I wrote a training manual in one afternoon.

"What I thought was impossible in 2023 is totally possible in one afternoon."

Back in 2023 I started writing a teacher training manual. I had the knowledge — years of it. I knew the flows, the best practices, the progressions and regressions, the contraindications. It was all in my head. But getting it out of my head and onto a page, while also running a studio, teaching most of the classes, being the only teacher for a long stretch, and raising two small kids — I just hit a wall. I stopped. The document sat there, half-finished, and I quietly let it go.

Then yesterday, a lovely friend asked me for some ideas for her classes. And something clicked. I thought — I'm going to try this with AI.

I opened Manus — which is the AI tool I've been using to build this website and a lot of what I'm documenting in this journal — and I just started talking. I told it what I knew. The flows I use, the principles I teach from, the things I always tell new instructors. I asked it to search for best practices and cross-reference what I was saying. And then I asked it to structure everything into a manual.

One afternoon. That's how long it took.

I want to be clear about what that means — and what it doesn't mean. AI didn't write the manual. The knowledge is mine. The years of teaching, the understanding of the body, the experience of what actually works in a class — that came from me. What AI did was help me get it out of my head and into a document, in a structure that makes sense, without me having to sit alone staring at a blank page trying to figure out where to start.

Why I stopped in 2023

The problem wasn't the knowledge. The problem was the blank page and the time. Writing a manual from scratch means making a hundred small decisions before you've written a single useful sentence. What's the structure? How do I organise the exercises? How much detail is enough? Do I include photos? What format? Where do I even start?

When you're wearing all the hats — teacher, studio manager, receptionist, marketing department, accountant — there's no space for that kind of open-ended thinking. You need to sit down, do the thing, and get up again. The blank page doesn't allow for that. So I stopped.

How it actually worked

I didn't write the manual. I talked it. I described what I wanted — a manual for instructors, covering the flows and best practices I use in my studio, structured so that anyone teaching my classes would be on the same page. I gave it the knowledge that was in my head and asked it to search for anything relevant it could add. Then I asked it to put it all together.

It asked me questions. I answered them. It drafted sections. I read them, corrected things that weren't quite right, added things I'd forgotten. It's a conversation, not a command. But because it's a conversation, it doesn't feel like work in the same way. I wasn't staring at a blank page. I was responding. That's a completely different mental state.

By the end of the afternoon I had a document. A real one. Something I could actually give to an instructor and say — this is how we do things here.

Why this matters if you're wearing all the hats

A training manual isn't just a document. It's the thing that lets you bring someone else in without having to be in the room for every class. It's the thing that means your studio has a consistent voice and approach, whether you're teaching or not. For a lot of small studio owners, that document is the difference between being able to grow and being permanently stuck at the ceiling of what one person can do.

I knew that in 2023. I just couldn't find the time or the mental space to do it. And so I stayed stuck.

What changed yesterday isn't that I suddenly had more time. I had an afternoon. What changed is that I had a tool that made the blank page disappear. That turned "write a manual" — which is a huge, open-ended, paralysing task — into "have a conversation about what you know." That's a task I can do.

If you have something sitting in a folder somewhere — a manual you started, a course you outlined, a document you abandoned because life got in the way — try talking it out with AI. Not writing it. Talking it. Describe what you know. Answer the questions it asks. See what comes back.

You might be surprised what you can finish in an afternoon.

— Victoria

Coming next

Setting up a weekly automation so the post gets drafted without me having to think about it.