7.6 Fault Triage: Addressing the Most Egregious Fault First
Key Takeaways
- When several faults are present, correct the most egregious first: the one most likely to cause injury, then the one most limiting to performance.
- Triage exists because athletes can act on one instruction at a time; a coach who lists three faults produces zero corrections.
- The priority order is spinal position, then joint safety, then completion of the movement, then efficiency and style.
- Many faults resolve on their own once the primary fault is fixed, because they were consequences of it rather than independent errors.
- In a group setting, triage runs across athletes as well as within one athlete: coach the most dangerous movement in the room first.
Why Triage Is a Named Skill
The content outline includes "address the most egregious fault first (triage)" as its own task statement, which tells you the exam treats it as a distinct competency rather than common sense. It is a competency because the instinct runs the other way: a coach who sees four faults wants to mention four faults, and a coach who has just learned to see faults especially wants to demonstrate that they saw them.
The constraint that makes triage necessary is the athlete's processing capacity. Under load, mid-set, an athlete can act on one instruction. Give them three and you have given them none — they will attempt to hold all three in mind, fail at all three, and lose the one thing they were doing correctly.
The Priority Order
- Spinal position. Loss of the lumbar curve under load, cervical hyperextension, uncontrolled flexion in a loaded hinge. This outranks everything, always, and is corrected immediately rather than at the end of the set.
- Joint safety. Knee valgus under load, elbows soft in an overhead position, shoulder position in an unsupported hang, wrist position in the front rack.
- Completion of the movement. Depth, full extension, full lockout, full range of motion. These affect whether the rep counts and whether the intended stimulus is achieved.
- Efficiency and style. Bar path, breathing rhythm, cycle timing, transitions. Real coaching value, but never before the first three.
Within a tier, correct the fault that is most limiting — the one holding back the most other things.
Cause Before Consequence
The second triage rule, which frequently overrides the first ordering: correct the earliest fault in the causal chain, because downstream faults often disappear when it is fixed.
A worked example. An athlete's snatch shows: (a) shoulders behind the bar at set-up, (b) bar drifting forward off the shins, (c) no full hip extension, (d) jumping forward, (e) soft elbows at the catch. Five faults. Correcting the elbows fixes nothing. Correcting the set-up frequently fixes (b), (c), (d) and (e) at once, because they were all consequences of a bar that never travelled over the mid-foot.
So before choosing a cue, ask: is this fault a cause or a symptom? Coaches who skip that question spend a session correcting five things that were one thing.
Deciding Between Safety and Cause
When the most dangerous fault is a downstream consequence, safety still wins in the moment — you do not allow a loaded round back to continue while you work on the set-up. The resolution is sequential:
- Stop or de-load immediately to remove the danger.
- Then correct at the causal origin, at a load where the consequence cannot occur.
In practice this usually means: strip the bar, then fix the set-up.
Triage Across a Class
The same principle scales. In a class of fourteen athletes, you cannot coach everyone on everything, so triage the room:
- Scan for danger first. Loaded spinal flexion, an athlete about to fail a rep they cannot bail from, someone in a bail zone, unsafe equipment. Handle these immediately regardless of who you were about to coach.
- Then scan for the class-wide theme. If most of the room shares a fault, one group intervention outperforms ten individual ones.
- Then coach individuals, prioritising the athletes furthest from a safe standard.
- Then refine with the athletes who are moving well.
A useful discipline is to run these as explicit passes rather than as a wander. Pass one: safety, whole room. Pass two: the day's primary point of performance, whole room. Pass three: individuals. Pass four: refinements. Coaches who wander tend to over-coach whoever is nearest the door.
Delivering a Single Correction Well
The practical form of triage in the moment is a three-part exchange that takes under ten seconds:
- Name what is right. "Your depth is good."
- Give one correction. "Chest up as you come out of the bottom."
- Watch the next rep and confirm. "That's it — that's the one."
Saving the rest is not neglect; the other faults are logged and addressed in a later set or a later session, once the primary correction has held. A coach who has corrected one thing successfully has coached; a coach who has mentioned four things has commentated.
An athlete performing a heavy clean shows a rounded lower back, a slow turnover, dropped elbows in the rack, and inconsistent foot placement. Which does the coach address first?
Why does correcting the earliest fault in a causal chain often eliminate several other faults at once?
In a class of fourteen athletes, what should the coach's first observation pass look for?