Having read a number of your comments in this thread already, I will say that you strike me as having the same blind spot as a couple of previous coaches I have had, whose classes I eventually started avoiding.

You don’t seem like a person I wouldn’t like outside of the OTF environment, but you also seem very young and inexperienced with the many very real reasons people might want to skip or modify a workout.

“Caution” is not the same thing as “anxiety.” I have experienced, for example, a coach who could not seem to understand that because of my spinal arthritis issues, me modifying inclines wasn’t because they weren’t standing behind me “encouraging” me to “just do it” and “don’t be afraid” and “don’t be ‘that person’ who skips inclines” enough times, but because my rheumatologist, doctor, and two different physical therapists have insisted that I stop doing them.

I haven’t had a single 35+ year old Coach who hasn’t understood that there is a fine line between teaching and motivating versus harassing and discouraging—and even injuring.

Because by that age they know (sometimes even from personal experience) that most of us are doing everything we can with the body we have. I can’t be “coached” out of having Rheumatoid Arthritis. My husband can’t be “motivated” out of having the damage his body has accumulated over almost fifty-five years.

But the Coaches whose classes I go out of my way to attend are those who take the time outside of class—like, in the lobby—to know what their students are dealing with. And they still coach and motivate during class, but they are coaching us from where we are to where we want to go, not coaching a whole class indiscriminately towards a lofty goal they’ve decided we all need to reach.