Teaching people proper technique over what they find on the internet with Greg and Tyler of Freestyle Strength and Therapy

Good day, Fringe fam. This is Peter Keller from beautiful Austin, Texas, and today I'm talking with Tyler and Greg Burton, the Burton boys, who are doing Freestyle Strength and Therapy but are currently both getting their doctorate, separately, in physical therapy. How you guys doing today?

Greg Burton: Doing well.

Awesome. I've got three brothers, and we're all doing pretty different things. But we've got you two, and you're doing the same thing but going to some different schools. Talk to me about that.

Greg Burton: We grew up - we have another brother, as well. We've always been interested in the same thing. We all grew up as wrestlers. We all have a fitness background, to some degree. Our older brother is actually doing business school, but we both took a different approach. We're in physical therapy. We both fell in love with Crossfit and working out, things like that, a couple years ago. And that's led us to where we are today as far as physical therapy goes.

The very common thing, whenever you're on the internet, Reddit or one of those cesspool-y-type sites that I enjoy, somebody says Crossfit and the very next comment that's uploaded is, "Oh, my physical therapist," or, "My chiro," or whatever, "says that they love Crossfit, because people are always getting fucked up and then coming to me." What would you guys say to that, which I think is an ignorant complaint, but what do you guys say to that sort of thing?

Tyler Burton: We still see it in our programs, "Crossfit is dangerous," or, "We shouldn't do it" kind of thing. But I think when you look at the methodology, the movements, when we break it down into the ideas of high intensity being good at everything, it actually makes a lot of sense. And in physical therapy, we're essentially doing that at just a smaller or different scale. There are tons of people who do Crossfit and they do it incorrectly, they have bad coaches or things like that. And that's why part of us wanted to do physical therapy school, because as a physical therapist you're a movement specialist. You know how the body works and moves. And we could take that information and apply that to our gym or to any population. That got us going into the Freestyle Strength and Therapy Instagram page that we started.

Awesome. It's interesting, the first box that I actually trained at here in Austin, the gentleman who owns the box has a brother who's a PT, and they have one box that is run as a Crossfit gym, Crossfit Cedar Park, and then they have another box that's called Tillman Physical Therapy, and it's an actual physical therapy clinic that has a box run out of it as well. And the Crossfit brother has all of his coaches for Crossfit intern ... I think it's six weeks minimum, but I'm not really sure how long it is, but intern at the physical therapy clinic because, just like you mentioned about learning how you see how the body moves, the Crossfit coach has his Crossfit trainers do that. That's really a pretty interesting thing. Do you guys have your L1s?

Tyler Burton: I don't, no. I coached at a box up in Idaho for a couple months but never was actually certified. I just always had the owner of the box or somebody else who was certified there with me. It was more of an internship-type deal.

No worries. That's cool. Tell me a little bit about Freestyle Strength and Therapy. What are you guys trying to do there? I talked with Tyler in the pre-interview, and he had mentioned that you guys are pretty much starting it for after you graduate. Is that correct?

Greg Burton: That's a large purpose of it, but the fact that we're going to school at the same time is a unique thing that a lot of physical therapists don't have. For me, one of the big reasons that I wanted to start it with Tyler was just as a way for us to be able to communicate with each other and just share the different things that we're learning over here at school. 'Cause we're being taught by different professors, a little bit different material. And it was just a way for us to learn from each other, too, but also share it with other people.

What are you guys doing with it now? You had mentioned the Instagram page, and I'm going to pull that up in a moment while you're chatting about this (@FreestyleStrength) Help us understand.

Greg Burton: It's pretty small right now. We're just looking at it as a way for us to teach people how to move correctly, the point in moving, and just sharing high quality knowledge that we have. We're not necessarily taking knowledge that we've learned over the last couple years as practicing physical therapists, but we're taking a lot of experiences that we're learning from a variety of different professors at different universities and sharing some of the valuable experiences that they've had over their course of practicing, but also high-quality research as well.

Tyler Burton: I think a lot of people see tons of information about fitness. You can go onto the search page of Instagram and see tons of infographics and things like that on the "Best Way to Front Squat" or "Best Way to Do a Deadlift", and things like that. And unfortunately, there's a lot of wrong information. I just saw one on how to front squat, and it was a good way ... the best way is how most people front squat, is to have your palms facing up, and then the other one is to do one cross armed, and then the other is do a full supinated. Your palm is facing down. And one of my buddies sent me the picture, and I was like, "Is this real? Can you actually front squat like this?" And I thought, "I don't think that's even possible to get into that position." I tried it, and it was probably the worst front squat I've ever done. I only had 185 pounds on there. Again, we see this misinformation being spread across the internet.

And as brothers who are in school getting the information, we want to spread valuable stuff that is correct to as many people as possible.

I love it. And what are the plans after you guys graduate?

Greg Burton: That's a good question. I think we just want to continue it. Of course we'll get valuable experience while we're out in the field practicing full-time. I could see us doing more informational videos and things like that, as things go on. And right now, I'm actually working on developing some products and things like that, which will be fun. Hopefully, Fringe Sport's interested in it. Just kidding.

Of course.

Greg Burton: But we're just seeing where things are going right now. We're so new to it, we're not exactly sure how things are going to go, but we hope that it just continues in the direction that it's been going.

I love it. With you guys working together, even staying connected in different states, how does that work out? You guys just talk with each other on the phone a lot? How do you guys collaborate on the Instagram account?

Tyler Burton: That's a good question. I have a big commute for my school. I live about 20 miles away from my school, and that gives me a good, ample time to call anyone who I want. Often I'll call Greg and we'll just chat, and we'll feel out the week, "Okay, what are some things that you learned in class?" Or, "What are some things we can post that people ask us about?" And then, we have a Google document. We write the things that we want to talk about, and then we'll make videos accordingly and post them throughout the week.

I love it, and I'm just looking and scrolling through your account here and really loving a lot of these videos, obviously. I'm consuming them right now while we're chatting. What kind of products are you guys coming out with? You don't have to share anything secret, but is it going to be physical therapy related, something similar to mobility/wod has come out with? Or which way are you guys looking to go with that?

Greg Burton: Hopefully, we'd like to go into some therapy stuff, but right now there's one product that hasn't been developed yet that I haven't been able to find anywhere, and that's one of the big ones that we're working on now. We haven't revealed that yet, but we've been talking about different ... more fitness products than anything at this moment that we're seeing could be improved, and things of that sort.

Tyler Burton: Yeah, because, I mean, ideally fitness is in the spectrum of physical therapy. We don't see that a lot. We think of just rehabilitation after an injury, or prevention. But I think fitness falls into it. That is the uppermost on the pyramid of health, is you have your fitness. And I think physical therapy fits into that. You could count it as a physical therapy.

Greg Burton: True.

I love it. Well, whether Fringe carries it or not, you can launch it to our email list. We got a pretty big email list. If you need that, we're here for you. I found you guys at @FreestyleStrength on Instagram, and I'd also found you guys, I believe, same handle on Facebook. If anybody wants to get in touch with you, is the Instagram the best way? Or what's the best way to get ahold of you guys?

Greg Burton: That works, or freestylestrengththerapy@gmail.com is also our email.

Awesome.

Greg Burton: That would work, as well.

Sweet. Thanks for your time, guys. Anything else you have to say to our audience?

Greg Burton: No. Thanks for your time. Thanks for all your support. We appreciate all that FringeSport does for us, and you guys' products.

Well, thank you very much. This has been Peter Keller from FringeSport, talking to the Burton boys. Lift heavy. Live cool. And we're out.