmetrically and in one spinal direction. This unwinds it. It also lowers the heart rate progressively rather than abruptly.

What good looks like: the counter-shapes actually correspond to what was done. Backbends countered with mild flexion and twists — not with an aggressive forward fold immediately afterwards, which is a common error.

6. Savasana — 8 to 15 minutes

The problem it solves: the nervous system is still in the working state. This is where it changes, and it takes eight to twelve minutes.

What good looks like: enough time, and a teacher who stops talking. A three-minute Savasana with continuous narration is not the pose.

Reading a class from the outside

A class with no arrival: the teacher is running late or does not think it matters. Both are informative.

A class that peaks in the first twenty minutes: the teacher is teaching a sequence rather than a class. Common in drop-in vinyasa.

A class with no peak: pleasant, and you will not improve at anything.

A class where the peak was not prepared: the most common flaw, and the one most likely to hurt somebody. If the hardest pose arrives with no build-up, be conservative in it.

A class with a short Savasana: the teacher over-ran, which means the sequencing was not planned to the hour.

Building your own

Use the same six phases and change only phase four.

The whole planning question becomes: what is the peak, and what does it need?

Pick the peak first. Then work backwards. If the peak is Camel: it needs open hip flexors, so low lunges in phase three; it needs open shoulders and chest, so a passive chest opener in phase two and Puppy in phase three; it needs a warm spine in extension, so Sphinx and Cobra progressively through phase three.

That is class planning, entire. Everything else is filling in around the answer.

The proportions

For a sixty-minute session, roughly:

• Arrival: 5 percent
• Warming: 20 percent
• Standing: 30 percent
• Peak: 15 percent
• Cooling: 15 percent
• Savasana: 15 percent

Scale proportionally for shorter sessions. The two things that get cut when time is short should be the standing section and the peak — never the arrival, and never Savasana.