When Julius Thomas hung up his NFL cleats in 2018, he didn’t know he was about to face the toughest, and longest, transition of his life. The tight finish who caught touchdowns from Peyton Manning walked into graduate faculty at 30 with no job, no playbook, and not one of the every day wins soccer used handy him.
“When you must go from a grasp to a rookie, you go from profitable lots, understanding what you’re doing and really snug with all of it, to then having to rebuild that,” he recalled. “That’s extraordinarily difficult, as a result of to start with of any journey, it’s dropping, doing it unsuitable, working actually arduous, struggling via it.”
The teachings he realized over time that adopted modified the way in which he checked out efficiency. He went again to the classroom, accomplished a medical residency and earned his doctorate in medical psychology in June 2025.
In professional sports activities, the mentality is usually to push via and preserve going. Whereas Thomas lived that for years, at this time, as a efficiency coach and guide along with his firm Optimum Efficiency, he sees how a lot of peak efficiency depends on stepping again and checking in with ourselves.
“One of many issues I say is the largest unaddressed space of efficiency in all of sport is emotional regulation,” Thomas advised Muscle & Health.
Thomas’ Tackle NFL Accidents This Season
The 2026 NFL season has already examined the push-through mindset from the opening weeks. Six of the 32 quarterbacks initially named starters have been harm early within the season, together with Jayden Daniels, Caleb Williams and Jaxson Dart. Now Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is now anticipated to overlook the remainder of the season after medical doctors discovered deep vein thrombosis and bilateral pulmonary emboli, along with his case traced again to a calf harm from an opponent’s cleat.
Thomas resisted pinning the run on any single trigger. He additionally didn’t suppose any of this was uncommon. “Soccer has a 100% harm fee” he says. “Each single person who performs soccer goes to get injured, so accidents are simply excessive in that sport typically.”
Contact accidents include the job, he stated, whereas coaching hundreds, surfaces, low season habits, mobility, and restoration—or the dearth thereof—form the non-contact ones. Analysis has additionally proven that the thoughts does have a seat on the desk.
A 2017 meta-analysis in Sports activities Drugs linked stress responses to greater harm danger and located psychological interventions decreased harm charges. Therefore, Thomas makes it some extent to take our foot off the gasoline much more often than we do.
“If you happen to simply solely flooring it, solely flooring it, solely flooring it. How lengthy do you suppose that engine goes to do properly?” Thomas explains. “Not very lengthy.”
The brakes signify the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest-and-digest department that counters the stress response. “If we don’t do sufficient to create extra parasympathetic tone in our nervous system, if we don’t sleep sufficient hours, all we’re doing is degrading the foremost methods in our physique,” he defined, noting the price of the grind will come ultimately.
How Each Excessive Performer Pays the Tab
This sample follows excessive performers into the boardroom as properly. Thomas has coached executives who requested him for nootropics to sharpen their focus—then admitted that he himself was solely getting 4 hours of sleep an evening for 20 years. So he’s constructed a framework known as “Striving for 100” to deliver purchasers again to 5 every day habits, together with train, sleep, vitamin, restoration and wholesome substance use, with restoration anchoring the remaining. One-on-one, he layers in radical acceptance, cognitive restructuring and reframing drawn from a number of evidence-based strategies comparable to cognitive behavioral remedy (CBT), acceptance and dedication remedy (ACT).
“You’re both gonna pay the associated fee slowly and absolutely by recovering in your 30s and 40s and 50s,” he says, “otherwise you’re gonna pay it hastily once you’re sick.”
He holds himself to the identical commonplace. Although when a pal had warned him a full transition would take a few decade, he refused to imagine it.
“I’m eight years in transition. And I’m nearly to the place I wish to be in my subsequent career,” he admitted, however identified the issue he’s skilled with id and the way a lot our society will get it unsuitable.
Thomas bristles on the recommendation athletes usually hear on the way in which out, that they merely must separate who they’re from the game they performed.
“It actually bothers me when individuals say that about athletes, as a result of they’re attempting to reduce the problem of the expertise, in order that when the athlete finds himself within the psychological problem, they really feel like they shouldn’t be, and this must be simple,” he defined, including that id runs deeper than a label, and it’s constructed by what you do day-after-day and bolstered by how others see you.
Years after his final sport, individuals nonetheless wish to speak about NFL enjoying days, wherein the two-time Professional Bowl tight finish caught 12 landing passes in each 2012 and 2013. “It’s arduous to get individuals to see you in your new profession,” he admitted.
Now he prepares athletes for that shift and asks them whether or not they’re prepared for one of many hardest issues they’ll ever do, and whether or not they’ve constructed the instruments to get via it.
“Do you’ve the psychological expertise to reframe, recontextualize, discover which means, discover goal?” he’d ask.
What he doesn’t need any participant to overlook is that the wrestle says nothing about them. Each main life change strains us. “Transitions are all the time arduous,” he stated. However with the appropriate instruments and help, it turns into simpler to navigate over time.
When the Ache Doesn’t Present on an X-Ray
Most of us have been by no means taught to call what we really feel, not to mention work via it when stress drags on for months. Thomas wasn’t both, and he’s seen the toll it might tackle the physique.
“Feelings set off our nervous system,” he says, referring to his research in psychoneuroimmunology. “So the higher you get at managing feelings and decreasing detrimental feelings, the much less sustained stress you’d have in your nervous system.”
And it issues as a result of our nervous system, immune system, and psychology are linked, he says, and when stress turns into power, numerous points of our life take a success. Sleep and food plan slip first when emotional pressure builds, he famous, and muscle pressure climbs as nervousness lingers.
Nonetheless, merely placing a sense into phrases may also help flip the quantity down. A 2007 UCLA mind imaging research in Psychological Science discovered that labeling feelings dampened the amygdala’s response to detrimental pictures.
Although few of us get help doing that work. He cited CDC information that reported 10.9% of U.S. males obtain counseling or remedy from a psychological well being skilled, in contrast with 16.9% of girls. And, sadly, Thomas sees the place we select to spend money and time as an alternative.
“Individuals are not desirous about paying for psychological well being providers, however they’re actually desirous about new pants and new shirts and good luggage,” he stated, including how a lot simpler it’s for many people to ask for assist with bodily ache or discomfort. As a participant, he by no means hesitated to stroll into the coaching room with a sore ankle.
“We’re consistently asking for assist in so many areas of our life,” he says, “however we by some means, as a tradition, imagine that we should always deal with what’s in our coronary heart and in our thoughts by ourselves.”
Meet Thomas at Eudēmonia
Actually, Thomas isn’t any rookie in his new profession, and it exhibits within the firm he retains. At Eudēmonia on November 5-8, he’ll share the stage with a few of the movers and shakers of the well being, wellness and longevity business.
He recalled his first yr on the occasion and the way a lot the relationships he constructed throughout psychology, neuroscience, drugs and mind-body practices have stayed with him.
“The conversations, the community, the neighborhood I constructed at yr one at Eudēmonia continues to be having constructive affect on my life nearly one yr later,” he stated. “And Eudēmonia has turn into one of many conferences that I’m most excited to go to.”
Thomas returns with keynotes on psychological well being and a panel dialogue on mindset, efficiency and the capability to adapt. The takeaway he needs the viewers to go away with is hope, actionable steps, and to be educated in one thing that’s going to assist make them more healthy, higher, extra productive and better functioning.
“If you need sustainable excessive efficiency, you must construct well-being and high quality of life into what you do,” he stated.
