Respectfully, you're kind of jumping around and attacking a variety of positions I haven't taken. Let's take this from the top.
"What I mean is that we should try to find someone who is skilled and accomplished and learn from them. "
I agree it’s important to find a skilled TEACHER to learn from. If that's what you mean by "skilled and accomplished,” we agree. If you mean someone who is successful as an athlete, I can't agree. I have met many skilled athletes (frequently in the martial arts context) who are absolutely awful coaches, and great coaches who are mediocre athletes. Teaching is its own skill.
StrongFirst provides a perfect example. Pavel is not known for his athletic accomplishments. He’s known as a teacher and writer, and deservedly so. The people who chose to follow him do so not because of Pavel’s array of athletic trophies, but because his programs and instructions work for them.
"What they say will be often at great odds with what we expect them to say, which is why we haven't been able to teach ourselves. It is indeed important to kind of just "shut up" and try to follow the programme."
Whether or not what good teachers will say will be at odds with what we expect is a matter of opinion. That has not always been my experience, but maybe my expectations were better calibrated to my teachers. Or maybe I got lucky. Certainly, I've gotten instructions from teachers I didn't understand.
"Following the program(me)" is where we're getting hung up, or at least, where I think you start drifting.
"For example, I really wanted to do the swings in S&S 2 handed. I felt more in control of the bell and that I could put more power into it, but the programme isn't written like this and after advice on these forums I just "shut up" and followed it properly and made a lot of strength gains. Why didn't make any sense to me but I shut up, did it right, and here I am swinging the 40kg single handedly whereas I used to swing the 32kg only 2 handedly. Honestly, I still do not really know why the 1 handed swings are better, but I sort of have an idea I guess. I just take it on faith. I can do what I want but I just shut up and follow and I'm able to do things I didn't think were ever possible before."
"After advice on these forums" is the critical piece of this. You didn't just "shut up." You asked a ton of questions, and then, once satisfied with the answer, went and followed the program. Your level of satisfaction may be different from others, but if you were really going to "shut up" you never would have posted here in the first place. You would have bought the book and done what it said without asking questions at all.
"I never said students should not ask questions. However, there is a time for this - i.e. not too much of it while we're trying to get a workout"
You absolutely said "The student had best shut up and accept the teaching." That implies the student shouldn't ask questions. You may not have meant it that way, but that’s what you said, and it’s I was addressing.
Of course, there is a time and place for asking questions. But again, that's not something permissible with a "shut up" ethos. I've admonished people for talking in the middle of sparring rounds. I've also let it go, when it was apparent that the person asking questions wasn’t getting any value out of the sparring but a beating.
"As far as pushing athletes to hurt themselves, that's a bit of a jump from me saying one ought to follow a programme as devised. I'm thinking totally opposite from you. I'll give you an example. A few weeks ago I was coming back from a hiatus due to an illness. I got on the mats and felt a little bit weak and started the training session. After 25 minutes, my coach "kicked me off the mat" and sent me home (I ended up staying to watch the rest of the class and we chatted a bit). What he saw was that I was not keeping my balance well and that I was looking pale. I felt almost fine. It was my duty to shut up and do what I was told, and this was in order to protect me from injury. A professional coach knows these things."
"Actually the "shut up and obey" part is CRITICAL for avoiding injury. Another example: I was doing a move that appeared dangerous to my coach on someone last week and he yelled at me to stop it. I obeyed immediately and everyone was safe and fine. A perky full of questions type person who thinks they have the right to boss their coach around might not have stopped on the dime and might have hurt their opponent. I'll add that I don't believe I was doing anything dangerous to this day to the other athlete, but this is beside the point. The important part is that the coach saw something dangerous and I stopped immediately, and look, everyone drove home safely!"
You’re conflating two different things.
When I wrote about safety concerns with a program, I was speaking of a written program (like S&S). I’m talking about the kind of questions that not infrequently appear on these boards, like “is it okay for me to do S&S if I have a bad back” or “my left shoulder feels weird, should I not do PttP,” and so on. They are questions where, unless the person is posting in the middle of a workout, no one is likely to be hurt or injured.
The safety concerns you moved to discussing are immediate action concerns, where there is a relatively immediate danger that someone is about to be hurt or injured. That’s a different context. In your first example, you were not in condition to train, and were a danger to yourself and your teammates. In your second example, you were an immediate threat to your teammate. That’s clearly not time for asking questions.
I had a rule I learned from one of my coaches, and imparted to my students: EVERYONE is a safety observer. Anyone in my classes was permitted at any time to stop the action if someone was in danger of injury, and everyone was expected to stop if they were told to. That is a rule of safety, not a question of programming.
A coach is responsible for the safety of all of his students. I kicked people out of training because they were sick, and likely to infect others. My responsibility to take care of the bulk of the people in the gym came before that one student's interests.
However, I explained why I did it, and I imagine your coach did too. He didn't just say 'get out' without any explanation. And, you didn't 'shut up and obey.' He told you to go home. You stayed and watched. A compromise, and not a big deal...but not blind obedience.
If we're talking non-professional coaches who just do this stuff part time, I'm quite in agreement that we can't put as much faith in them.
There are many coaches out there who, by the very nature of what they coach, make their living by other means. I had amazing martial arts instructors who were tailors, pharmacists, computer programmers, and other professions because being a martial artist doesn't pay the bills. And there are plenty of charlatans and frauds who make all their money by being professional coaches. Knowledge is knowledge. Good coaching is good coaching.
Honestly, here's my bottom line. I don't think we should "put faith" in any instructor. This is training, not religion.
"But if you mean that students should be telling the teachers how to teach, I'm totally in disagreement with this. "
I'm not sure how you leapt from 'students should not unthinkingly obey' to 'students should tell teachers how teach', but no, that is not what I mean.
What I mean is that the student-teacher relationship is just that, a relationship. It requires constant, forthright communication. It requires the ability to interact honestly, for the student to ask questions and for the teacher to provide answers. Yes, it requires the student to follow the teachers guidance, but it should never be in a blind, subservient manner.
"I'm not a coach by the way."
I spent over two decades coaching in one form or another. I’ve taught in academic contexts. I have a degree in teaching, and spent no small amount of time studying coaching strategies and educational concepts before I started law school two years ago. I'm painfully aware of the many misconceptions people bring with them to learning of all kinds (particularly martial arts). I trained everywhere from small college clubs to elite gyms where people were preparing for UFC title fights. I've helped coach professional fighters, and I've coached people who never did a day of training in their lives.
I am telling you from experience that the "shut up and obey" attitude that you are describing is sort of ethos that is weaponized by the worst abusers and predators that infest the martial arts and fitness industry. It is not only unhelpful, it is dangerous. If I am coming across as harsh or overly zealous about this, I apologize, but I have seen this kind of predatory behavior first-hand. It does lasting harm to people who sought teaching with the same earnestness that you seem to.
As you say, there is a time and place for questions, and some situations lend themselves to more discussion than not. But when we're talking about the question of following a program (by which I am taking you to mean a written training template a la Simple and Sinister), not only is there plenty of time for asking questions, but those questions SHOULD be asked. Questions should always be asked.
No one should surrender their responsibility for their own well-being.
Does that mean telling a teacher how to teach? No. Does that mean you should modify every program to your own random whims? Probably not. I am a big believer in following the program as written. But not blindly.
NEVER blindly.