Elevating Individuals Through Mentorship
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As a student athlete and a college football star, Dr. Josh Angulo learned all about perseverance, empathy, and the importance of delivering a peak performance despite weariness. He brought these characteristics over when he became a career builder and founder of Optimum Wellness, a provider of mobile chiropractic care in Northern Virginia. Joining Tina Fox, he shares how his athletic mindset proved vital in his work as a sports chiropractor who helps athletes achieve performance recovery. Dr. Josh also reflects on his own journey from the football field to the clinic to provide valuable advice to young athletes facing career transitions and battling imposter syndrome.
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Everyone, welcome to the show where we explore the real stories behind mentorship, career pivots, and the courage it takes to expand your identity beyond just one chapter of your life. I am talking with none other than Dr. Josh Angulo. He is a former multi-sport high school athlete, collegiate football player who has built a business around performance, recovery, and truly meeting people where they are. Josh is the founder, CEO of Optimum Wellness. The DMV’s mobile chiropractic practice literally brings high-level musculoskeletal care to your home, office, or training facility.
His work focuses on helping people maximize their performance, stay healthy enough to do what they love, whether that is being a weekend warrior or competing at the highest level. As a sports-focused chiropractor, he has worked with professional athletes here in the DC area, including serving as team chiropractor for the DC United, NWSL’s Washington Spirit, supporting the US women’s national team, Go Girls, and treating players with the Washington Commanders during the preseason.
Josh, it is awesome to have you on our show. Welcome to the show. I am so glad you are here.
Thank you so much for having me, Tina. This is super exciting. Super stoked to be on this with you. I am excited to get into some of this with you. It is going to be fun.
Some people may not know, you are actually also my personal chiropractor. I am not an elite athlete. However, I do tend to injure myself way too much. I was so lucky to meet you. In all of our friendly discussions about just taking care of ourselves, I learned a lot about your history. Being a fellow entrepreneur, I was also interested in how you, as a student athlete, managed to not just take yourself away from just the athletic part, but move yourself into a career path that does involve athletes for sure.
You have carved out your own identity in that. I want to go backwards a little bit to set the time frame, the audience’s mindset. Can you take us back to the days when you were a student athlete? What did that look like for you then? How would you have described your identity as a young Josh Angulo?
As far as describing the identity, most student athletes would probably admit to what I am going to say next. Everybody, when you are in that phase of life, especially if you are at a Division I, Division II school, it is a really competitive program that you are in. You view yourself more, at least I did, as an athlete who is also a student. I know the saying is always, “You are a student athlete first.
The student comes first.” When you are 19, 20 years old. All you are doing every single day is breathe, sleep, and do it again over and over, your sport, it really does start to become where you are in your mind, view yourself sometimes as the athlete first. I do not know if everybody would admit to that, but I certainly thought that, especially for the first three years of college. You go through the recruitment phase from high school, going into college.
There is so much talk, hype around you becoming an athlete at the next level. There are not a lot of people who get to do that. Your attention really gets drawn into that. It definitely is challenging as a student athlete to make sure that you are keeping your studies, your academics focused. Going back to me at a younger age, I definitely was 110% committed to being an athlete.
I would say my advisor from college might also agree, but I was definitely not as focused on my studies as I probably should have been for the first year and a half. Eventually, you do come to figure out, “This is obviously important. This is going to propel me for the rest of my life.” Going back, what would I say I was like then? Somebody who was hyper-focused on being the best athlete that they could be. I did not become that way with my studies until a little bit later down that path, but everybody learns, goes through those experiences.
I was super focused on doing what I needed to do to perform at the highest level. My teammates, everybody, even my teachers, through that part of my academic career, would attest to that as well. You are showing up after a 6:00 AM workout for class. You are still in your sweaty clothes. That is like, “You are at an 8:00 AM lecture. You have already worked out for two hours.” It is a big commitment.
I was just going to say, I would assume, now I was not an athlete, but I know a lot of athletes. In viewing their lives, it is very obvious that whether it is the family unit, whether it is their professors, as you said, or their teachers, certainly their coaches, or many of their friends that they hang out with, everybody is in this space of cheering on the athlete because who does not like a good competitive game. Who does not know somebody who is excelling in that game?
I can see a lot of emphasis being placed, a lot of praise being placed on that. If we are all in it for the dopamine hit, then that praise is going to come in real nice when it comes to performing as an athlete. At what point did you feel like there was even this like small little whisper in the back of your head that said, “I do not know, I have been doing this athlete thing a long time, I love it, but do I see myself becoming semi-pro pro?” When did that whisper finally say, ” I need to think about what is next?”
I would say during my athletic career, it was probably in that transition from my sophomore to my junior athletic season. I actually did a redshirt year, my true freshman year. That technically was like my junior academic year, but it was only my sophomore to junior transition year of sports. I would say at that point, I am going to be honest, I do not think I ever thought that I was not going to be able to play professionally.
You are always holding that you are like, “Maybe it can still happen. Maybe you can achieve that dream that you have had since you were a kid.” I will say that time, that sophomore to junior year transition, was when I said to myself, “I am still going to give this pro sports thing everything I can give, but I want to make sure that if it does not work out, that I am prepared for whatever I need to do next.”
I would say for me, that is when that thought came into my head, where I took that seriously. You have your parents. I was lucky to have a great family structure in my life. My parents were always telling me that. For a while, as you probably know, having teenagers, you do not always want to listen to what your parents are telling you. That sophomore to junior year was when I really buckled down, started to take my studies a lot more seriously. I just knew that I had to be prepared for in I did not do professionally, what was I going to do next?
Was that scary? How did you feel? Even though there was that recognition, you were still gunning for pro, but you are like, “I need a backup plan.” Was that just planning, or was that nerves? What was that feeling that you were having during that time?
It is a good question to ask how that felt. I do not know if I have ever been asked that question before. If I am being honest with you, I feel like part of it.Maybe part of the reason why I did not want to think that way for a while was because you almost, as a competitor in athletics, you are, it is almost like you are hyper-focused on the goal. Anything outside of that goal is like, you are almost cheating on that goal, or that you are not focused enough, or that you are thinking that there could be another outcome.
For me, a lot of it was that I did not want to give that a thought because I did not want to feel like I was quitting on my original goal, which was to play a professional sport. The feelings of that are, you are like, “I do not know if I want to think about any other options because I do not want to create that or manifest that into reality because that is not what I really wanted to happen. I wanted to play professionally.”
Once I got over that mental hurdle, it was just like, “Yes, this is what I need to do. I need to make sure that I am prepared.” It took me a while to maybe mature and realize that that is not a bad thing to be prepared for multiple outcomes. Obviously, now as a business owner, I understand that that is what every single day is like. When you are going through that for the first time, it is definitely an interesting feeling. You may even feel like it makes you sometimes, maybe even feel insecure about yourself as an athlete.
It is not a bad thing to be prepared for multiple outcomes. Share on XYou are like, “Am I really good enough to be playing? Should I be quitting on this goal? Should I not?” Eventually, you realize, you have to plan. You have to be prepared. You have to have multiple outcomes that you can be able to handle, be prepared for, just like I would in competition. I played wide receiver in college. If I saw one coverage, I knew what I had to do. If I saw another coverage, I knew what I had to do. It is the same thing in life, but it takes a young kid sometimes a little while to figure that out.
It is great that you had support, that you were clear of mind in that space. You mentioned this transition. Now we are going from an athlete. We are in college. We are playing football. We are thinking about this career afterwards. Everybody starts with a consideration of a major. Lord knows I switched mine after failing a class. What were some of those first career paths that you seriously considered when you realized, “I need this plan B, because maybe the sport thing is not going to last forever?” What were some of those early pads?
I would say the early pads, it is going to sound cliché, but believe it or not, my original major when I got to college was like pre-chiropractic, chiropractic studies. That is what I originally wanted to go into. The reason was that I had a really bad injury, a couple of injuries, going through college. The sports chiropractor that I had, who I utilized growing up, helped me immensely. I was like, “This is pretty cool.” That was a big reason for me wanting to even get into the profession in the first place. Believe it or not, that was my initial major.
Around my sophomore or junior year, I started doing a lot better with my studies. I was really doing well in a lot of these science courses. I thought for a while that maybe I would want to go to medical school. I actually did sit for the MCAT once I had graduated from college. Obviously ended up going to chiropractic school instead. That was my initial ambition was just because of my own personal experiences to get into it.
That is great. It sounds like there could have been a silent mentor in that whole experience because somebody was helping you through injury. You were so taken with that that it puts you on that mental path of maybe I could be that for these folks. It was not too much of a departure, it sounds like.
Yes. I would say even it was just like a good role model to see, like, we are going to talk about this later, the role of the mentor, obviously, but it was just an obvious moment where I said, “That is really cool.” It was like an inspirational thing for me to say, “This is cool. I could see myself doing that.”
Do you remember their name?
Yes. Dr. Ross McDaniel still practices in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Shout out, Dr. Ross, ChiroSport. I know them very well. We were really close family friends. Dr. Ross and I actually have stayed in touch. He is an excellent guy. He has been a great, silent mentor and somebody whose opinion I really value.
Thank you, Dr. Ross. I am very happy because I got fixed because Dr. Josh is in this. Unlike many people who have to like dabble a little bit like fail, and 6hen dabble a little bit more, you had this path. You started going down this path. You do have that mindset. That athletic mindset where it is like, “There is the goal. There is the place I need to be.” You just go for it. When you decided on sports chiropractic, which is what you are doing now, why specifically that instead of more general chiropractics? Is because you were an athlete, or you just saw that that niche was like your niche, you got it?
Totally. My whole life essentially revolved around sports. I was constantly doing sports. I grew up playing hockey when my family lived in Minnesota. That transitioned into football. I played tennis, volleyball, and basketball. You name it, I was playing it. My whole life revolved around sports. Once I figured out that I could do a profession that, also part of it, as well is that I was really fascinated with human performance, training.
When you are playing football at that level, you are constantly training. I naturally had an interest in learning how to do that to the best of my abilities and train. To me, it felt like sports chiropractic was the perfect blend of helping people, seeing the way that I was helped, but then also incorporating a lot of those special skills of human performance, how can everybody get the most out of their potential? That was the perfect marriage for me.
That is awesome. Optimum Wellness was born. Optimum Wellness is not just chiropractic care. We are talking about a mobile and concierge-style practice. You literally go to people’s homes. You go to my home. You go to the gym. You go to workplaces. Where did this idea come from?
I would say the idea came from observing the landscape of medical care that we currently have. The mobile idea has been out there. We are certainly not the first people to offer that service. Most clinics, when we were doing our market research, most clinics that do offer mobile care have a brick and mortar space on top of it. They offer that as an adjunct to an additional therapy that you can pay an extra fee for if you need a house call.
It did not really seem like anybody was going for it, and trying to do this mobile service that we do now. We noticed that there was maybe an opportunity in the market for it. My wife, I, Dr. Kara Ziemer, wanted to create this practice because we wanted to also have a little bit more control over the amount of time we could spend with the clients.
By offering this, we call them, we eliminate a lot of patient excuses as far as, “I cannot get there today. I cannot do this. I cannot do that.” There is a lot more accountability also with our clients when we go to their home. We are like, “Did you do X, Y, and Z? Have you been able to perform this part of the treatment plan?” We are sitting in their living room. We are sitting in their dining room.
Wherever we are doing this treatment. It creates a little bit more sense of accountability. For that reason, we were like, “This mobile concept could work.” We do 60-minute appointments, 30-minute appointments, which a 60 minute appointment in the chiropractic profession, is almost unheard of, but it allows us to really get the level of care that we want to provide to our clients. That concept came from.
It is. You do not just work with athletes, obviously, because you work with me. What do you think is the difference between working with an athlete versus not, or is there?
The only difference is in the perception of the person that I am working with. For instance, that is funny that you said, “I am not an athlete.” I would beg to differ. Everybody is an athlete, depending on how you do yourself, what your tasks of daily living are. The reality is that everybody needs to be able to squat. Everybody needs to be able to sit down, stand up. Everybody needs to be able to do these basic movements.
Whether you are doing them on a football field with like a million people watching on TV or whether you are just at home, whether you are picking up laundry baskets, it does not really matter what you are doing. The movements, the principles of the anatomy, and the biomechanics of all these movements are all the same. For me, I do not view it any differently.
What I have found in working with people who would describe themselves as non-athletes is that they like working with doctors who work with athletes because it makes them feel like they are working with somebody who really understands the full picture, who understands how the body is supposed to be working. It is something that the clients, who again say they are not athletes, not that I agree with them.
They enjoy that part because they know that we are looking at them through an athletic lens. We view them as athletes. I joke with all my clients, “I want you moving. I want you to do what you need to do. I do not want you to be stagnant. I want you to have all the movement skills, capacities that you need to be able to perform whatever you want to do on a daily basis.”
Josh, you have gone from student athlete to working in the field of chiropractic care. You had this moment, but you have not described the moment yet, as to when you decided that you were not going to just be a clinician, working for someone else, but you started switching that mindset to, “I am going to be a founder, CEO.” This became even, I guess, before the mobile idea, or did those two come in tandem? How did those mindset shifts occur for you to go through these different phases? How did you become a founder CEO?
How it really happened was that I was working at another clinic right out of chiropractic school. I had been working there for about a year, a half. Throughout that process, it is like, “It happens with everybody.” You go through a work experience. You are like, “There are certain things I like, and certain things I do not like. How could I improve this, perhaps?” As we already talked about with the concept of mobile care, concierge care, that idea had already been established in our minds. We said to ourselves, my wife, and I said, “Do you think we could do this on our own?”
It was just kind of like a natural question that I had that we asked ourselves. Again, alluding to the fact of being a student athlete, honestly, I felt like at that moment when we had the concept of, “We have this idea. Do we think we can perform it and actually do it?” I really felt like I tapped back into that part of my mind where I was an athlete. It took it. It is definitely not easy, as you know. It takes extreme focus, extreme dedication, and extreme hard work, which was a lot of the same type of stuff that I had to do to be an athlete in college.
It takes extreme focus, dedication, and hard work to be a college athlete. This is the same mindset you need when you become a CEO and founder. Share on XAlso, to get through graduate school. It takes a ton of hard work, dedication, and focus to be able to get to this point, be able to be a CEO, founder, and have a company that is operating successfully. I really felt like that experience as an athlete helped me once I got to the phase of asking myself that question, “Am I going to, am I really going to do this?” A ton of research, a lot of market research, a lot of time spent on business planning, modeling, and projecting.
Once we sat down, I said, “This is actually possible.” In my mind, really, the question at the moment was when we had it all laid out there, I said to my wife, “If I am going to bet on anybody to like do anything in life, am I going to bet on myself or not? Am I willing to pull the trigger, basically say, can I do this or not do this?” Without question, I give my wife a lot of credit.
She was like, “If you believe in this, then I know it is going to work. Do you believe in it?” That was her exact response. I said, “Yes, I believe in it. Let us go.” Thanks to my wife, obviously for her support means more than anything. She said, was kind of it. From that point, the snowball started rolling down the hill. Now here we are, three years away, to like a month away exactly from being three years of being open.
We love Dr. Kara, too. She is absolutely amazing to be able to go into business with not only a partner, but a partner who happens to be your spouse can be very difficult, but when you have the same plan, some of the same goals in what you want to accomplish, you guys decide that you are going to burn the boats together, that is pretty powerful. It is a great duo.
Talk to me about some of those things you mentioned that being an athlete helped you with in certain instances, as far as the mindset. If you had to talk to students or maybe just the younger Josh Angulo about, “This skill right here. I am now years out. I can see how this skill is being applied to me as not only a business owner, but somebody who is working alongside other athletes.” What are some of those skills that you think you bring forward?
A couple of really big ones. Number one, when you are an athlete, student-athletes, this is what started this discussion, actually, brought the idea of doing this podcast stuff together. Student athletes, when they are in school, in my opinion, get a lot of flak from non-student athletes. People like to throw jabs at them and say that they have not made it because they get to do certain things that other student athletes do not get to do.
They get a lot of jokes about that. That also carries on into your post-student athlete life. You get a lot of jokes, stuff like that, about being a student athlete, whatever stigmas come with that. To me, undoubtedly, when you are a student athlete, you are doing all the academic work. On top of that, you are working more than full-time hours on your actual sport. At least that is how it was for us in the football program that I was in.
You are talking practice during the season, is we used to start around 3:00. That means pre-practice starts at 2:30, 2:45. That means you have got to be in the training room by 2:00. That means you have got to be at the facility by like 1:00 because you have several meetings. You have a team meeting. You have a position meeting or special teams meeting. On top of that, you have to get your lift in still during that day. There are three different lifting groups. You are lifting at 6:00 AM or at 12:00 PM before the team meets.
This is just off the top of my memory about all the things. You have post-practice meetings. On top of that, you are getting home after all these post-practice meetings, the film, everything you are going over. You get home around 6:00 or 7:00. That is like early. You still have to do all your academic work on top of that. The reason why I am pointing all that out is, you have got to be able to deal with stuff when you are tired.
I am exhausted listening to that.
I view that as a skill. I do not know if everybody does, but you have got to be able to do stuff with your tired when you are tired, be able to perform. That is how it is on the field or the court or whatever sport you are playing. You start to get tired. Your opponent does not like to start trying less because you are tired. They actually pick it up harder if they see that you are tired. We used to have a rule in my program at USF, where when we were doing conditioning drills or anything.
On the field, at any point, you were never allowed to lean forward, put your hands on your knees, like you are rest. That was literally not allowed. You would have to immediately start doing up-downs if you were seen doing that. I hated that when I was an athlete, because you are exhausted and you want to just lean forward, rest. The mindset of that is really powerful. It is like, “Do not let anybody see that you are tired.”
Even when you are tired, pick up the slack, keep going. The most important thing is when you push through those moments of extreme fatigue or “I do not know how I am to be able to do this,” or “This is too much or too challenging.” Whenever you push through, there is always a moment where you actually do have time to rest. You can take your time. You can recoup your batteries. That stuff is important too. You need to be able to perform when you are tired.
Do not feel sorry for yourself sometimes. Just push through. Have the discipline, the perseverance to fight through that stuff. When you can, what you gain as an athlete, not everybody has that experience. Some people have that ability naturally, which is good for them. I definitely was not one of those types. It took that experience for me to, as an athlete, to learn those skills. Also, recognize that when you get out into the professional world, it is the same. You do not have.
I do not have defensive backs trying to press me off the line anymore, but I have a lot of other problems when I have a business, as I do now, that are presenting themselves, trying to create problems for me. How are you going to figure out how to manage that, do those things when you are tired? Not to mention all the personal life stuff that happens. My wife and I do not have a family yet, but maybe someday. There is more, more stress that is bound to come. That ability to be able to push through, to persevere, that to me is by far the biggest skill that you learn as an athlete.
That is amazing because absolutely the physical training that you had had to leak over into the mental training to just get through that. There is a podcaster that I have listened to for a long time. His name is Ed Mylett. He calls it separation season. As you were talking about the fact that you cannot rest on your laurels because your competition is not resting on their laurels, that is the separation season. It is being willing to do that little bit of extra that other people are not in the times when you are the most tired. That is what pushes you forward. Yes, I can absolutely see that being a huge skill that you bring forward as a founder CEO, because every day as an entrepreneur, sometimes it can feel like a kick in the head.
I kick in a lot of places.
Keep going. Let us talk about some of your mentors. We talked about one of your mentors who you saw working as a chiropractor on athletes, working on you. You still keep in touch with him to this day. Who are the other key mentors during your transition from college athlete to now graduate, moving into entrepreneurship? Who were some of those folks?
The first person, undoubtedly, I would not have gone to college without this person, played football in college without this person. My high school football coach, his name is Kim Nelson. He is still in Sioux Falls to this day, in the town where I grew up. He was a huge influence on my life, my ability to play football. He taught me so much about football at a young age that I had no clue. I just thought I was out there.
I thought I knew what I was doing. Absolutely, I had no clue what I was doing until he started coaching me up. He, his sons, Ross, and Joey were huge influences on my life. Because of what they taught me, I was able to play. You are looking at a pretty slow, non-athletic guy. They taught me how to run routes and how to get open.
God bless them for teaching me what to do out there. That is the first one for sure. I would not have gotten to college without my advisor, whom I introduced you to, Dr. Schultz. She was a huge help to me when I was in college. She was that little nudge in the back of my shoulder that was like, “I make sure that you are still showing up to bio at 8:00 AM on Tuesdays.”
I am like, “Yes, whatever.” You know how that goes when you are a nineteen-year-old. She was a great influence on me. She helped nudge me and constantly pushed me a little bit. Also, what I loved about her as an advisor was that she knew I was an athlete. Sometimes she would talk to me like an athlete. I would walk into her office.
She would go, “Josh, what the hell are you doing? Why are you skipping your class? Geez, you are being such an idiot.” I am like, “You are right, Dr. Schultz.” I really appreciate that from her. She had the guts to talk to me like that because sometimes you need a little butt kicking. You are like, “You know what? She is right.”
She is very authentic. You are right. You did introduce me to her. I distinctly remember when I met her. It was so funny because she was like, “Josh is doing pretty well, huh?” It was like one of those things where she was so happy and proud of you. At the same time, she was thinking of the younger Josh, going, “Sometimes this kid did not show up for class.” It was great that all these years later, you are like, “I got to introduce you to Dr. Schultz because she is such a game-changer in my life.”
I would say she would say I was one of her biggest likes, side aches. It was definitely needed for her encouragement. Thanks, Dr. Schultz. In that transition from undergrad to chiropractic school, one of my biggest mentors was Dr. Davey Farrar, who, ironically enough, actually works with our company now. He actually just moved out here to the DMV a few months back.
Now we work together. He was the head of the anatomy department while I was in my doctorate at Northwestern Health Sciences in Minneapolis. He and I became really close. I actually became one of his teaching assistants. How it works in our program is that you take gross anatomy one, then you take gross anatomy two.
Sometimes, if you did well in those courses, the professors would ask you if you wanted to be a TA, which was fantastic for me because I needed money. I was a broke grad school student. I was like, “I need some money, so this works.” On top of that, I get to keep studying. I get to help new students learn. It helped me keep my mind sharp, keep all those things that I learned in that coursework fresh in my mind.
That was a no-brainer. Through that time, he and I developed a really great friendship and mentorship. He has been a huge influence on my career. A lot of the way that I practice, still to this day, is some of the stuff that he taught me when I was, you know, a trimester one student at Northwestern.
Now you are working with patients. You are working with athletes. They look at you. I look at you as a trusted guide. How do you think your mentors influence the way that you show up for people, and you serve them on a daily basis?
For sure, the mentor that I just spoke of, Dr. Davey Farrar, influenced me a lot. The biggest way that he influenced me was by having a strong sense of empathy towards the patients that you was working with. Unfortunately, that the medical system that we have in America, there is a lot of emphasis on volume, a lot of emphasis on seeing more patients, being as productive as possible, no matter what part of the medical field that you are in, whether you are a chiro, whether you are a primary care physician, whether you are orthopedic surgeon, or whatever it is.
There is a lot of emphasis on volume. A lot of that has to do with the insurance situation in this country, how those networks are developed, set up. That is a whole other discussion for another day. What I really learned from him was having empathy, understanding that there is a human being in front of you. If the human being in front of you is dealing with something, emotionally, that emotional situation that they’re dealing with 100% of the time will manifest itself in the body in some way.
If the human being in front of you is dealing with an emotional situation, it will manifest in their body in some way. Share on XIf I go into an hour appointment, I can tell that something is off with my patient emotionally, just in how they are communicating with me. I would say the biggest thing that I do as a practitioner is that I am constantly reading people. I am reading your emotions. I am reading the microexpressions on your face. As I am speaking through what we are going to do for the appointment, if I see that there is something wrong on your face, I will stop the appointment immediately, and I will say to you, “Everything okay? Are you dealing with something right now that is bothering you?”
Forget the glute bridges that I taught you to do. Forget all the drill. That stuff is irrelevant if you are dealing with something inside that is really bothering you, really affecting you. It 100% will affect the appointment. I have had that happen to me so many times when you bring something like that up. I noticed that there is something wrong. I say to the client, “What is going on here?” All of a sudden, the client is in tears.
They are telling you something that happened. They are being really vulnerable. They are opening up with you. That is a really beautiful thing that people have the faith to say that to me, open up that way. What I notice, that the most beautiful part about it is that when those moments happen, if somebody does break down, they are having a bad day, or having some sort of emotion, as soon as they get that out of them, it is like everything is just cleared. All of a sudden, they are like, “Tell me about the football game.”
Their whole demeanor changes. Once that happens, then I know we are ready to start doing some actual work. That whole process, investing the time, that is why I love what we do, why we have 60 minutes, because in a ten-minute appointment, I do not have time to really give a crap about what emotions are going on in your life right now. After all, I have to go right now. I have to go fast because I have four other patients in the waiting room waiting for you. I would say that is probably the biggest thing that I learned from any mentor. Dr. Dave taught me that just to be empathetic.
I love that you touched on that because so many people, especially on college campuses these days, have issues with just their mental wellness. What you have said about the mental health of your patients, being able to not only read the body, which, as an athlete, you are probably reading body language all the time, so that you know to move left, move right, advance, stay put, is so important.
Another one of those skills we were talking about that you took from being an athlete, moved into this career as a chiropractor. On college campuses today, there is a lot with mental wellness that we are trying to tackle because, as wonderful as technology is, it can separate people in their ability to communicate. It can also separate people in their ability to see those very small nuances when you are face-to-face with an individual, if you are out of practice.
If you are always looking at a screen, you are probably missing those minute movements in people. That is something that you obviously are very adept at. When it comes to that, what would you say as far as mental wellness? What advice would you give to someone if they are physically feeling something in their body? What should they be checking beyond going to the chiropractor first? Maybe that is not their first line of defense. Maybe that is their first thought. What would you advise them?
The biggest thing for anybody who is dealing with whether it is just the stress of life, whether you are going through personal losses or grieving about something, or whatever the stressor may be, everybody needs to figure out whatever physical way they can do something to try to physically de-stress themselves. That is probably the biggest piece of advice I can give you. The literature on this is pretty strong.
When you are dealing with stress, when you have high cortisol levels, you need to physically dump that. You need to try to get some of that out of your system. Any sort of way to do physical exercise is the way. Whether you are somebody who loves to go on a walk, whether you are somebody who loves to get on a Peloton, whether you want to play tennis, whether you are a pickleball person, whatever the physical manifestation that you choose, whatever outlet you want, you have got to try to do something physical to try to get some of that stress out of you. Have fun.
Pick something fun. If you like playing volleyball, go play volleyball for 30, 45 minutes, an hour, whatever, but go have fun. Go do something physical. Get your blood flowing a little bit. I guarantee you that that is going to help take some of the edge off of that stress that you are dealing with. Sometimes, where people get in trouble is when they think, “I am dealing with this or that. I just feel sad. I just want to sit on my couch. I feel sad.”
That is actually the worst thing that you could do. You need to get up. You need to move. You need to try to be active. Going back to talking about that mental discipline, fortitude to push through, when you are going through those things, the best thing you can do is try to get active. I would say that is the best thing that you could do for yourself if you are dealing with any sort of situation. Physical fitness, physical movement are not going to fix everything in life, but the evidence is pretty clear that they are going to help you if you are dealing with a lot of stress.
Rolling Stone gathers no moss, right? Not only do we deal with mental wellness on campuses, but there is another big thing that we study here at TERN Mentoring. That has to do with the imposter syndrome. You are somebody who works with incredibly high-level athletes here in the DC region. We talked about the fact that you work with the Washington Spirit, that you have helped the US women’s national team, and even the Washington Commanders players. What is it like to step into those environments as a chiropractor to support people in their wellness?
This is how I would describe it. The imposter syndrome thing is funny because a lot of people feel that way. Whatever their field is, when you get close to those opportunities where you are like, “This is the highest level of my field.” Whether you are an architect, whether you are an engineer, whether you are a designer. In my instance, I am a chiropractor. When you get to those opportunities, I think about how I thought about athletics.
“I have prepared myself for this moment.” When you go through chiropractic, you chiropractic degree. It is basically three, a half years nonstop studying, practicing, technician over and over, repetition over and over, constantly over. It is so much repetition, so much coursework in such a short amount of time, that maybe that is a part of what I learned as an athlete. When those opportunities present themselves, I just think to myself, “You know what? I have done everything that I could possibly do to be prepared for this. I think that I am ready.”
Maybe that is blindness on my part. Maybe it is arrogance, but to myself, ” I have prepared a lot. I have spent a lot of time getting ready for this. I am to do the best that I can do.” On top of that, having the attitude of saying, “I am going to do the best that I can do.” Every time I try to work with pro athletes, I always say like, “How are you doing? How do you feel? Do you feel like this helped you?”
Do not be afraid to ask questions, especially when you are in a team environment like working with the Spirit. It has been phenomenal. There are a lot of medical professionals in that building, all working together. Communication is critical. Making sure that you are administering the care that you can give to the best of your abilities. Also, make sure that you are communicating with the athlete. You are communicating with the other medical staff to make sure, “Is this the treatment that you guys wanted? What do you think about this?”
Spitballing ideas with them, communicating with them is critical. To address the imposter syndrome, I would say just trust yourself. If you are in a position like in my field, if you are in a position to be even like an athlete wants to work with you, or you are getting close to that, for me, that was like the pinnacle of what I wanted to do. I had been prepping for that basically since I was twenty years old. I had been preparing myself for that moment. In my mind, I said, “Just go for it, have fun. Do not be afraid, just do what you think is right. Communicate appropriately.” That is how it all started for me.
Great advice on that. You obviously, as somebody who goes in, you prepare early, often. You feel good, even if it is a high-stress environment where imposter syndrome could leak in for other people. You are like, “I am here. I might as well make the most of it. I have prepared for this. I am doing this.” There is a no-fear attitude in that. Now I am going to flip the switch. Where have you shown up? You are like, “Did I royally mess that up?” Can you give us an example of that?
Sometimes, the times when I have messed up in my career are, at least for me as a provider, you must have systems in place, mental systems. What I mean by that is when you are working with a client, whether it is a pro athlete or whether it is a non-athlete, it does not even matter who it is. You have to stay diligent with your systems. This is something that I learned from one of my mentors, actually, Dr. Tim Stark, who was also at Northwestern, where I got my degree from.
Systems are critical. The mistakes that I have made in my career are when I deviated from the system. I will give you an example. When I do a new patient intake or a new patient exam, I am following in my mind a very set system in rhythmic flow that I want to follow to make sure that I am not missing anything. When you go through medical school or go through a chiropractic degree program, one of the classes that you take is how to do a proper intake.
How do you do a full history, a full medical background? As you become a provider, you get more experience, you nuance that, and make it fit what you do. For me, those instances where I made mistakes, whether it was a misdiagnosis or whether it was, “Shoot, I do not think I should have administered that treatment necessarily in that spot. I should have done it over here.” Any time that has happened, it is because I have deviated from that.
That is probably the biggest takeaway is like, again, part of it is imposter syndrome related, but find your system, stick to it, believe in your system. Do not deviate from that. When you figure out what your system is, what dogma you are going to be following, do it, stick to it. Do not deviate. Even if you are like, “This seems like the most simple of idiopathic low back pain.” It does not matter. Still follow the system. Still do what you have to do. If you do that, you are probably going to avoid a lot of those fudge-ups that I had in my.
Find your system and stick to it. Do not deviate from it. Share on XI still have to go back. You have to give us one of those fudge-ups. You have to tell us, like, was it specifically? How did you talk yourself through that, get over it, and still end up here? That is what a lot of students get a lot out of our failures, more than they get out of our successes. Although I am a big believer in the processes, because processes help take ambiguity out of things. That is a great tip, but you have got to give us one of the fudge-ups. You have got to tell us.
Can it be a business fudge-up? I have one that.
Yes, man, anything you want.
I would say the biggest fudge-up so far, when you are starting a business, a lot of people are approaching you, trying to offer you help to help you grow your business. Whether it is marketing, whether it is accounting services, there are a bajillion avenues to things that you need as a business owner for sure. There are a lot of people who are trying to say, “You should try this. You should try direct mail marketing.
You should try this.” The marketing part of it, in my opinion, was the biggest question mark of “I am a new business owner. How much do I invest in this? What do I want to do?” The biggest mistake that I made was, at least for my business, was not recognizing that my business is extremely interpersonal, extremely focused on networking, creating relationships, diving into those relationships, and fully committing to developing relationships with your community.
I spent a large amount of money on a couple of marketing ideas that did not really work out that well. I learned from that. I spent the money on it. We spent the money on it. What I really learned from that was, “This business for me is all about creating connection. It is all about having those those relationships,” which is why I love what you are doing with TERN, which is why it is so important to me, because when you have a especially a young student like they need to know what their network is, and how to develop a network.
They need to understand the importance of interpersonal communication, relationships. I would say that a big mistake for me was not recognizing that that was where I should be investing my money, my time. Do not in other ways, SEO, in digital marketing campaigns. For some businesses, that stuff might be successful, but for us, it did not pan out.
You have gone through your mess-ups. You have gone through your processes. You have recovered from that. I love the interpersonal because obviously I am all about the interpersonal. We want to connect people in that way. Talk to us now about going back to the students because you are a mentor to your patients. What about students who are like, “I am looking to be mentored. I want to go out there. I want to talk to my coach, my professor, this person that I met, who I really admire.” What kind of respectful or effective way would you say you can get into an interpersonal conversation with these students? How would you go about doing it?
First of all, number one is to talk to you guys at TERN. That is going to be the thing that they have got to do. No, but seriously, I might simplify it, but this is just my personality. If you see somebody in your community that you like, “This could be a really great opportunity for me to learn from them,” or all those parameters that you just set forward, go up to them, talk to them. Do not be afraid.
Sometimes, students might be intimidated that an adult in their field does not want to talk to them, or there could be some level of intimidation there. It could not be farther from the truth. I have had people who have come up to me as a nineteen-year-old still in college. They say, “I see what you are doing. I would love to like learn from you. I am going to be graduating from school in a couple of years. I would love to follow up with you once I have graduated.”
I am like, “Heck yes, that is awesome.” Most people in their field, when they see a young person who, first of all, has the guts to go up to you, say, “Nice to meet you. I am so and so. I am really interested in learning from you if there is any sort of opportunity.” That tells me everything I need to know about that student. That they have got the right stuff in them. I would say do not be afraid, just go ask them.
Go talk to them. Find a way to approach them. Maybe there is an opportunity for you to get their email. Maybe there is an opportunity for you to get their phone number, get their clinic number, and get their business number. At the end of the day, you have to assert yourself. You have got to assert yourself. You have got to go find that opportunity for yourself. Again, this is why I love what you are doing with TERN.
Those opportunities to shadow, learn from a mentor, and see things in the field. Frankly, you do not know if you know. It is funny. I said, “I wanted to go into chiropractic, sports chiropractic,” because I saw it personally. It happened to me. I saw exactly what it was like. I said, “I could totally see myself doing this. I loved it.” I did an internship in my curriculum, in my undergrad degree, where I got to shadow an orthopedic surgeon for a long time. I was like, “This is really awesome. I love this. I could do this.”
If you are a student, you are not investing in those things. You have no idea. You have no idea what you do not know. You do not know if you are going to like it. You do not know if you are going to love it. You could hate it. The best thing to do is to be assertive, go talk to them, and ask them. There is nothing wrong with approaching a professional, saying to them, “I am Johnny. I would love to learn from you if it is possible. Let me know if there is a day, potentially, I could come shadow you.”
I love that. That is what I tend to do because I like you enjoy connecting with people.
We are the same, yes.
We have got this wonderful wide world of the interweb. YouTube is fantastic, teaching us so many things. There is a masterclass this, a masterclass that. What would you advise people, as far as the balance between the interpersonal versus the “Dude, just Google it. Just look it up. You can figure it out online. You do not even have to talk to anybody.”
Yes, sure. The questions that I want to be asked are similar to things that we are talking about, like “What made you want to get into this field? What traits do you think I would need to perform and excel in this field? What are our certain skills that I should try to develop now, while I am an undergrad, or while I am in grad?” Like, “What are the certain things that you see that are skills that I should have?”
Frankly, especially in our field, you are going to get educated. It is not my job to teach you all that. You are going to go through that. If you are going to get to where I am now, you have to go through all those hoops. You have to take all your board exams. There are countless hours of studying that you have to do. No doctor, frankly, wants to teach you the basics of organic chemistry and go over. No one wants to really do that, if I am being honest with you.
What we do want to show you is the skills, the personality traits, and the mindset that it takes to be successful. That would probably bleed into most fields, especially fields that require advanced education to get into. Yes, those questions to me are the good questions. What are all those personality skills, traits, and things that you need? You are going to learn how to deliver an adjustment. You are going to learn how to do a side posture of A to P, P to A. I am talking in medical terms now, but you are going to learn all that stuff. What you are not going to know unless you talk to a professional in the field is all of the other skills, personality traits, and all those things that you need to be successful.
For the current student, specifically the student athletes, since that is where you hail from as well, listening to this podcast, they might be terrified about like what happens after, like what happens after college. Let us say I am in a major right now that I found interesting, but I do not know if that is going to be my career pursuit. I am not going to go pro, semi-pro, like, “I am so freaked out about what is going to happen after.” What would you say to them?
This is my favorite one so far. I would say I went through this big time. Athletes, when you go through a collegiate athletic experience, you are divulging so much of your time, your life into your sport. One day it is done. It is over. You do not have that anymore in your life. It almost feels like you are breaking up. Like you are going through a really tragic loss. That is how it felt to me. I went through a pretty big like moment of, I would say almost depression, where I was like, “What am I? This is a huge part of my life that is now gone.”
In college, we were lifting weights, training, and doing off-season programming. I do not think I took more than a whole week off for like five years. You are just constantly training. All of a sudden, then just be like, “You are done with this now.” Now you get to go into the professional world. It was definitely a challenge. I would say the advice that I would have is if you are an athlete or student-athlete out there, your career is coming to an end.
Those emotions are real. You do not have to try to suppress them. It is what it is. It is okay to feel like you have suffered a little bit of a loss because it is a huge part of your life. I still love football. I still have dreams about playing. I wake up before I can get on the field. I wish that I could still play, but you just accept that those emotions are real. It is what it is. It is okay to feel like you lost a connection to something.
Also, do not be afraid of it. It is okay. It is just a part of the evolution of life. What I would encourage people to do is to take all those skills, everything that we talked about that you learned, and just position them into whatever it is that you want to do next. Take your time to pick. You do not have to rush. Figure out what you want to do. If you want to be a chiropractor, great. If you are like, “I might need to do something else.”
Take a little bit of time to figure out what is next. That is fine, too. Do not ever lose those skills that you learn because you just spent so much time developing all those skills that we already discussed. It is the hard work, the discipline, the mental fortitude that it takes to be a student athlete. That is still in there. Do not let that go. It is okay to just recognize that those emotions are real. Go through that. When you are ready, focus on what you have to do next.
Do not ever lose the skills you have learned in your younger years. All that hard work, disappointments, and mental fortitude will prove useful in your adulthood. Share on XThat, to me, is what I wish somebody would have said to me. It would have maybe taken me a little less time to just conclude, because there is a denial phase. I went through. I remember thinking like, “What is wrong with like, why am I not, why am I not as motivated?” I remember thinking to myself, like, “It is not about football.” It is like, “I am more than just a football player. I am more than just a football player.”
When you spend so much of your time focusing on that one thing, it really feels like an emotional moment. Say goodbye to that. The biggest piece of advice I could give is to accept those emotions. It is okay. It is going to feel sometimes like you have a little bit of a loss, but take your time. Figure out what you want to do next. Take all those skills, plow forward. You are going to be a lot better off for what you went through.
That was so raw and so vulnerable. I just want to say thank you for that because that is going to resonate with a lot of people who are listening, particularly that student athlete. I have got to squeeze out one last bit of advice because here you are. You are definitely more than an athlete. I did not meet you as an athlete. I am so grateful to have you in my life as a chiropractor. As I said, I break myself quite often, it seems like. If you could write a short note to your younger athletic self, leave it on your locker room before a big game, what would that note say to the younger future Dr. Josh Angulo?
I would say the note would be probably quite simple and plain, but I would write something along the lines of “Trust yourself. Do not be afraid to make decisions, choices. Have fun.” I spent so much time in my career as an athlete, training countless hours. Especially with football, you only get like fourteen games, at least we did at the time. You only get fourteen chances to display each season. That is, if you look at it like you are only a football player. You are actually learning all these skills for the rest of your life. You get to apply it every single day. That to me is what I would say.
You display your excellence more than in fourteen games. Every single day, you are out there making people feel better, not just physically, but as you said, you are tied to that interpersonal emotional connection as well. That is what makes you so special to me. I want to say thank you so much for joining our show.
For anybody who is interested, you can find Dr. Josh Angulo at Optimum Wellness. Again, he and his team are in the DMV area. For those of you who are not familiar with DMV, this is the DC, Maryland, Virginia area. You can also check them out at OptimumWellness.com. We are going to have everything in the chat after our call. I just want to say thank you again, Dr. Josh. It has been a pleasure having you here.
Thanks for having me, Tina.
This is super fun. Have a great day out there. I will see you soon.
Thanks.
Dr. Angulo has also served as a part of the sideline medical staff for the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) as well as the NWSL’s 2022 championship match. Dr. Angulo also has experience treating the Washington Commanders as a part of the preseason for the 2022 – 2023 pre-season. Dr. Angulo obtained his doctorate degree with an emphasis in sports chiropractic from Northwestern Health Sciences University in Minneapolis, Minnesota (NWHSU).
During his time at NWHSU, Dr. Angulo also completed a master’s degree in exercise science and is certified in the Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA) levels 1 and 2, Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) level 1, TPI Medical Level 2, and completed a 100 hour Acupuncture Certificate. In his free time Dr. Angulo enjoys staying active at the gym, participating in sports like golf, flag football, volleyball, soccer, basketball, ping pong and spending time with his wife, Kara and their dogs, Murphy and Maeve.
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