Episode 58 - To Correct or Not to Correct… Let’s Explore the Question

In this episode of Three Questions, I unpack one of the most commonly misunderstood topics in movement and teaching: correction. Correction isn’t just about pointing out what’s wrong… it’s about understanding the person in front of you, clarifying your intention, and helping the brain learn, not just comply.

In This Episode You’ll Hear:

• Why correction without context often creates confusion, not change

• How autonomy, competence, and relatedness shape real learning

• Why building awareness beats fixing movement every time

This episode is part movement science, part communication strategy, and part reality check for how we help people change.  So if you’re coaching, teaching, or just trying to communicate better, this episode will give you a more thoughtful and effective way to guide change.

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Transcript

Meghann Koppele Duffy: Welcome to Three Questions where critical thinking is king, and my opinions and research are only here to support your learning and deeper understanding. Hey, I'm your host Meghann, and I am so honored you clicked on Three Questions today so we can talk about the age old question to correct or not to correct.

Now, in today's episode, I'm gonna really be talking to my movement professionals. Excuse me. But I do think these questions can cross over into other aspects of our lives. Whether you're talking to your partner or your spouse, your friends, your children. I think these questions are gonna help us all critically think about how we interact with each other and how we correct each other.

So let's get right into question one. Who are you dealing with? Who is your client? Who is the person you are correcting? And who are they? What type of person are they? Now, what do I mean by that? I want you to think about that for a moment. When you meet somebody, what do you size up first? Think about it.

Something I do when I meet someone, as I kind of take in everything, how they're standing, how they're looking, how they interact with others. Are they someone that's a little uncomfortable in the situation and need help feeling part of something? Are they a person who needs to be heard? Are they a person going through something?

Now, these are my observations. I think a lot of times we assume what a person needs rather than asking. So when I ask who your client or the person you're communicating with is, maybe the best question to ask them is, what are their goals? So if you're coming to me for a session, I know there must be something going on or something you wanna learn now based off your health history questionnaire.

All the questions I ask in my intake, I could assume. I also ask on my form, what are your goals? I ask it directly, but that is such a hard question to answer because let's all be honest. Yeah. Like I might have a goal of decreasing my SI joint pain. But that might not be my actual goal in the short term.

My actual goal in the short term is to better understand how to move my hip better or maybe to fit in my pants better or maybe to get stronger now. And this is what's tricky about goals and dealing with humans. We often say one thing, but there's often actually a smaller, more realistic goal within a goal.

And that's hard to get out of people. Like you can't just like interrogate them and be like, all right, you say you wanna fix your hip pain, but are you willing to do the work it takes to fix that? Ew, I'd be like, F you. Now, don't get me wrong, it sometimes comes to a point where I have to say that to clients.

And rather than saying that, I'll say, Hey, could there be any other things we wanna work on in here? And what I think people don't realize is our clients tell us exactly what we need. So ask yourself again. Who is your client and what are their goals? Connecting with those goals, asking them again, and see if you can start asking better questions.

Okay. I have another episode about questions coming up, so just hang tight on that. But before I, I was debating which episode to drop first, and I wanted to drop this one first. Because I want you guys to start thinking about better questions to answer, and I could correct you and tell you what questions to ask, but those are questions I ask.

Those are things I need to fill, the knowledge gaps I have for my clients. I feel like the best questions come from what you need to know from your client based off what you do. So before we go into question two, I wanna give a little more nuance to question one. So if somebody's coming to me for a session, they want answers, they want solutions, they are asking me for help, and I don't take that lightly.

However, we all know sometimes when you give people a lot of information, it can either overwhelm them or it's often not what they wanna hear. Okay? Oftentimes when it's a movement problem, it's a longer conversation. This. Nobody likes to hear this. There is not one exercise that is going to fix your problems.

That being said, we can potentially find one exercise that creates a big shift to your brain so that you can start incorporating that concept into your daily life and to all your workouts. Because if you know anything about neuroplasticity, we need repetition. But we can't be doing a million different movement patterns and thinking.

That's repetition. It's complicated. Right. So here's what I like to boil down everything, and it's based off motivational theory. It's called self-determination theory. Okay? It's a very well-known motivational theory, and it's really based off three components, guys, autonomy, competence, and relatedness. And you might be thinking.

The No, no, no, not the, what do we really mean by autonomy? So if I'm correcting you and I'm saying, Hey, you're elevating your shoulders when you shouldn't be, let's fix that. I have now told you what's wrong with you, but I did not give you the autonomy or the ability to adjust it yourself. How is a a client gonna know when their shoulders lift?

They never know. We will talk about this more in question three. So how can I really use my corrections to build autonomy in my client, not making them figure out the problem? And this is where a lot of people I think go wrong here is. No, no, no. I'm not trying to force my client to figure out what's wrong with them.

They paid me money to help solve their problem, but the problem is if I just solve their problem and tell them what's wrong without working on building that autonomy for them, that they'll be able to reach the goal. They feel like they've gotten a lot of information, but then they're back at square one going, okay, now what?

And if you're like a teacher, you know what I mean? What do clients say after like a first session, okay, what can I do at home? And you're thinking, oh my God. Like it was our first session. I mean, I got them say, let's just keep, let's keep it basic with hip. I got them to move their hip better, but I don't know if they'll be able to do this at home yet.

But they want a home exercise program. Okay. Should I just give them exercises? But then what if they do them wrong? You, you go through this mental gymnastics and I get it, and I just think being honest with clients is better. I'll say, I love that you have the enthusiasm to wanna do this at home, because that's gonna be the key to getting it better.

I feel that we need a few more sessions to improve your competency at this, meaning I want you to feel confident. That you know what you're doing. I want you to feel confident that you can repeat this. So right there we're kind of working on autonomy and competency at the same time. And they might say, well, I want it fixed now.

And I'll say, I know, man, if I could fix this right now, I'd have a lot more money and a lot more time. I truly believe building a new movement pattern is like learning a new language. Would you, would you figure you could learn a new language in one hour? And they'll say, no. And listen, I know that's not the answer you wanna hear, but I need to be truthful with you.

I could sell you snake oil and release your psoas or do something to make your body feel totally different right now, but I don't think that will help you long term. And they'll say, well, can you do that? So as release, that'll make me feel better right now. And I'll say, you know what? I'd rather do this.

Or I might say, you know what? Yeah, let's get you out. A little bit of pain because once they're out of pain, they might feel like they can do things better. And this is why I say to my students, there is no wrong way to get to a destination. Some of you might be taking a longer journey than need to. I gotta be honest, I took those long journeys.

That's how what got me better at doing what I do. But I think we could all be more efficient at our journeys. So the last piece of that motivation is the relatedness. And that's not being like, oh, I have hip injury too. Okay. Nobody cares. What I wanna say about that is being like, Hey, watch me do the exercise.

See how I'm moving. Tell me what I'm moving wrong. And it's so funny, my clients will be like, um, you are not moving that bone right there. That looks weird right there. You should move that better. And I'm like, you're right. But here's the interesting thing. My brain didn't realize that error. So if I kept doing that exercise at home, what would you say?

You're doing it wrong. Yeah. Do you see how hard my job is? Now, explain to me how I can do that better. And they were like, I don't know. Put your hand right there and try to move that more. I said, great. Start. Now let me do you, I'm gonna video you so you can see what I'm doing. What did I just do there? I showed them that creating a new movement pattern is not easy.

I gave them the autonomy and the opportunity to actually correct me. And it's so funny, this actually happened, um, last week when I was training my dad. My mom comes in with no movement background and she's like, do you see what he's doing? There I go, excuse me. Backseat driver out of the studio. And my dad's like, huh?

I'm like, he couldn't hear her anyway. But I said, mom, that's not helpful, but I bet he's doing that at home. I go, okay, let me decide what is important, but can you explain to me what you mean? And I had to hold my tongue. And my mom said, well, sometimes I notice when he's doing his exercises, he's going really fast and I don't think he's paying attention.

I said, fair. So I said to my dad, Hey, do you feel this happening? No. So then I said to my mom, Hey mom, he has no awareness. He's making that error. Dad, if mom comes over to you and touches a part of your body, that's part of the body that you're either moving too much or not enough, just see how that feels.

And I said to my mom, say less, mostly because he doesn't hear well. And number two, when you touch his body, that's creating a change at his brain. His brain is now feeling that body part in a different way. Just let him ride with it. And then based off that, you know the goal of this exercise, remember it's moving that leg without moving this leg.

Okay? So I said, which leg do you wanna touch? The moving or the non-moving leg? She goes, well. What if I touch the non-moving leg? So if he moves it, I can say, Hey Gary, don't move my hand. And I said, and I'm thinking here. Oh my God, I spent months trying to teach my students that. And my mother who has no movement background.

Got it in a minute. Not because of anything else, but she used common sense. Now, do I need to teach my mother about the cerebellum and why that's important? No, but if she asked, I would tell her. But my mom realized if she gave my dad too many cues of what his body's moving, he'd shut down. So we all decided, dad, you're gonna do your exercises focused on this.

Mom, if there's parts of his body moving that shouldn't be moving, would you touch them for him? And then if he doesn't change, bring it to his attention, as you said, yes. And I said to my dad, if mom touches you, that means you need to pay more attention. And just in that moment, let's talk about what I did there.

And I want to be honest, I have been talking to my dad about doing movement for a very long time. The problem was I wasn't practicing what I was preaching. I was lecturing at my dad. I was telling him what he needed to do. I was correcting him. He couldn't hear me. He didn't wanna hear me. What I did here was build autonomy for both my mother and father so they could do it without me.

Number two, improve their competency. So my dad in the movement, and my mom in understanding what the situation was and relatedness because I allowed my mom to teach me and put us all at a level playing field. Okay. I also showed my dad how I do it. And I asked my dad, what am I doing wrong in this exercise?

And I shit you not. He goes, you're doing that thing with your pelvis that I do. What should I do? Why don't you put your hands on either side of your butt and don't smush your hand? Which is a cue I gave him. I said, dad, that's a great cue, but do you see I'm still smushing my hand? Yeah. Why are you doing that?

'cause I can't feel that I'm smushing my hand. Interesting. He said, and then we said, no more. Why did I stop the conversation? 'cause he said, interesting. He did not ask any follow-up questions. So to wrap a bow around question one, before you correct somebody, understand who they are, what their goals are, and ask yourself before you correct them, can you improve their motivation?

First, can you build autonomy, competence, and relatedness? Now, this doesn't all have to happen at once and you don't even have to do it. I just want you guys thinking about it. And this is hard stuff. It's hard stuff. Let's go to question two. What is the goal of your correction? Now, we're all on social media.

I find that social media is a great place to share ideas and observations. I also find social media is a place for people to not listen and be so quick to correct. So when you need to correct a student, a client, a child, I want you to ask yourself what is the goal of the correction? Are you trying to correct them to prove that you know more than them?

Now number one, let's explore that. Did that person ask for your opinion? No. Don't give it. Could you potentially know more than that person? Well, that's pretty judgmental from a minute. Social media post or an interaction you have with a client. Okay. Now might you know more about movement than your client?

Yeah. They're here to see you. And this is where I get kind of annoyed about the correction conversation. It's not whether to correct or not to correct. It's what of our goal of the correction and how can we best implement it to the client, which we'll talk about in question three. So what is the goal of your correction?

If the goal of your correction is to improve alignment, I am going to ask you a question rather than educate you. Are you assuming alignment equals better execution or less pain. That's number one. Also, if your client had the range of motion and the ability to get into that position, don't you think they would already be there?

That's question two and question three, if you have to correct a client, could you maybe think that their brain has no awareness of that error. Okay, so I'm asking you a lot of questions here. We assume a lot about alignment. Let me give an example. When we're doing a sideline exercise, a side plank or lying on a Pilates chair with our hand on the pedal, the first thing people do is correct people's alignment to get them perfectly straight.

Now, what is super interesting, the shoulder and the hip joint often go like completely misunderstood. Now, in order to get into a perfect alignment, most people rotate different sections of their spine, so they might right rotate their upper body to the left and their lower spine to the right to give you an ideal alignment.

They have just potentially created tension in their spine where their abs can't reflexly stabilize, or their brain is now getting a red light a lot of times alignment issues. They're not an easy fix by just telling people to line up. When people line up, they're gonna use whatever ability is in their body or whatever joints their brain thinks is available.

So for me, if I'm in a side plank, it is much easier for me to rotate around like C seven and like L one or L two, rather than mobilizing my shoulder joint, the glenohumeral, which is the most mobile joint in the body. Okay. Now again, we can improve people's alignment by bringing awareness to areas they're moving too much so they can move other areas more.

There's a lot of different tools. Okay? We could put our hands on people, we could wrap them in TheraBands, but often in a group class, if we're queuing based off alignment, we are missing a lot of problems. Now you are already at the edge of your seat wanting to yell, huh? But, but their, their back is arched too much.

They're gonna cause a injury. That's a lot of assumption. Let me tell you, a lot of positions, if somebody is doing a plank with their back really arched and they're holding it, I guarantee they're not actually in pain. Now, a lot of times when it looks like a spinal issue, it could often be a hip issue. So I'll have, I am, I kind of, my hips get tight, so flexion extension can be problematic.

So in a plank, I can over mobilize my spine. To get into a perfectly looking plank, but it doesn't feel great. So then when I get my spine in a position that feels great, I'll have a teacher going, drop your butt. Yeah, if I could extend my hips to get my butt down, lady, we wouldn't be having this problem.

But in order to put my butt down, I've gotta flex my lumbar spine, which is causing me spinal pain. Okay? Now this is what's hard about a teacher. When you're in a group class, sometimes we have to triage if there's something that looks detrimental or the person's gonna hurt themselves, maybe adjusting their position, fine.

But I want you to ask yourself, what is your goal of that correction? So for example, if they're in a plank and their back is really arched and you need them to get their butt down, or you need, what's your goal of that? Do I want that line to flex their spine to get out of that excessive extension in the lumbar spine?

Or might I wanna leave that lordosis, which lordosis is natural in the lumbar spine and get them to do hip extension. Now, if you're at a place where you can touch someone and ask permission, you could put your hand on their lower back and say, Hey, keep your spine against my fingers and try to lower your butt down without pulling your back away from my fingers or hand.

Now, in order to keep their spine in that position, to get your butt down, you're gonna have to extend your hips. Or you'll bend your knees or do something else weird. But it gives the brain a moment to learn and get curious, which is kind of interesting to the client. Okay, so if the client's saying, I'm in pain, okay, we need to correct now in a private session, if someone is working with me privately, I have a system and an assessment where I triage from the most important to the least important.

Sometimes we correct these tiny little joint positions. But these huge joints that are problematic, we're just ignoring. So I have a triage and an assessment list. I go down. You might have a different way of doing it, that's fine, but just ask yourself, what is the goal of my correction? Is it alignment? Is it to get them out of pain?

Is it to move the lumbar spine? Is it to move the hips? It might be like, I don't know what my goal of this correction is, but I'm just seeing something I don't like. So we can first ask a question. Are you in pain here? No, I'm good. Alright. Do you want it to be more challenging? Yeah. All right, cool. Do you need to be less challenging?

Cool. Asking your client a question and understanding their goals should dictate your correction. And if you're still listening to this thinking, no, no, I know better. I'm going to change everyone's alignment. That's fine. What I'd ask you to do is just critically think about, could I be creating a potential issue down the road?

Am I giving my client autonomy? Have I created a shift at the brain? Do they have competency? Can they do this when they're not with me? These are all questions I like you to ask yourself, and you come up with your own answers. And last but not least, I'd like to focus on number three, which to me is the most important and kind of brings in my work.

But I didn't wanna make it all about my work. When we are correcting people, what if instead of fixing the problem, hold it, instead of fixing the problem, can we fill sensory gaps or movement gaps to increase the client's awareness of the mistake? Let me repeat the question again. Instead of correcting, can we improve the person's awareness that the mistake is happening so they can fix it themselves?

Let's go back to my mom and dad. My dad had no idea when he was doing his homework exercise and he was moving his right leg, his left leg was also moving. My mother and I, in conjunction with my dad, decided that if that was happening, she would touch his leg. So my mom used error augmentation. My mom targeted my dad's cerebellum without knowing anything about neuro.

My dad had no idea he was moving his other leg, not because he's an idiot. He's not. He's lovely. He's not as coordinated as I would like, although he's getting so much better. But his brain didn't, oh, wasn't aware of it. It didn't feel it. It didn't sense it. His proprioception was not telling him it was moving, but when my mom touched his leg.

His brain felt where his leg was in space. More based off my mother's touch. I also gave my dad a way to wrap a TheraBand or a neuro plate around his leg to also improve awareness because when the brain senses the error error, it can correct it quick. Neuro, our brain comes up with a motor map, so we're deciding we're gonna do something.

Our brain gets all this information from our eyes, our ears, our proprioception, everything going on. And it creates a motor map. This is how we're gonna do it. And then we do it. And then the cerebellum goes, good job, continue your work. Or Uhuh, what the hell was that? That wasn't our motor map. Let's make adjustments.

But here's the cool thing about the cerebellum. If it don't feel the error or it's not getting good sensory input, it doesn't intervene at all. Interesting, isn't it? So with your clients, if they're not responding to your correction, it's not because they're ignoring you. Their brain thinks they are doing what you said.

How can we bring awareness to the brain from a sensory perspective? And that's not just touch. I use the visual system a lot for this. The vestibular, we use other senses. Cranial nerves can do this. How do we build the awareness so that the brain notices the error? And I have a rule on correcting. I do this with all my students.

I ask the person to do something. I don't give people cues first. We have to see what their body wants to do because if we give them cues first, we're not assessing their body. We're assessing if our, what our cue did for them. Okay. So I ask them to do something based off that I assess, fill sensory gaps.

Then if the exercise improves, we continue. I allow them to make errors and I want them to make errors 'cause I'm testing their cerebellum. So say we're doing something as simple as a hip drop. Something my dad, I give him in bed. He's doing his right hip drops. His left hip is stabilizing his spine, stabilizing.

He's good to go. But then he does one rep and the left hip doesn't stabilize. His brain feels the foot rocking in bed. He corrects it. He keeps going. So anytime my dad makes a mistake in the session, I said to my mom, do not overcorrect. If he makes a mistake in the session, wait. If he makes that mistake twice, then you intervene.

If he continues to make the mistake, that means he had no awareness. If he makes a mistake, the rep after the mistake, guys is the most important rep. Make a mistake. See if the brain corrects it, because if the brain corrects it, we've got more autonomy and competence. We can say to the client, oh my God, your error awareness is so much better.

What were you focusing on, Meg? I was focusing on my hand on the leg. Great. Now you have the autonomy to do it by yourself. When you're at home, you gotta keep your hand on your leg. Don't anticipate an error, which you'll do, but that's okay. I need you to make errors and then you adjust. Okay? And if you're wondering, Meg, but I don't know how to fill sensory gaps to build awareness, well reach out.

I can point you in directions of my work or other educators I respect to help you learn how to do that. Because if you wanna be a teacher, if you wanna be a good parent, if you wanna be a good friend, nobody wants to be lectured to. Nobody wants to be told what to do. Think about your kids, right? You could be giving them the best advice.

They sometimes have to figure it out on their own. But let me tell you, when you can relate to them and say, you know what, I do this to my nephew all the time. He doesn't listen to my podcast, my sister does. Kim, you're doing a great job. Don't forget that. But I'll say to him, he'll sometimes fib to my sister.

I said, are you an idiot? Your, your mother number one is very cool. Okay? She gives you a lot of leeway. And by the way, my nephew's a great kid. I go, she's onto you. She knows when you're fibbing, she's gonna give you enough rope to hang yourself. Let me tell you, you are not gonna pull a fast one over your mother, okay?

She's letting some things slide, but do not get it twisted. It. Your mom knows what's going on and I'm not gonna tell you why. And then I wink at him. Okay. What do you mean? What do you mean? What did mom do when she was a kid? I go, it's in the vault. You think? I'm gonna tell you. Get outta here. I'll tell you some of the shit Aunt Meghann did.

Aunt Meghann was a terrible liar. Aunt Meghann always got in trouble and your mother always covered for me and I was lucky to have her. Okay? Don't forget it. So he's looking at his mom like this and me saying, bro, or as they say, bro, don't get it twisted. Your mom is way cooler than you think. She knows everything we talk about.

You ain't nothing getting past her. We created some relatedness there. Now my nephew knows my, his mom is, is a great mom and cool, but they're still kids. Right. I remember my mom saying. Hello. You don't think I was your age once? I'm not gonna tell you some of the stories, but it was pretty funny. So creating that relatedness without telling my nephew things my sister did when she was a kid, that's none of his business.

Relatedness is really important. Relatedness is hard 'cause we don't wanna get like too deep in there, right? It it's kind of a tricky slippery slope. Um, so I, uh, my mom always said she raised us with benign neglect. Meaning she would give us kind of enough rope, but she was always there. So that's why I love equating it to parenting and as an observer of parenting, it, it, it's so cool to watch.

'cause I'll watch some of my kids, like, I remember one time someone being saying to their kid, if you don't start behaving, we're gonna leave this restaurant. And I'm thinking, hello. He knows we're not leaving. We just ordered Appies. Okay, now in a different situation. See, the difference was my mom would've grabbed us outta that restaurant and taken us outta there.

But that's a different conversation. So think about corrections in all aspects. And this is something I think about and it's hard because I mentor a lot of students, and I'll leave a session on, I'll be like, oh, I missed an opportunity there. I totally just lectured to them and told them what they should have done.

I should have asked more questions. I should have asked them, where are they getting stuck? It's hard because we want to help people, but remembering if we just tell people we're giving them auditory feedback, we're not changing their awareness. We did not improve their competency. We did not help them control it themselves and give them autonomy, right?

So think about all these things. That's why I love bringing motivation. And motivational research and tools into kind of everything we do. Because if somebody is not motivated to make a change, it doesn't matter what we're correcting them, it doesn't matter. They're not gonna get better. And if we're correcting them and that's not part of their goals, we might be missing an opportunity.

So before I let you go, I threw a lot at you today. Let's review question one. Who is your client? Who are you talking to? Get into them a little bit more. Are they someone who needs to be heard? Are they someone who gets defensive Very quick. Okay. I have a lot of students, they ask me a question and then I give them the answer, and then they get so defensive and I'll say, I take a step back and ask another question.

Are they someone who is at the end of their rope and needs help? Sometimes we give them the answer and then work our way back. What is, who is your client? What is their personality and what do they need? I know these, this is hard. I get it. And we're not always gonna do a great job at this. Take it from me.

I'll sometimes walk away from sessions and be like, oh my God, that was amazing. And other times I'm like, man, I really missed an opportunity there. Okay, sorry. Number two, what is the goal of your correction? To prove you no more to help the person to get them out of pain or alignment. All those are good answers.

But then ask yourself, am I making assumptions? How can I better give a cue to reach that goal? Okay. Because if they're getting pain in their lower back, oftentimes that's because they're moving their lower back incorrectly and you micromanaging that doesn't help. How can we add something to the party?

And question number three, which to me is the most important and the key in how I work with corrections. How can we, instead of fixing things. Change the awareness at the brain, improve their ability to sense errors. And when we sense those errors, we have the ability to change it ourself. And don't get, don't get it twisted.

You're not gonna lose clients like this. There's always work to be done and people need guides. I say to my clients all the time, I need you to fix me. I am not your landlord. Treat it like you own it. I am the translator to help fill proprioceptive and other sensory gaps that your brain is not paying attention to you.

That's what fixes things long term. That being said, I do understand sometimes we have to triage and fix things in the short term. So I think guys, if you just keep asking yourself these questions, I think your corrections will be better received. And to leave you on this, if you feel like your correction's not landing, talk less, listen more, and ask more questions.

And that's the whole goal of three questions. I know I give you a lot of my opinions and share some research and theories, but at the end of the day, I, my goal is to build your autonomy and competence. So that you can answer all these questions yourself. I hope I do a good job of relating to you and sharing stories so you know that this is, stuff is not easy, but the juice is so worth the squeeze.

So thank you so much for listening to today's episode. I would love to talk more about corrections. I'm actually gonna do a free lecture series about this. So reach out if you're interested, because I think this is critical to us as movement professionals and humans. So I'll leave you with maybe we correct a little less today and listen a little more.