There's a difference between teaching a student a trick and teaching a student to fly. That difference lives almost entirely in the planning that happens before class starts — the part nobody sees on the aerial reel.
It's tempting, especially when a class is fun and students are eager, to build a lesson around "today we're learning X." The skill becomes the whole plan. Warm up, review a bit, throw the skill at them, spot it a dozen times, call it a day. Students leave excited. But excited isn't the same as equipped, and a trick taught in isolation rarely survives contact with the next skill in the progression.
If we want our students to actually build — not just accumulate a highlight reel of tricks they can do once with a spot — we have to plan lessons the way we'd design a structure: foundation first, then framing, then the piece itself.
Start With Why, Not With What
Before deciding how to teach a skill, it's worth sitting with a harder question: why this skill, and why now?
Every skill we put in front of a student should earn its spot in a lesson plan. What does this specific move teach the body that another move doesn't? Is it building a strength pattern students will need later — a hip flexor engagement, a specific grip, a shoulder rotation? Is it teaching a mental or spatial skill — spin tolerance, trust in an apparatus, spatial awareness? Or is it primarily an artistic tool — a shape, a transition, a way of moving through space?
A skill that's just "cool" isn't reason enough to teach it. A skill that's cool and teaches something the student needs for what's coming next — that's worth building a whole class around. When we're clear on the "why," the rest of the lesson almost designs itself, because now we know what to reinforce, what to reference, and what success in the room should actually look like.
This also changes how we talk to students about what they're doing. Instead of "today we're learning a scorpion," it becomes "today we're building the back flexibility and learning the wrap technique you'll need for a scorpion — and for half a dozen other back-bend based skills down the road." Students remember purpose longer than they remember choreography.
Build the Body Before You Ask It to Perform
Once we know why we're teaching a skill, the next question is what the body needs to do it safely and well — and whether it currently can.
This is where floor and apparatus conditioning stops being a warm-up formality and becomes the actual engine of the lesson. If the main skill demands hip flexor strength, hollow body control, or a specific range of shoulder flexion, that's not something to hope students arrive with — it's something to build, deliberately, in the same class, on the floor, before it's ever asked of them in the air.
A few questions worth running through when planning this piece:
- What strength does this skill require, specifically — not generally? "Core strength" is rarely specific enough to plan around.
- What flexibility or range of motion does the body need, and do most students in this class currently have it?
- Can I drill the strength or flexibility requirement on the floor first, where it's easier to correct and safer to fail?
- Does the apparatus itself need its own conditioning moment — grip strength, wrap tolerance, apparatus-specific positioning — separate from the floor work?
When conditioning is built around the actual demands of the skill, students show up to the apparatus portion of class already partway there. The skill stops being a leap and starts being the next reasonable step.
Review Before You Reveal
The third piece — and the one that's easiest to skip when time is short — is reviewing prerequisite and related skills before introducing something new.
This does two things. First, it's a genuine safety and readiness check: if a student can't cleanly execute the skill this new one builds on, that's information worth having before attempting the new skill, not during it. Second, it reactivates the neural and physical pathways the new skill will lean on. A student who just drilled a related wrap, lock, or transition is warmed up — mentally and physically — for a new variation of the same idea.
This is also where instructors get to connect dots out loud for students. "Remember how we wrapped this leg last week? Today's skill uses that same wrap, just from a different entry." Suddenly the new skill isn't a stranger — it's a cousin of something already familiar. That familiarity does more for confidence than any amount of hype ever could.
Designing for the Hour — and for Everything After It
Here's where all three pieces come together. A lesson built on purpose, conditioning, and review doesn't just teach a skill for one class period. It builds infrastructure the student keeps using long after they've walked out the studio door.
Think about the difference in outcomes:
A trick-first lesson gives a student one moment of "I did it," dependent on a spot, disconnected from anything before or after it. The skill often needs to be re-taught almost from scratch the next time it comes up, because nothing was built underneath it.
A purpose-first lesson gives a student a moment of "I did it" that's actually load-bearing. The strength gained on the floor shows up in the next three skills that need it. The core rotation drilled carries into body wrap rolls weeks later. The reviewed prerequisite gets reinforced again, cementing it further instead of letting it fade. The "why" behind the skill gives the student language to understand their own progress, instead of just collecting tricks like stickers.
This is the length, breadth, and depth we're really after. Length, because the planning considers where this skill leads over months, not just where it lands today. Breadth, because conditioning and review touch multiple skills at once instead of isolating one. Depth, because the student understands why they're doing what they're doing, which is what actually makes a skill theirs instead of borrowed.
A Planning Framework Worth Stealing
If it's helpful, here's a simple sequence to run through before writing any lesson plan:
- Why this skill? What does it teach the body or mind that matters beyond this one move?
- What does the body need? Identify the specific strength and flexibility demands, and plan floor and apparatus conditioning to meet them.
- What comes before it? Review the prerequisite or related skills that set this one up, and use that review as part of the warm-up, not an afterthought.
- What comes after it? Know what this skill leads to, so today's class is visibly laying track for next month's, not just today's.
None of this requires more class time than the trick-first approach. It requires more thought beforehand — which is, frankly, the actual job. The apparatus makes the tricks look effortless. The planning is what makes the progress real.
Curious how we structure this across our own class progressions — and have built a 4-level curriculum progression plan to safely train our students in-house. Happy to talk shop with fellow instructors. Reach out here.
Peggy Ployhar
Owner, Eternal Aerial Arts
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