- If you teach restorative in a decent-sized town there may be a hundred people offering something indistinguishable from yours.
- The way out isn’t teaching differently. Golfers wreck their backs and almost none have ever considered yoga.
- You would be teaching more or less what you already teach. It’s just the way it’s presented.
- Speak to what they want. Golfers want a couple of shots off the score, not wellbeing.
- A specific offer travels because the golfer tells the other golfers. A general one doesn’t, because there’s nothing to tell.
The complaint I hear more than any other is some version of: *there are too many yoga teachers round here.*
We get asked this constantly, and usually they’re right. If you teach restorative in a decent-sized town, there may be a hundred people offering something a prospective student would struggle to tell apart from yours.
The question that usually follows is how to stand out. For me that’s the wrong one — standing out among a hundred people doing the same thing is a losing game however good you’re.
And the interesting part is that the way out isn’t teaching anything different.
What does a niche actually look like?
Here is the example I always come back to.
Golfers wreck their backs. Shoulders and necks too, because they rotate hard and repeatedly, usually without warming up and never stretching out afterwards. Tiger Woods, arguably the best there has been, was very nearly finished by their back.
Yoga is close to a perfect answer to that, and I’d say a badly underused one. Almost no golfer has ever considered it, because yoga isn’t a thing golfers think about.
If you offered *yoga for golfers*, how many other teachers within ten miles are doing that?
You would probably be teaching the same stuff you normally teach. It’s just the way it’s presented.
How do you speak to them?
This is the bit that decides whether it works.
Golfers are competitive. Many aren’t remotely interested in wellbeing and would wince at the word. What they want is a couple of shots off the score, to play without seizing up on the twelfth, and to beat the friend they have been losing to since 2019.
So the offer says that. Eight weeks, move better, hurt less. Nothing about chakras. Everything about golf.
How do you find yours?
Not a list to pick from. A test to run.
- Who does yoga genuinely help, that would never think of yoga? Runners, cyclists, nurses on twelve-hour shifts, hairdressers standing all day, choirs, new dads.
- Do they already gather? A club, a team, a workplace. That’s ten conversations instead of a thousand impressions.
- Can you speak their language honestly? If you’ve never held a golf club, golfers will know inside a minute.
What does it cost you?
It narrows you, and that’s uncomfortable. It feels like turning people away.
In practice it does the opposite. A specific offer travels, because the golfer tells the other golfers. A general one doesn’t, because there’s nothing to tell.
You might run through all three tests and decide none of them are for you, and carry on exactly as you’re. Plenty of teachers have. Just decide it, rather than assuming a crowded town is something that happens to you.
Where this sits
YogaPros has been the professional body for yoga teachers since 2006, with over 10,000 members across 100+ countries.
*This article is general professional guidance. It isn’t a substitute for professional legal, tax, or insurance advice specific to your situation.*