Yeah, I get that, but what I feel your takeaway misses a few key points. With Ken you get instructions. Do this and see results. I'm also a very analytical man. But the absolute most frustrating thing I found with my 4 (extremely expensive) dealings with Keith is his self help approach. Every swingle session he (I had him as my one on the last two levels, but one and two were the same) would ask what I thought I did wrong. What -> I <- thought I did wrong.
A couple of points on the above:
The CSS methodology lays out the day into classroom sessions that address a particular riding skill, followed by an on-track session where the rider is assigned a drill to support the topic of the classroom session. The classroom sessions address
teaching, or delivering information ("Do this and see results"), where the topic is covered in some depth.
Coaching, or helping the rider become more proficient at what he learned in the classroom, takes place on the track and during the after ride briefing with your coach. During the debrief, the coach will ask the student questions to get them to recall what was happening on track. These are not normally wide open questions, like "What do you think you did wrong," but typically more focused questions like, "Do you have an apex reference point for turn 2?" Ideally, the questions will be based on an observation the coach made from the previous ride, though sometimes they are focused at diagnosing something that is bothering the student but the coach wasn't there to see.
We could just tell a student what to do and expect them to go do it. Decades of experience with tens of thousands of riders have shown that getting the student to participate in arriving at a solution for the next ride is more effective at giving them something to try that they can succeed with and it models an approach that students can use to continue to improve after the school day is over.
Coaches go through rigorous training and drilling on ways to ask focused questions that get to the heart of the matter with few words and distractions. It would be much, much easier for the coach to say, "Hey, you're late on the gas in turn 5. Roll on sooner there." Some students might go out and find a way to do that, but with most, there is a reason they are late on the gas. Unless the coach and student understand what the reason is, just telling them to roll on sooner may not help. It also fails to give the student a basis to correct a similar mistake in the future when riding on their own.
In the 20 years I've been with the school, this approach has been in place, though it has become more refined with each passing year, as we discover what gets results most often. This whole approach is most workable if the coach explains to his students at the beginning of the day how the interactions are going to work. This gets everyone on the same page about the approach and expected results.
I do know that not everyone sees the value in being asked questions. Thankfully, based on survey results and repeat business, they are in the small minority. In these cases it can be the coach could have done a better job of setting expectations or formulating his questions. We conduct end of day surveys as well as follow-up surveys after the school date. Before we leave the track, every coach reads every survey response. If the result is not strongly positive, the Chief Riding Coach contacts the student to find out what went wrong.
