16.2 Feedback, Corrections, and Movement Options

The hinge block looks fine from the front row. In the back-left corner, two lumbar spines have rounded and one person is staring at the floor. The instructor keys the mic and says, "Jordan, your back is a disaster — everyone look, this is what not to do." The room gets quieter. Jordan puts the bell down. Independent OpenExamPrep CGFI teaching treats that as a Task F failure: feedback, corrections, regressions, and modifications exist to prevent injury and meet needs, not to produce a cautionary tale with a name attached.

Published 2020 Job Analysis Task G sits beside that job: provide movement options to accommodate different fitness goals and improve the experience. k45 gave you knobs. This section is tone, timing, audience, and goal. Domain 2 wrote the menu. Domain 3 serves it without humiliation.

This is independent CGFI study by OpenExamPrep covering those published instruction tasks. It is not an AFAA or NASM course, review, or partnership.

Task F: Feedback Is a Safety Tool

Feedback is information about what just happened that the person can use on the next rep. Correction is a specific change in position, timing, or version. Regression is a planned easier version of the same purpose. Modification is a purpose-keeping change that may be easier, lateral, or constraint-based. You already named those words on the plan. Live, they have to fit in a phrase people can hear over music.

Useful feedback is:

• Specific — shift knees over mid-foot, not good job as the only sentence, and not do it right.
• Timely — during the set if the joint is at risk now; after the 8-count if you need a breath of attention; after class if the note is personal.
• Actionable — one change they can make before the next rep. Three cues at once is a lecture.
• Purpose-tied — so the hips do the hinge beats because I said so.

Useless feedback is a vibe (work harder), a diagnosis (that is your SI joint), a rank (the athletic option), or a story about someone else's body told into the microphone.

Public versus private

Public feedback is a whole-room cue that states the joint standard without identifying a person. Use it when several people share the miss, when naming the standard would help the whole mix, and when you can fix it without pointing.

Examples that belong on the mic:

• Let's all check that knees track over the mid-foot path on this squat.
• Ribs stacked over the pelvis — take a shallower range if that is how you keep it.
• If the landing is loud, take the march. Quiet landings only on the jump.

Public cues protect dignity and often repair three people at once. They also keep you teaching instead of running a private clinic in lane four while the other twenty-four people invent choreography.

Private feedback is a quiet word, a walk-by, a gesture, or a after-class sentence. Use it when the information is personal, likely to embarrass, medical-adjacent, or about a single person's unique limit.

Examples that do not belong on the mic:

• A disclosed surgery, pregnancy, or "my therapist said."
• A collapse only one person is showing after the room-wide cue already went out.
• A conflict between two members (next section).
• Anything you would not want shouted on a speaker in a packed studio.

Walk-by technique: you are still facing as much of the room as you can, you drop to a volume only they hear, you give one change plus an option, you leave. Hovering over someone for an entire song is a spotlight even without a name. Virtual: you cannot whisper. Use generalized language (if your lumbar spine is rounding, take the hinge with no load) and a chat or after-class message for anything personal. Do not put a participant's health story in a recorded class.

Trap: believing public correction is never allowed, so you watch a roomful of knees cave in silence. Trap: believing every correction must be public "for the group's education." Trap: using a person's name plus the error as entertainment.

Positive-first, then one change, then the goal of the change

Lead with what is working. Then name one change. Then say why — the purpose, the joint, the option.

• Nice depth. Shift the knees over mid-foot so the squat stays in the hips.
• Feet are on time. Let's drop the arms until the grapevine lands, then we will add the reach.
• You own that plank line. Take the kneeling press if the hips start to pike — same chest.

That order is not a trademark sandwich you have to memorize as a brand. It is how adults stay in the room. Opening with you're doing it wrong makes people shrink range, hold breath, or put the bell down. Sarcastic applause when someone fails is not inclusive coaching; Chapter 13 already called that out as instructor-centered theater.

Positive-first does not mean you praise a dangerous position. If the lumbar spine is rounding under load, you do not say love that extra depth and then whisper a correction. You recast the version: Keep the hinge in the hips — shorten the range or drop the bell so you can own it. Honesty about safety still starts with the pattern you want, not with the person's character.

Give one correction per pass. If they also need less load and less impact, that is a regression, not a paragraph. Demo the version. Chapter 15's rule still holds: if they cannot organize the easiest option, stop that move for them.

What you never say as "feedback"

• A pathology name you are not licensed to give.
• A meal plan or a comment on someone's body size as the reason for the option.
• Push through when they reported sharp pain.
• A comparison: everyone else has this, why don't you.
• A promise that the kneeling push-up will "fix" their shoulder.

Refer medical questions. Keep coaching the pattern.

Task G: Options by Goal, Not Only by Rank

Task F often sounds like easier versus harder. Task G asks something finer: movement options that accommodate different fitness goals so the hour still feels like their hour.

People in the same squat block may be training:

• Muscular strength or hypertrophy — slower tempo, fewer reps they can control, a load they own, longer rest inside the group constraint.
• Muscular endurance or work capacity — more reps, lighter load, shorter rest, a pulse they can organize.
• Cardiorespiratory endurance — a squat-family pattern that lets ventilation rise, maybe a step-touch jack between strength sets if that still matches the class description.
• Mobility or range they can own — a sit-to-stand or a bodyweight squat to a target they reach without lumbar collapse.
• Skill or sport transfer — a pause at the bottom, a tempo eccentric, not a circus jump they cannot land.
• Stress relief or consistency — a version they will finish and come back for. That is a valid goal. It is not laziness.

The option still has to pass Question 1. A biceps curl does not become a squat because someone "just wants arms tonight" in a squat-pattern class. A legal Task G choice stays in the family: goblet squat, sit-to-stand, isometric wall squat, slower tempo, lighter bell, more reps. You name the goal in language they can use: If you came for strength, own a slower six-count. If you came to keep moving, take the lighter bell or bodyweight and keep the reps clean.

Participant-centered teaching (Chapter 13) means they choose among legal versions. Instructor-centered teaching treats copying your hardest demo as the only success. Task G is the first of those. You still set the safety fence: you do not offer a version that fails Question 3 (safety) just because someone requested it.

How a goal option sounds on the mic

• Strength goal: slower squat, own the load. Endurance goal: lighter or bodyweight, keep moving.
• If you are here for a press you can build, take knees or a wall. If you already own a long plank line, toes are available — hips stay with you.
• Cycle: seated climb if you want control and a gear you can keep smooth. Standing if you chose the hill and your hips stay quiet.

Do not assign goals by appearance. The person who looks trained may have a cranky tendon tonight. The person who looks new may be here for a strength-endurance block they do every week. Offer the menu. Let them pick. Recheck form. That is Task F and Task G on the same phrase.

Putting Feedback and Options on One 8-Count

A practical sequence that items like:

1. See the miss (Task E).
2. Whole-room cue, positive-first, one change (public Task F).
3. Show the legal versions, including a goal split if the block can hold it (Task G + k45 knobs).
4. Walk-by or after-class private note if one person still needs something that would embarrass them on the speaker.
5. Stop that move for pain or unrestorable positions. Options are not a substitute for the contraindication path.

Tactile cueing — a light tap to a scapula — is a later professionalism topic: consent first, and never on a stranger in a packed room as your first tool. Voice, demo, and a named option will carry almost every live correction on this exam.

Traps:

• Public name-and-shame as "accountability."
• Private silence while the whole room shares the same knee cave.
• Positive-only fog with no actual change (you're all amazing) while lumbar spines round under load.
• Easier/harder as the only menu, so the person with a strength goal gets a march they did not need and the person with a mobility goal gets a jump they cannot land.
• Treating Task G as permission to abandon the class description.

The sentence you want is short: what is working, what to change, which legal version matches their goal, then you scan again. Flow — keeping that sentence inside the music when the room throws you a surprise — is the next section.