The UFC Gym on Pohuka‘ina Street in Kaka‘ako is a little intimidating on first glance. First off, the building is huge. Occupying the space that formerly housed the nightclub Pipeline Café, the gym is emblazoned with bright neon letters spelling out “UFC” and the name of mixed martial arts fighter BJ Penn. Inside, rows of treadmills, stationary bikes and punching bags line the walls and an MMA octagon ring looms in the back.
But the room isn’t filled with musclemen and weightlifters. There are moms and dads, college kids and older folks, too. UFC Gym General Manager Kimo Luna says it’s not a fighter’s gym, it’s a place for everyone. “Our mission is to empower the fighting spirit,” Luna says. “All different types of people come here. Our goal is to revolutionize the world to help train differently. Plus, everybody’s got a little fight in them.”
Luna is a local boy, born and raised in Mililani. He had always been interested in sports growing up. He played football for Mililani High School and eventually took up weight training, where he competed in powerlifting at the national level. “It opened a lot of doors for me,” Luna says. “I’ve been in the fitness industry now for 20 years.”
Staying active is his passion. Luna started working at Gold’s Gym and after that, 24 Hour Fitness. He began in sales and worked his way up to general manager. After 10 years, he took a break from the industry and applied what he had learned in sales and marketing to join friends working in Hawai‘i’s tattoo industry.
“I wanted to teach different ways to look at marketing and the importance of building relationships in the community,” Luna says. Getting a tattoo isn’t necessarily a one-time purchase. Clients may want additional designs added to their tattoo or get images retouched after time has passed. Luna encouraged tattoo parlors to follow up with customers to build repeat business.
He also knew tattoo artists who started in Hawai‘i before moving to Oregon and beyond. He’d invite them back every few months to be guest tattoo artists, teaching local artists techniques and new technologies they had learned on the mainland. Luna’s collaborative community approach helped change the culture around the tattoo business in Hawai‘i.
“One day, I was reading the paper and I saw that BJ Penn was returning to Hawai‘i to open the UFC Gym. I saw my old district manager’s name, too, so I called him about coming aboard,” Luna says. 24 Hour Fitness founder Mark Mastrov had partnered with the UFC to open the first UFC Gym in the East Bay near Oakland, California, in 2009 to great success. Now they were bringing the brand to Hawai‘i, and Luna wanted to get involved. Teaming up with Darlene Kaku, previously the corporate sales manager for Hilo Hattie, Luna opened the first location in Kaka‘ako in 2012.
“Most people when they first came, all they knew was the traditional workout: upper body, biceps, triceps, chest and finish with some cardio,” Luna says. “But we integrate everything from resistance training to running circuits with the battle ropes, the slam balls, the kettlebells, and so on for high-intensity interval training.”
The response was overwhelming. Within two years, Luna and Kaku had a second UFC Gym location up and running in Waikele. Both establishments broke company records as top-producing gyms. Their third location in Mililani opened in February 2017. “The initial idea was just to have two gyms in Hawai‘i,” Luna says. “But the success of these two allowed us to open another spot here in Mililani, just five miles down the road from the Waikele spot.”
UFC Gyms have expanded quickly across the country. There are currently 145 locations—a mix of corporate branches and franchises like Luna’s—around the world, from Australia to Taiwan to the Philippines. In the islands, Luna is looking at expanding, too, with eyes on two additional locations. The Pohuka‘ina gym recently celebrated its five-year anniversary. Open 24 hours a day, the gym offers more than a hundred classes a week, beginning at 5 a.m. and continuing into the night.
“We get that everybody’s busy,” Luna says. “Our classes are 50 minutes long so you come in, jump into a class, go 110 percent, grab your protein shake from our cafe and you’re done. We provide the locker rooms, showers, all that stuff.”
UFC Gym’s newest location in Mililani brings Luna back to the town where he grew up. Between teenagers from the high school across the street to men and women in the military at nearby Schofield, the new location is already achieving solid attendance. “Mililani is really family oriented,” Luna says. “So we have classes for children from ages three to 11, run by BJ Penn’s older brother, Jay, so the whole family can work out together.”
Twenty years into his career in fitness, Luna is busy as ever. He’s building relationships with area businesses to spread the word about each new gym he opens. The UFC Gym has built corporate partnerships with organizations such as Hawai‘i Pacific Health, Matson and Hawaii Sheet Metal Workers.
“You see everybody coming together at the UFC Gym and you hear the success stories—how people’s bodies and mentalities are changing,” Luna says. “It’s a great business.”
kimo.luna@ufcgym.com
