Prior to the Colgan crash, I distinctly remember stall training in the CRJ landing configuration involved max power and slight back pressure to ride it in the shaker basically. Only after this crash did the industry say screw it, nose down and power up.... as it should have been in the first place. The whole "minimize altitude loss" is crap and had the training always been to push the nose down unequivocally, the aircraft would likely have recovered and continued flying. If you get to the point of near stall or stall, then you're gonna have to suck it up and know you are going to lose altitude as you recover.
Well, I agree the training should have been that way all along, and if the captain was any kind of real aviator, he would have known that as well. He F-ed up badly. This is a real lesson on why it is so critical that most pilots do at least a minimum amount of primary flight instruction before flying complex airplanes. Maybe military flight training can sufficiently close the gap between simply following basic stall recovery techniques and having a true and deep understanding of what it really takes to break a stall.
He had deficient knowledge and skills, in addition to deficient training.