Train Unique California

Coming soon to
Southern California.

Train Unique has coached adaptive athletes in Louisiana since 2014 — more than a decade, two floors, and a coaching standard built one athlete at a time. Southern California is the next floor.

Athletes and coaches together on the gym floor
Lafayette, Louisiana

Same Floor.Same Bar.

Strength and conditioning for athletes with intellectual, developmental, and physical disabilities.

No separate room.
No special hours.

Why we exist

Nobody was building gyms
for these athletes.

Seventeen seconds, one sentence, a floor full of people training. Damon didn’t set out to make a statement about the fitness industry. He kept meeting athletes with nowhere to train and families who had quietly stopped asking — and the gyms weren’t coming. So he built the floor himself, and then kept building it wherever the athletes already were.

An athlete training in a standing frame at the squat rack, coach at her side

Who trains here

Not here to be included.

Here to train. Down syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries — and everything in between.

Some athletes are lifting heavy. Some are working on standing up out of a chair. Some need a coach's hands the whole session, some need ten minutes before they're ready to start. The session gets built around the athlete, not the other way around.

You won't find weight machines on this floor. Free weights make an athlete control the movement, and control is what carries over into getting up, getting out, and getting through a day.

No separate room.
No special hours.
No one turned away.

01

Come look

Walk in, meet a coach, see the floor. No workout, no commitment, no pressure. Bring your athlete or come on your own first.

02

Tell us about them

How they move, what they love, what sets them off, what's worked and what hasn't. We listen before we program anything.

03

Start one-to-one

Everyone begins with a coach to themselves. Group comes later, if and when your athlete wants it.

The coaches

They know the lift.
They know the person.

Fitness is the easy half. Empathy, communication, pacing, knowing when to push and when to sit down on the turf and wait — you cannot hire that off a certificate. It's the part we train hardest for, and it's why families stay.

In his own words

People walk in afraid.

Damon on what actually changes in the first thirty seconds — a coach’s face, tone and demeanor, and what it does to somebody who arrived intimidated. Nobody books a second session because the programming was clever. They come back because somebody looked happy to see them the first time.

A parent

Ridge’s mom.

Laina Lambert on her son Ridge — born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, three surgical repairs, a stroke, and then aging out of the physical therapy his school provided. She closes on the line that says it best: the environment is everything your child needs. Two minutes covering every stage a family goes through — the diagnosis, the therapies, the aging out, the searching — and where it finally landed. If you watch one thing on this page, watch this.

A parent

Jonah’s mom.

Shannon Barres on what her son gets that isn’t strength — leadership, mentoring, being integrated into the community. And the part most places forget: other people need to learn how to socialize with them too. Jonah has been coming for years, and what keeps them coming back isn’t a workout. It’s goals, leadership, and a room that expects things from him.

On the news

Somebody else said it first.

Damon in the studio for the Baton Rouge launch — what an adaptive floor actually is, and where the idea started back in 2014. Eighty seconds, and none of it is us describing ourselves.

What families say.

My son, Daniel, has a C6 incomplete spinal cord injury and works with Garrett. Garrett has been incredibly encouraging, kind, compassionate, and knowledgeable. Absolutely worth the time and commitment.

Stephanie Humble

Not only is Owen getting stronger, he genuinely looks forward to every class. The coaches create such a positive and motivating environment, and his confidence has grown right alongside his strength.

Rainey

The minute you walk through the door you're greeted with the sweetest welcome. There is always a positive vibe and smiling faces. This place is doing amazing things for so many people.

Jade Foreman

The Hero’s Journey

One hundred sessions.
Then two hundred.

Athletes earn a shirt at 100 sessions, another at 200, 300, 400. It is the blue shirt you keep seeing in the photographs on this page, and it is earned one week at a time. A simple idea doing a hard job: showing up, counted and celebrated, until showing up becomes who you are.

Train Unique California LLC · Long Beach, California Instagram @wetrainunique Train Unique · Lafayette & Baton Rouge, Louisiana