diff --git a/InstructorEmbedding/instructor.py b/InstructorEmbedding/instructor.py
index 0ba795c..9d4f90a 100644
--- a/InstructorEmbedding/instructor.py
+++ b/InstructorEmbedding/instructor.py
@@ -12,6 +12,8 @@
 from torch import Tensor, nn
 from tqdm.autonotebook import trange
 from transformers import AutoConfig, AutoTokenizer
+from sentence_transformers.util import disabled_tqdm
+from huggingface_hub import snapshot_download
 
 
 def batch_to_device(batch, target_device: str):
@@ -515,10 +517,21 @@ def smart_batching_collate(self, batch):
 
         return batched_input_features, labels
 
-    def _load_sbert_model(self, model_path):
+    def _load_sbert_model(self, model_path, token = None, cache_folder = None, revision = None, trust_remote_code = False):
         """
         Loads a full sentence-transformers model
         """
+        # Taken mostly from: https://github.com/UKPLab/sentence-transformers/blob/66e0ee30843dd411c64f37f65447bb38c7bf857a/sentence_transformers/util.py#L544
+        download_kwargs = {
+            "repo_id": model_path,
+            "revision": revision,
+            "library_name": "sentence-transformers",
+            "token": token,
+            "cache_dir": cache_folder,
+            "tqdm_class": disabled_tqdm,
+        }
+        model_path = snapshot_download(**download_kwargs)
+
         # Check if the config_sentence_transformers.json file exists (exists since v2 of the framework)
         config_sentence_transformers_json_path = os.path.join(
             model_path, "config_sentence_transformers.json"
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 05f8986..a7fe466 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -10,4 +10,5 @@ sentence_transformers>=2.2.0
 torch
 tqdm
 rich
-tensorboard
\ No newline at end of file
+tensorboard
+huggingface-hub>=0.19.0