Legacy · Est. 2014
Train Unique California didn't start in California. It started twelve years ago and two thousand miles away, in Lafayette, Louisiana — as a fitness class called DREAMS, with six athletes and one coach. This page is that story, and why it's the foundation everything here is built on.
Louisiana's numbers — 186 athletes training today, ages five to seventy-five, and an average stay of four and a half years. Once a family finds the floor, they tend to keep it.
The program
It's not a gym with an adaptive corner. It's a standard: athletes with intellectual, developmental, and physical disabilities training in the middle of a real floor — same floor, same bar — with coaches who expect effort and keep raising it.
The word is athlete — never client, never patient, never special needs. That one word changed the culture of the original floor, and it's the only word used anywhere Train Unique operates.
And showing up gets counted. Athletes earn a shirt at 100 sessions, another at 200, 300, 400 — the Hero's Journey. A simple idea doing a hard job: consistency, celebrated until it becomes identity.
The history
Six athletes and one coach in Lafayette, Louisiana. Bruce “Damon” Vincent II — a professional MMA fighter who grew up managing a rare medical condition of his own — starts coaching athletes nobody else was building gyms for.
The class outgrows its name twice. The philosophy never changes: a diagnosis can explain the challenge — it doesn't define the ceiling.
Friedreich's Ataxia News publishes “I've Found a Place I Belong” — written by one of the gym's own athletes.
Recognized at the Lafayette Disability Awareness Awards — the Mayor-President's recognition of what the floor had become. Damon later takes a seat on the Governor's Advisory Council on Disability Affairs.
Train Unique lifters travel to the WPC World Championships in Lisle, Illinois — every lifter gold, every lifter a personal record, world records broken.
The second floor opens in Baton Rouge, the press run reaches six straight years — and Train Unique California begins: the first floor outside Louisiana, led from inside the family.
From families on the Louisiana floor
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 original floors
The home floors are alive and training in Lafayette and Baton Rouge — 186 athletes, a full-time coaching staff, and the community twelve years built.
If you're ever within driving distance, go stand on the original floor. Until then, it's all at wetrainunique.com.
Same floor.
Same bar.
Since 2014.