PUEBLO, Colo. -- When you walk into the PBR Sport Performance Center (SPC), glass doors and partitions offer a view straight to the back of the 18,000 square-foot space.

Peek at the state-of-the-art weight room. Catch a glimpse of the athlete lounge equipped with Buckrite machines and television screens. Notice the anti-gravity treadmill, another jewel of the recovery center. Around the corner, a nutrition bar. Through one door, hot and cold plunge pools. Through another, a cryotherapy tank.

But back at the entrance, down the first hallway to your left, is the office of Antwon Burton.

Burton, a former NFL defensive tackle, is the executive director of the SPC. A larger-than-life presence at 6-1 and 300 pounds, Burton is tasked with building the SPC into a destination for bull riders, Western sports athletes and any athlete seeking a world class training and mentoring experience.

The city of Pueblo, Colorado, has been advocating for this project as part of the expansion of the Pueblo Convention Center for more than a decade. The PBR signed on in 2014, and construction crews broke ground on the riverside building in August of 2017.

However, Burton was the key piece of the puzzle.

Melissa Henricks, the PBR’s Vice President of Athlete Initiatives and Development, met Burton in the summer of 2018 on a recommendation from PBR CEO Sean Gleason’s assistant, Dawn Dickerson. He was a local guy, training athletes out of his gym, Next Level Performance, mentoring kids and taking speaking engagements, with a number of NFL and MLB athletes already on his resume.

It was an immediate match.

“My first reaction was that it was something different, something outside of the box,” Burton said. “But the vibe I got from the PBR was a positive working vibe. People wanted to be better, people wanted to strive for excellence. That’s what everything’s about. How do I succeed in life? How do I go farther in life? It’s something that I felt was necessary for the PBR, and something that they were taking extremely serious. It was intriguing from day one.”

That “something different” is a facility that’s the first of its kind to cater primarily to bull riding and Western sports as a whole. In addition to Buckrite machines, the SPC is working on partnering with a local facility to give riders the opportunity to get live outs on bulls.

But the focus will be on developing all-around athletes, in Western sports as well as the more traditional Olympic and stick-and-ball sports.

The SPC combines personal training with injury prevention and rehabilitation, sport psychology, mind/vision/reaction training and nutritional advice. Athletes have access to film review stations, classrooms and experts in addition to a 4,600 square-foot gym. Through a partnership with the Pueblo Convention Center, a large, open indoor space is available for wrestling, gymnastics and other sport-specific training.

There will be six to eight trainers on staff, plus several physical therapists, with experts brought in to cater to the athletes using the facility at any given time.

While the concept was a new one for Burton, he’d previously trained several Western sports athletes and found they weren’t all that different from himself.

“Honestly, my first thought, they’re basically football players on a bull,” he said. “They’re a little smaller, but the same attitude, the same courage, the same athleticism. Because I would have to think it takes a little bit to be on a 2,000-pound animal.

“The biggest thing for us in the PBR is basically to put a shining light on the fact that these riders are athletes. The funny part is how was it never established that they were?”

Indeed, not every cowboy goes to the gym. Burton knows this and is content to let the old-school, veteran cowboys do what they feel is best for them.

“You are who you are because of who you are,” Burton said, tipping his metaphorical cap to the likes of J.B. Mauney. “Something like that is more of, on the back end of your career, how would you want to make yourself a little more healthy and introduce performance? But for the up-and-coming, there’s a lot of guys out there that are chomping at the bit to be elite athletes.”

Henricks, who’s been spearheading the project since joining the PBR in January 2017, has spoken with a number of riders already itching to break in all that shiny new equipment.

“Cody Campbell asked if during the offseason he could just bring his trailer here and live here for the summer,” she said, laughing. “They’re not interested in just, ‘Oh, we have a big facility to work out in.’ When I say we have cryotherapy, their eyes light up. When I talk about this mental toughness and the mind and vision training, it goes beyond just working out, and you can see the wheels turning. They’re very excited.”

The holistic approach to elite-level performance is one that dovetails perfectly with Burton’s passions. The six-year NFL veteran, who joined the league as an undrafted free agent, spearheaded a program called More Than Football to teach college athletes the ins and outs of being a professional athlete. How to handle money, buy a house, sustain your income, the mental state necessary to be a professional, and the overall adversities and tribulations that come with being an NFL player.

“You necessarily don’t know the numbers and the statistics of people that are broke when they’re done, that are addicted to things when they’re done, that live with their mom when they’re done,” Burton said. “And then not knowing how to pick their life back up because all they thought was a one-track mind about football. It breaks my heart. So I just thought it was necessary and something I needed to do.”

Henricks cited Burton’s desire to help people as what made him the perfect person to lead the SPC into the future. Already on the schedule is a mental toughness camp, working with the Western Sports Foundation’s providers to give riders access to neurological experts and other professionals that could provide benefits that reach far past bull riding.

“This facility and Antwon go way beyond just athletics,” Henricks said.

“It fits,” Burton agreed. “It just fits.”

It also helps that, for Burton, building such an innovative facility in Pueblo isn’t just business: it’s personal.

His wife, Terah, is a Pueblo native, and the two have had a residence in the city since 2009.

He jokes that, growing up in Buffalo, New York, he’s from the Pueblo of New York state and shares the same blue-collar, true-grit mentality of his Colorado home town.

“I really, truly do feel invested in the community that I live in, the community where my kids go to school, where my wife goes to church, where my father-in-law preaches,” Burton said. “So for me, outside of work, I’m passionate about this. Everybody’s kind of driving in the right direction as far as being progressive and making our community progressive.”

Since retiring from the NFL in 2012, Burton spent time working in the music business with the likes of Keith Buckley and Good Charlotte. He’s trained at elite sport performance facilities from California to Florida, including NFL players Morgan Fox, Reggie Gilbert, Larry Clark and more, and in sports as diverse as swimming and gymnastics.

But in the end, it all came back to Pueblo and the organization that got its start there in 1992.

“I think this is, for the community, a great viewing point of the highest level of performance,” Burton said. “And to be able to integrate Western sport with other sports, it’s just an exciting thing to be around.”