One or two instructors during my PPL kept knocking the rudder use out of me, plus insisting that the nose wheel must be on the ground before the "go" part is started,
The first part is just bad teaching unless you were actually
over using them. As far as insisting the nose is down goes I have no problem with that in principle, he maybe wants to see how you control the nosewheel onto the ground. I do a thing similar in the early part of tailwheel conversions - I want to see them control the direction down to a low speed, but I will brief not to "go" until
I call it, and if I am not happy with the distance left, we stop and taxi back to the hold.