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At 16 years old, Brian Cowell began working with a young martial arts student named Grayson. What started as a coaching challenge became a defining moment in Brian’s journey as a teacher.
In this episode, Brian shares how Grayson progressed from struggling during private lessons to participating in group classes—and eventually stepping onto the floor at a martial arts tournament. The experience taught Brian to question assumptions, focus on individual progress, and ask one powerful question: “Why not?”
This story explores inclusive coaching, the importance of being a guide rather than the hero, and how giving students the opportunity to try can reveal what they’re truly capable of accomplishing.
Listen to discover how one student helped define Brian’s path as a martial arts coach and teacher.
Do you remember a time when you first fell in love with something, maybe it was the crack of a bat hitting a ball into the outfield for the first time, or the warmth of the lights hitting you at the beginning of a production on stage, or the smell of boxing gloves of your wrapping around your hand, and you just knew this is something I'm going to do the rest of my life. I was 16 when I had that moment with coaching. I was really fortunate that I was young when I learned that this would be something that I would end up doing the rest of my life, and this is the story of how I became a teacher. I was 16 years old when I became a nationally certified martial arts instructor, and I can remember the early years quite vividly, and how it shaped me as a coach, and who I am today, and the passion that I have for teaching today. At the time I was teaching Taekwondo mainly, and I had my head instructor and boss technically, he gave me a new assignment. I had already been pretty inundated into the studio teaching classes on a regular basis, one of the main leads on the floor, coaching kids classes and our team classes, and I also ran a class on the weekend that was our special needs class with kids with different disabilities, and I had been regularly coaching these students for quite some time, all of these classes, and one day the instructor came up to me and he goes, I want you to work with this little boy, he has autism, which at the time I had almost no understanding of what autism really was, or how to work with kids with autism, and he said he's got autism, so he has a hard time focusing and things like that, and he's got some sensory stuff going on, and I'd like you to do the private lessons with him and just see how you can help him, and I was like, okay, so I did, I remember the first time I was going to go meet with them, I'm driving to the studio, and I go, man, I don't really know what type of things to do with a kid that has this, I don't know what to expect, I don't know what he's going to be like, and so we get on the floor, and probably the first thing that I noticed about this little guy, he was really sweet, really cute little kid, probably about five years, maybe six years old, about six years old or so, he had a really hard time, everything was really distracting, so if there was a fan on, or if he could see himself in the mirror, then that would just be, he'd be staring in that direction for a long time, and he wouldn't really engage with what I was doing, and so I just kind of quickly kind of intuitively picked up on that, and I started blocking off the mirror and doing different things, and I started building a rapport with this kid, and he started doing pretty well in these little lessons, and he went from kind of not being able to do anything, he kind of just show up and kind of sit there for 20, 25 minutes of the lesson, and then finally in the last five minutes to do something, to fully doing a full lesson with me after 30 minutes, or a full 30 minute lesson, and so I had suggested to his parents, I said, hey, you know, I teach this class on Saturday that has some kids with different needs, a special needs group, why don't we have Grayson, what's the boy's name, why don't we have Grayson come check out the class on Saturday, and I sat and talked to Grayson, I said, Grayson, would you like to go to class with other kids, you know, just instead of being by yourself, you know, it can be to class with kids, and he goes, okay, you know, are you going to teach? And I said, yeah, I'll be the one teaching, I said, okay, so then he goes to the class, and I remember I called up the instructor and I said, hey, I'm going to move a private lesson to a group class, and the instructor at the time was like, oh, you know, I don't know, I don't know if that's a good, I don't know if that's a good idea, and I remember, you know, at 16 years old, I didn't have any perception or limitations on things, and this is kind of what's cool about the idea is, having no idea gives you kind of an idea, right? And so I was like, well, why not? Why can't he just do the class? So the instructor said, okay, go ahead, give it a try, see how that goes. And so Grayson did his first class with special needs kids, and I don't remember how the first class went, I just remember that he ended up starting during the class regularly, so he's a consistent student in this class now, and he starts to do really, really well. So then I suggest to his parents, I say, hey, you know, we have classes during the week with other kids that he would probably, you know, he goes to school with these kids, it's going to have kids that are, you know, neurotypical. That wasn't a word that we had back then, but you know, something that we have now, and they said, sure, let's go ahead and give it a try, you know, and so we took him out of the special needs class, and we put him in one of the classes that we had during the week. And again, I don't remember how the first class went, but I remember he ended up assimilating to class. And just a regular student in class and kind of his one qualification was he wanted to make sure I was the teacher, you know, and I don't remember if other instructors ended up working with him, but I was working on them for a while, and then I remember we had a tournament coming up, and our instructor told us, hey, you know, now it's a tournament, let everyone know about the tournament that's coming up and that sort of thing. So I remember I announced a tournament, and one day Grayson comes up to me after class, and he goes, I want to do the tournament. I said, okay, let's do the tournament. I didn't expect that because, you know, he went again, knowing where he came from to where he's at now, where he came from, you know, he couldn't even be in a room by himself with a lot of action. We, he got used to and assimilated to a class with a lot more sensory input, you know, music and noise and other kids and that sort of thing, but a tournament's a whole nother level. I mean, it's like very big, very, very big. It's 10x, 20x or 100x of what a class experience is like. So I was like, yeah, let's do it. Let's do the tournament, you know, and so flash forward. I remember I was at this tournament, and I was one of the judges running one of the rings at a tournament. It's actually at the high school that I went to. It's this big gymnasium, right? It's really loud in gymnasium. We had mats laid out on the floor and we had all these different rings set up, and I was judging the tournament and, you know, all these kids and out of the corner of my eye, I see something running across the mats and I look over and there's Grayson sprinting as fast as he can, tears down his face, runs up and boom, latches on to my leg as hard as he can, just holding onto it. And I had to like kind of stop the group and go, oh, hey guys, you know, let's take a break for a second. And I bend down and I look at him and I go, what's wrong? You know, and he goes, I don't know, I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. And I remember just kind of looking at him and go, you're here to do the tournament. Let's just go do the tournament. Let's go, let's go, let's go compete. Let's do our tournament. And he goes, okay, as long as you can be the judge in my tournament. So I said, okay, I'll be the, I'll be the ref, you know, and so we walk over to the section that he was going to compete in and walk over there and I really don't remember what happened next. All I remember is he did compete in the tournament and his parents were so thrilled that he went from, you know, kind of by himself, having a hard time and a one-on-one setting to do in group classes with other kids and then to compete in that tournament. I don't think Grayson won anything that day or he was, but he certainly won in a different way. And it's an experience that I, I vividly remember and will never forget. And I remember when he latched onto my leg and I bent down and I was talking to him face to face just eyes to eyes, we met eyes to eyes. I knew in that moment the impact that coaching had on somebody being a teacher. And it was at that moment I really realized this is one of the reasons I'm here on this earth. I am here to do this. This, and I feel really grateful and fortunate and blessed that I was 16 and I figured that out. It wasn't until years later that I realized I would do this as a career, which was a different story for another day, but I knew that teaching martial arts was going to be a part of my life for the rest of my life for that moment. And one of the things that I was reflecting on when I was remembering the story recently was just how even the young version of myself almost is teaching me something. You know, when I went into it, I didn't have an idea or a perspective or a way I thought things should happen or do. And that helped me actually be a good guide and a good teacher to somebody because I didn't come in with any preconceived notions or way of doing things. I didn't really know much about autism. I'm not saying we shouldn't when you go to teach, but at the time I didn't and I didn't really know I wasn't trained on nobody taught me what to do or how to do that. I kind of just used some instinct and observation. And I just, I think about that and I go, I was asking questions like why and why not. And it's like other people had so when I called the instructor and I said, hey, let's have Grayson try a group class, you know, and the instructor's like, I don't know if that's a good idea and I'm thinking, why not? Why not? And it gets me thinking about modern things. Where in our life are we not pushing the boundary in whatever it is that we're doing, whether it be teaching or training martial arts or a sport that we do or whatever, whatever activity or thing that we do, where we stop asking why and we stop asking why not. And we settle for the status quo. We just settle for what has been done in the past or what somebody else did or they did it this way. Instead of just saying, oh, why not do something different? And in reflecting on that, I think about trying to find ways to continue. I do that now. I've become much more seasoned as a coach and now I do it more intentionally. Back then it was an accident. I kind of came upon this accidentally. But now I'm more intentionally going, you know what, where can I, how can I approach the situation where I kind of come in with my knowledge and experience, but the blank slate and say, ask questions like, why or why not to help get to the next level to help get the next result. I had a really good mentor one time mentioned to be a good coach, you want to be the guide, not the hero. And the example, I remember kind of asking more questions. I was like, tell me more about that is like, you can't step in and you can't fix. If you want someone else to learn something really well, you can't be the one to fix it or do it for them. They have to learn to do it for themselves, but you can guide them in that process. And then he joked, he's like, be Yoda, not Luke Skywalker. And I was like, oh, okay, yeah, I get it. You know, I can't save, I can't save the day for somebody, but I can help guide them in that direction. And kind of unintentionally, that's what I had done at that time, just by asking questions like, why or why not? Why can't he do this class or why can't he, why can't he compete in the tournament? Why not? Why not? Let's just give it a try. That approach helps be a guide, you know, in a lot of ways and, and teaches people to kind of opens up opportunity for people to be the hero of their own story, so to speak. It's like, so good coaches, if you're a coach out there, parents, you know, where are we limiting our, our belief and maybe our kids or our students or whatever by not asking, by challenge, not challenging the status quo and not asking why or why not. And anyway, hope this is a good lesson, but this experience that I had as a young kid teaching that kind of like I said, it kind of more or less happened without any intentionality or any expertise in coaching at the time taught me a lot about myself and, and things that I'm passionate about and just want to share that with you all today. Thanks for listening. Everyone, thank you for listening to today's episode. If you liked what you hear, do you want to hear more? We try to do a podcast probably about once or twice a month, we're going to start putting out our content regularly again. You can like or subscribe and follow us. And we appreciate you taking the part on this journey with us.
