Question Everything! - my new favourite phrase :)

"Question everything. If something doesn't make sense ask. Question what you're told by your coaches until you're sure you understand it. I'm not perfect, I could say something wrong -- so if something doesn't seem right, ask me about it."

This from my coach after a lesson in which not once but twice I had questioned something he had told me to do (which the first one I had heard before but never understood why. The 2nd went against everything I've been taught for years and while I'm still not 100% convinced I believe it, I'm certainly willing to give it a sincere try).

Now, I try to be reasonably respectful when I ask said questions but several of my past coaches, even those who claim to be "question friendly" have had serious issues with it -- whether it's that they feel I'm challenging their knowledge or are frustrated cause they'd rather I just do as I'm told -- I'm not sure. But it's happened often enough that a huge part of me is now seriously hesitant about asking questions of the "why" variety. However, a small but insistent part of me knows that for me to truly get it and be able to apply it when said coach is NOT standing there supervising (which, let's be honest, is most of the time) I *have* to understand why and how what I'm doing works. And even more so to be able to teach it. So you can imagine my relief when I got the above lecture! hahaha we'll see as time goes on whether he's *really* ok w/ said questions, but I have to admit there were no signs of concern or tension when answering the ones today -- and they were the types that would've set off previous coaches.

With my students I actively encourage questions (some of whom take it to the extreme *cough*Stephy*cough*). But I'm always impressed when I get a truly intelligent question -- it kinda makes it worthwhile. One of my quite novice students comes up with those fairly regularly. She's fun to teach cause I know she's always thinking. Never anything particularly out there, but just things that show that for the level she's at now she's thinking about what she's being told and how it compares with what she's been told in the past and how it should apply to what she's doing now.

As far as the actual lesson? Brilliant things happened on the flat, which if I can actually replicate them mean it's time to go visit my dr coach again (hahaha let's be honest, it's *always* time to go visit my dr coach -- it's just a bit of a scheduling nightmare!) AND equally brilliant things happened over fences! Woohoo. So yeah, I'm pretty excited about the whole lesson thing in general really.