Keith Owen & I

I've gotten a few comments over the last few days, comparing my teaching style to Keith Owen.  To be honest, the name kind of rang a bell, but I wasn't sure from where.

I looked him up, and I really enjoy his teaching... so that probably means we are fairly similar.

One thing about teaching that I've noticed, is that its a lot like driving a car.

Anyone who drives faster than you is a lunatic, and anyone who drives slower than you is a moron.

Meaning, its a very subjective and biased thing.  Like most arts, we all see what we are doing and think "yup, that's the best way to do it".  This is one of the reasons why I do my absolute best to surround myself with people who are excellent at what they do, but different from me.

We can always learn and grow, always develop our styles and our arts.  For me, one of my arts is teaching.  Its something I've been doing for a very long time, through quite a few mediums.

I wrote my book, The Key to Awesome to help leverage my teaching abilities into areas of the world where I may not frequent as often.  (or hopefully "ever" in some cases, as I'm donating a few to some prisons and such) and made Shinka Martial Arts the best dojo in Richmond so that I would have a huge martial arts facility to teach fun fitness and self defense.

I think that this is one of the key points of evolution that we all undertake.  We find something we enjoy and are good at, and we figure out how to help as many people as possible with it.  Leverage.

I see what Keith Owen is doing, and I really respect it.  Teaching to mass audiences and impacting the world through leveraged information.  Good job ol' chum.

Sensei Ono, Shinka Martial Arts