Julius Thomas on Recovery, Mental Health and Sustainable Performance

For Julius Thomas, the habits that sustain performance are easy to overlook: rest, emotional regulation and the ability to adapt when an old identity falls away. The former NFL tight end now brings that perspective to performance coaching, informed by his own career transition and a doctorate in clinical psychology he completed in June 2025.

Thomas retired from football in 2018 and entered graduate school at 30. The move took him from a profession where he knew how to succeed into a setting where he had to start over. “When you have to go from a master to a rookie, you go from winning a lot, knowing what you’re doing and very comfortable with all of it, to then having to rebuild that,” he told Muscle & Fitness. Early progress, he recalled, often meant struggling, making mistakes and working without the steady wins he’d known on the field.

That experience helped shape his view of performance. Through his company, Optimal Performance, Thomas works with athletes and executives, emphasizing a dimension he believes sport often neglects: “One of the things I say is the biggest unaddressed area of performance in all of sport is emotional regulation.”

Why recovery belongs in the performance plan

The injury toll in the 2026 NFL season has put the demands on players in sharp relief. Six of the 32 quarterbacks named as starters were hurt early in the season, including Jayden Daniels, Caleb Williams and Jaxson Dart. Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is expected to miss the rest of the season after doctors found deep vein thrombosis and bilateral pulmonary emboli. His case was traced to a calf injury caused by an opponent’s cleat.

Thomas cautions against assigning those injuries a single cause. Contact is part of football, he said, while training loads, playing surfaces, offseason habits, mobility and recovery can all influence non-contact injuries. He also sees a high baseline of risk in the sport: “Football has a 100% injury rate,” he said. “Every single person that plays football is going to get injured, so injuries are just high in that sport in general.”

Research also points to a role for psychological stress. A 2017 meta-analysis in Sports Medicine linked stress responses with increased injury risk and found that psychological interventions reduced injury rates. For Thomas, the practical lesson is that exertion needs to be balanced with recovery. “If you just only floor it, only floor it, only floor it. How long do you think that engine is going to do well?” he asked. “Not very long.”

He describes the parasympathetic nervous system as the body’s brakes: the rest-and-digest system that counters the stress response. Without enough sleep and other recovery, he said, the body’s major systems take a toll. Athletes may be accustomed to pushing through discomfort, but constant strain has a cost that can arrive gradually or all at once.

A daily framework for high performers

Thomas sees the same pattern among executives. Some clients have asked him about nootropics to sharpen focus while neglecting basic recovery. He recalls one executive who said he had slept only four hours a night for 20 years. Thomas developed a framework called “Striving for 100” around five daily habits: exercise, sleep, nutrition, recovery and healthy substance use. Recovery anchors the other four.

In individual coaching, he also draws on evidence-based approaches including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). Techniques such as radical acceptance, cognitive restructuring and reframing can help clients respond differently to pressure and setbacks. His point is that performance habits need to account for the whole person, not just the hours spent working or training.

“You’re either gonna pay the cost slowly and surely by recovering in your 30s and 40s and 50s,” he said, “or you’re gonna pay it all of a sudden when you’re sick.” Thomas says he tries to hold himself to the same standards. He once dismissed a friend’s estimate that changing careers would take about a decade. Eight years into the process, he says he’s nearing where he wants to be in his new profession.

The identity challenge after sport

Thomas says the transition from professional sport can be harder when other people expect an athlete to simply leave that identity behind. He objects to advice that athletes should separate who they are from the sport they played, arguing that it can make a difficult adjustment feel like a personal failure.

Identity, in his view, is shaped by daily actions and reinforced by how other people see you. Thomas was a two-time Pro Bowl tight end who caught 12 touchdown passes in both 2012 and 2013. Years after his final game, people still ask about his NFL career. “It’s hard to get people to see you in your new career,” he said.

He now helps athletes prepare for that shift by asking whether they’re ready for a major change and have the psychological tools to navigate it. Can they reframe an experience, find meaning and establish a new sense of purpose? The struggle, he tells them, doesn’t say anything about their worth or ability. “Transitions are always hard,” he said, and the right tools and support can make them easier to manage over time.

Emotional strain has physical effects

Thomas’s clinical psychology training also informs how he talks about stress and the body. Drawing on psychoneuroimmunology, he describes emotions as signals that affect the nervous system. Learning to manage emotions and reduce negative emotional states, he said, can reduce sustained stress on that system.

When stress persists, the effects can reach across daily life. Thomas says sleep and diet are often among the first things to slip, while anxiety can contribute to muscle tension. A 2007 UCLA brain imaging study published in Psychological Science found that putting feelings into words dampened the amygdala’s response to negative images. For Thomas, that’s a practical reminder that recognizing an emotion can be part of managing it.

He also points to a gap between physical and mental health care. CDC data he cited found that 10.9% of U.S. men receive counseling or therapy from a mental health professional, compared with 16.9% of women. Thomas says many people readily seek help for physical pain but feel they should handle emotional distress alone. “We are constantly asking for help in so many areas of our life,” he said, “but we somehow, as a culture, believe that we should handle what’s in our heart and in our mind by ourselves.”

Taking the message to Eudēmonia

Thomas is scheduled to speak at Eudēmonia from November 5–8, joining participants from across health, wellness and longevity. He credits his first year at the event with building connections across psychology, neuroscience, medicine and mind-body practices. Those relationships, he said, continued to influence his work nearly a year later.

He’ll return with keynote talks on mental health and a panel discussion on mindset, performance and adaptation. His aim is for attendees to leave with hope, practical steps and knowledge they can apply to their health and work. For Thomas, sustainable performance depends on making well-being part of the routine itself. “If you want sustainable high performance, you have to build well-being and quality of life into what you do,” he said.

His career shift gives that advice a personal dimension: performance doesn’t mean maintaining the same pace forever. It means building the capacity to recover, respond to change and keep finding purpose when the old measures of success no longer fit.