.png)
Our Team
Ben Schwab
HiT Specialist
​​
Ben Schwab loves nothing more than connecting with and helping people. As a lifelong lover of physical activity, he has always enjoyed strength training, running, and playing ball sports in an effort to stay fit and have fun.
​
Joining the team at Live Oak Strength has been transformative for Ben as he has translated this passion for physical activity into becoming a HIT specialist who is deeply committed to helping people get stronger and live better. Ben truly exemplifies our core value of being growth-minded, his enthusiasm and attention to detail is immediately apparent when training under his guidance. While his approach is practical and no-nonsense, he is also quick to find humor in the process of training with intensity.
Ben’s career shift toward personal training began during the pandemic when he left the gym he had been a member of for over 25 years. In an attempt to stay active and foster community, Ben and his wife started leading "Sunday Strength" sessions in the park near their home. Having spent most of his adult life consumed with the job of owning and operating his own business, building community around strength training solidified his desire to become a personal trainer. Ben enrolled in a UC Berkeley certified personal trainer prep course and was soon connected with Live Oak Strength through a trusted friend.
​
Ben loves spending his free time playing. He feels happiest and most alive when surrounded by his friends and family. He enjoys passionate conversations, reading good books, meeting new people, playing board games, and being a father and husband. He spends most of his spare time engaged in imagination games and going on outdoor adventures with his 8-year-old son. He is always up for a sport that involves running, throwing, catching, jumping, or climbing. No matter who you are or what your goals are, Ben looks forward to meeting you and helping you get stronger.
Taylor Jones
HiT Specialist
​​
Taylor Jones joins the team at Live Oak with five years of experience as a personal trainer specializing in HIT methods. He holds certifications as a NASM Certified Personal Trainer (CPT) and a HIT-UNI High Intensity Specialist, and is furthering his expertise through a degree in kinesiology and a certification in nutrition.
A Bay Area native, Taylor is passionate about making a lasting impact in the communities that shaped him. Growing up, he excelled in golf and baseball, proudly representing Skyline High School as a star athlete. Taylor was fortunate to learn from some of the most respected trainers in HIT, who taught him the fundamental pillars of strength training. Inspired by his own remarkable results, he embraced this approach in his career and experienced dramatic improvements in his strength and mobility.
​
Taylor's personal journey shapes his coaching philosophy—he truly practices what he preaches. His authentic, relatable approach comes from direct experience, helping him connect with and motivate clients. Having worked at several premier HIT facilities in the fitness industry, Taylor brings a well-rounded perspective on high-intensity training and world-class customer service. He takes great pride in tailoring each session to the unique needs of every client.
​
Taylor lives in Oakland and is dedicated to maintaining his own health and wellness. He enjoys pool, golf, therapy, and meditation as part of his commitment to personal growth and mental well-being.
Owen Monroy
Head Of Business Development​
​​
Owen Monroy joined the team at Live Oak Strength in March of 2024. Owen is a lifetime coach, innovator, and executive with an entrepreneurial career in health, human performance, and wellness industries. Previous to Live Oak Strength, Owen spent 2 years as the Chief Operating Officer at Jyzen, an integrative medical and longevity center in Mill Valley, CA.
​
Attentive and inspired, Owen is driven by a desire to help others achieve their best. Whether refining business systems or guiding clients through a challenging set, he channels his passion for purpose and excellence into every interaction. Drawing on years of experience as a professional volleyball coach and executive leadership, he has a fine tuned sense of a person’s limits both physical and psychological. Owen is passionate about teaching people to engage resistance training not only as a vital form of physical exercise but as a powerful practice to hone skills of focus and mindset.
​
Owen earned a bachelors degree in Music Business from Messiah University where he helped earn the Men’s Volleyball program’s first national championship as an outside hitter. After graduating he went on to record The Sun Swings Low EP as a singer-songwriter and began a 9-year career coaching women’s volleyball. Owen was mentored by some of the sports greatest coaches and held positions at Penn State, University of Illinois, Saint Mary’s College of California, Cal Berkeley, and Messiah University - achieving a Big10 conference championship, sweet sixteen and a semi-final appearances in the NCAA national tournament, and a NCVF national title.
​
In his free time Owen enjoys listening to podcasts, playing pickleball, cooking, cycling, singing, percussion instruments, fly-fishing, and exploring personal development in the realm of psychology, meditation, and consciousness. Owen lives in San Rafael, with his girlfriend and two Norwegian forest cats.
OWEN DOCKHAM
Founder
​
Owen started Live Oak Strength in 2015 with one goal: make people stronger in the safest, most time efficient and evidence informed way. Spending years of frustration and downright disgust with the dishonest nature of the fitness industry, he knew he had found the solution so many people sought when he stumbled upon Body by Science and adopted the high-intensity training principles to his own workouts and his existing personal training clients.
Fast forward to today, Owen has personally supervised over 20,000 high intensity strength training workouts, and mentored 10 successful trainers at Live Oak and other facilities across the country. He is absolutely committed to helping ensure all Live Oak Strength clients receive the absolute best workout experience and results possible, and is grateful for the opportunity to help improve the lives of those in his beloved east bay community.
Owen graduated in 2005 from Cornell College as a double major in psychology and music. He has played piano since the age of 5 and spent nearly a decade after graduation as a piano teacher. During that time he became heavily involved in the fitness industry, earning several certifications, and working as a fitness instructor and director/manager at a local bay area wellness center. The discipline, communication skills, attention to detail, timing, patience and decades of dedication it took to become a pianist and successful piano teacher have, without a shadow of a doubt, directly influenced Owen’s approach to business ownership, leadership, and personal training.
Owen lives in Emeryville with his beautiful wife, daughter, son and their Russian blue cat Darwin. Owen's hobbies include playing classical and jazz piano, spending as much time outdoors, working on his family's land and off-grid cabin near the Yuba River, learning new methods of cooking and mixology, reading philosophy, meditation and leadership training. He encourages anyone looking to save time, get strong, and lead a happier, more confident, better quality of life, to stop wasting time on ineffective and dangerous fad workouts, and adopt a more evidence based, efficient and safe high-intensity strength training lifestyle.
“Training with a high degree of effort just once or twice a week at Live Oak Strength will completely change the way you feel and will open up so many possibilities for you. Ditch the fads, the quick fix mentality, the quackery and B.S. detox and cleanses, and start adopting reasonable, sustainable daily habits with exercise, eating and physical activity. Long term consistency will get you to your potential faster and safer than any expensive fad diet and/or overly complicated pseudoscience Instagram workout program. I can’t wait for you to experience the benefits of these workouts and lead a happier, stronger, and more confident life.”