Professional athletes not only train their bodies but condition their minds to have the same resilience and strength. The mission of [AARMY](https://www.aarmy.com/home) is to utilize the methods and practices that professional athletes use and apply them in their classes for people at all levels. AARMY builds athletes by refining everything from their physical, spiritual to mental state.
Through inspiration, motivation and physical exercise, AARMY aims to use their new fitness concept: community-based team training.
The founders of AARMY, Akin Akman, Angela Davis and Trey Laird, opened up their second pop-up facility in West Hollywood, introducing the west coast to in-class coaching methods that target both the mind and body.
Alvarez & Vincent Architects, the designers behind Nike’s exclusive Room 72 in LA, helped create the sleek pop-up shop, with a room for boot camp and another 55-bike cycling room. In addition, it has supplied locker rooms and an outdoor terrace where AARMY’s athletes can rest and rejuvenate. If anyone wants to treat themselves, they have a designated section for their AARMY gear.
After throwing BJ Panda Bear into a top notch session with Akin Akman, he spoke with Akman and Trey Laird about design and fitness.
**Tell me about AARMY’s programing you are bringing to LA.**
Akin Akman: We have new coaches that are coming up that I’m training in New York who are from in LA. We are tying to make everyone an athlete.
Trey Laird: There’s an athlete in you and we are trying to bring it out of you and tuning you like a beast.
Akin Akman: We think everything is changing and shifting a little bit and everyone is training like a pro athlete now, in New York too.
**Why do you think that is?**
Akin Akman: It’s this lifestyle. I grew up at a training academy so we trained like eight hours a day. It kind of fed my mindset throughout my life and that’s how we trained. The people in New York are very successful people in their fields. They’ll come in in the mornings and the afternoon and train like athletes. They can run marathons without even training for it by running in the traditional way. I have two people who are now in the Olympic trial marathons. It’s insane. They were never runners.
The way I think about it is like if you define an athlete as a professional mover and we have bodies that were created to move and we have moved for our entire life, we are all athletes. The only difference is that now you are very specific about the way you move, then you excel in that specific method. Right? So, it is just stressing that we are all athletes and rebranding certain words that used to have power over you in a negative way. It’s the mindset part, we just teach it through movement.
**That’s what is so painful about going to a lot of these workout classes is that there such a poor design and the horribly unchic cult vibes.**
Akin Akman: It’s the stigma. We associate working out to losing weight. People are like I want to lose weight. But I am like I don’t care what you want to lose, I’m going to teach you skills and if you lose the weight that is just a side effect of you actually excelling in this.
**What’s the story behind the name AARMY?**
Akin Akman: AARMY is the meaning that we are a team, the comradery. But also Army was built by the athletes that come to my classes back in the day, like at Crunch basically. I would teach a 6am and someday I would have a modeling job so I wouldn’t show up so another instructor would step in and no one would know. So they were like we need to start a website and you got to do this and call us **Akman’s Army**.
Trey Laird: It started as a community. We started calling it A’s Army for short and when we joined forces with Angela it was the perfect thing with that ‘A.’ So it was like we created our own army. Basically, the athletes named it because they felt like they were on to something bigger. It has this team united force thing at its heart and that’s what it is about. And when you feel like you have an army behind you it’s pretty fucking powerful.
Akin Akman: The way we put it is that it is in my best interest to follow through on your dream because sometimes you don’t realize that that is the ingredient I needed for my dream to exist. For here, if you think about it, if the bike designer didn’t follow through on that bike and the people who made the sneakers didn’t follow through on that, the musician didn’t write that song, it wouldn’t have the ingredients I need to build my dreams. It is more like we are a team and I have the best interest of you?
**Love the design of the space, It’s so magnificent. I really love it especially since I can’t believe that this is a pop up. It feels like it should be here not as a pop up, it’s so well cohesive with all the linear designs. It is not oppressive which I find really great.**
Akin Akman: The lines give it a more track feel.
**It’s not oppressive that’s the thing. I feel like a lot of these places are either too colorful like where I want to eat candy and pass out or they look like you’re going to be tied up un-consensually.**
Akin Akman: It’s a little more neutral on all levels. It’s not more for girls and it’s not more for guys. It’s for everyone.
Trey Laird: This was actually parking spots, but we decided to move it down there because we wanted a place for people to hang out after class. It was an old, different studio and it didn’t work for our brand, so we wanted to transform.
Akin Akman: In New York we have a hall way. LA is outdoors so we wanted that.
Trey Laird: It’s been nice all week. We’ve been out here having meetings.
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AARMY Los Angeles pop-up | 8599 Santa Monica Boulevard.
[Sessions are presently available for booking at HERE.](http://www.aarmy.com/booking)
Photographed by Bree Castillo.
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