High-Load Teaching

A Framework for Instruction in High-Demand Physical Disciplines

High-load movement disciplines amplify every layer of the learning experience. When a student is physically challenged, disoriented, scared, or in pain, the hidden curriculum of teaching movement becomes more prominent. High-Load Teaching is the practice of working intelligently and ethically with those layers.

Sara Kaiser · Embodied Aerial · 2026

Implications of High-Load Teaching

Pedagogical Depth Directly Shapes Safety, Learning Outcomes, & Identity

When teaching doesn't account for the principles of high-load learning, risk is elevated, learning outcomes drop, and students are more likely to quit with a story about themselves that they weren't cut out for it. Every student's interpretation is unique, but many miss the full transformational journey these disciplines offer, and walk away with a story of failure that was never truly theirs. Safety, success, and identity are the stakes, and that's why we need to take the hidden curriculum of movement learning seriously, especially in high-load disciplines.

"The teacher directly shapes whether a student gets a fair chance to fall in love with the art form, or leaves with a story about themselves that it wasn't for them."

Sara Kaiser · Embodied Aerial

The framework

The six principles of High-Load Teaching

These principles apply to any discipline where the body is under significant physical or psychological demand. High-load environments don't create different rules for learning. They make the existing rules impossible to ignore.

The Nervous System Comes First

High threat-level states shift the brain toward defensive processing and away from the integration of new information.¹ Too little arousal produces inattention and disengagement; too much and the capacity for learning collapses. Neither extreme supports skill acquisition. Teaching into a dysregulated nervous system is instruction that goes nowhere, and elevates stress and risk for the student.

The teacher's state is integral to the instruction. A teacher who is anxious, rushed, or checked out transmits that to the room through their voice, pacing, and presence. Observing skilled movement engages portions of the observer's motor system and can contribute to how movement is internally represented and learned.² A teacher who is grounded and present creates the conditions for learning before a single cue is given.

Roots in LeDoux fear memory research, action observation and motor learning research (Bonini et al., 2022)

Motor Learning Has Defined Stages — And Teaching Should Organize Around Them

Students move through cognitive, associative, and autonomous phases of skill acquisition.³ Cueing strategy should be organized around the stage. Too much instruction at the wrong time interrupts automaticity. Silence is a teaching tool. Knowing when to intervene and when not to is a sophisticated teaching technique that materially affects learning outcomes and student autonomy. An external focus of attention and learner autonomy have additive benefits for motor skill acquisition and retention.⁴

Roots in Fitts & Posner (1967) stages of motor learning, Wulf & Lewthwaite OPTIMAL theory (2016) — external focus, autonomy support, enhanced expectancies

Progression Is a Design Problem

Getting a student from where they are to where they're going is a progressive process that requires customization to accommodate different students' needs, bodies, and nervous systems. Effective progression in high-load disciplines requires identifying the specific barrier, preserving what must remain intact, changing one variable at a time, and building a ladder back to the full skill. A teacher who skips this process asks students to make unrealistic leaps in technical knowledge and motor control, which elevates risk, produces movement quality gaps, and diminishes the probability of success.

Roots in Motor learning theory and skill acquisition research. Progression methodology developed by Sara Kaiser within the BLOOM Aerial Teacher Training.

Psychological Safety Is the Container for All Learning

Belonging, safety, and engagement are fundamental pillars of learning.⁵ A student who doesn't feel safe asking questions will hold back or push through unsafely. A student who doesn't feel they belong will be far less likely to return.⁶ A student who doesn't feel challenged will lose interest. The teacher is the primary architect of this environment, and it is built or broken within the first five minutes of every class and ongoingly.

Roots in Edmondson (1999) psychological safety research, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Self-Determination Theory — Deci & Ryan (2000): autonomy, competence, relatedness

High Load Highlights the Ethics of Teaching

When a student is learning something that can hurt them, scare them, or disorient them, the ethics of instruction become increasingly prominent. Consent, communication, knowledge of fear response and pain physiology, and transparency about risk and sensation become central. The teacher must understand how to read fear signals from students and make decisions based on real psychology and neuroscience, not assumption or encouragement alone.

For example: a student who appears rattled or spooked at the end of a drop will not reliably feel more safe with additional repetitions.^7,8 Fear extinction, the neurological process by which repeated exposure reduces fear response, requires that each exposure remain within a tolerable threshold.⁹ An overwhelming experience does not extinguish fear; it can consolidate it, thereby reinforcing the feeling that this task is dangerous. The student needs specific guidance and modification, not encouragement to push through. Simply giving learners a meaningful choice, including the choice to opt out or modify, reduces anxiety and improves motor learning outcomes.¹⁰

Roots in Trauma-informed pedagogy, medical informed consent frameworks, Foa & Kozak (1986), Rachman (1980), Craske et al. (2014), Lewthwaite & Wulf (2015), Sara Kaiser's AERIAL consent protocol

Progress Is Layered, Not Linear

Standard definitions of progress such as skill acquisition are insufficient in high-load disciplines. Real progress includes physiological adaptation, proprioceptive development, tolerance for uncertainty and failure, movement quality, psychological resilience, and trust in the process. A teacher who only tracks skill acquisition is missing most of what's actually happening and is liable to progress students to the next level before they are truly ready. Pressure from "trick-chasing" culture and pressure to excite students and entice them back contributes to this pattern.

Enhanced expectancies, the belief that a student will succeed, have been shown to improve both motor performance and retention.¹¹

Roots in Motor learning science, adaptation physiology, Schmidt & Lee (2011), Wulf & Lewthwaite OPTIMAL theory (2016) — enhanced expectancies

A Cross-Disciplinary Framework for Movement Instructors

These teaching principles aren't unique to aerial. They're universal to teaching movement. High-load environments expose the vulnerabilities and complexities of motor learning. High-load disciplines are, in this way, the best laboratory for understanding what movement coaching actually is. This framework is an effort to clarify and make actionable the theory behind high-load pedagogy, and to name the hidden curriculum that is shaping every student experience.

References

LeDoux, J. E. (1996). The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. Simon & Schuster.
Bonini, L., Rotunno, C., Arcuri, E., & Gallese, V. (2022). Mirror neurons 30 years later: implications and applications. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 26(9), 767–781. doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.06.003
Fitts, P. M., & Posner, M. I. (1967). Human Performance. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Wulf, G., & Lewthwaite, R. (2016). Optimizing performance through intrinsic motivation and attention for learning: The OPTIMAL theory of motor learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 23(5), 1382–1414.
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. doi.org/10.2307/2666999
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78.
Foa, E. B., & Kozak, M. J. (1986). Emotional processing of fear: Exposure to corrective information. Psychological Bulletin, 99(1), 20–35.
Rachman, S. (1980). Emotional processing. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 18, 51–60.
Craske, M. G., Treanor, M., Conway, C., Zbozinek, T., & Vervliet, B. (2014). Maximizing exposure therapy: An inhibitory learning approach. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 58, 10–23.
Lewthwaite, R., Chiviacowsky, S., Drews, R., & Wulf, G. (2015). Choose to move: The motivational impact of autonomy support on motor learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22, 1383–1388.
Schmidt, R. A., & Lee, T. D. (2011). Motor Control and Learning: A Behavioral Emphasis (5th ed.). Human Kinetics.

This framework was developed by Sara Kaiser, founder of Embodied Aerial and creator of the BLOOM Aerial Teacher Training. Sara brings the High-Load Teaching framework to studios and programs through Beyond Technique workshops and extended partnerships. For aerial instructors, the full framework lives inside the BLOOM certification.

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