Meet Josh Landis | Massage Therapist, Personal Trainer, Holistic Bodyworker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Josh Landis and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Josh, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I decided early on in my life that my health needed to always be a priority. I also knew that whatever I chose to do with my career, that I wanted to have direct impact on making peoples’ lives better. Becoming a health-based practitioner was a no brainer.

What that looked like, I was less sure about in the beginning. I declared psychology as my area of study during my freshman year of undergrad, but I decided pretty quickly that I preferred to focus more on physical health. Growing up, I always had one injury or another stopping me from doing the things I loved to do. My relationship with sports was on-off because of injuries. As a freshman in college, I discovered a love for strength training and using it to support my body and make it more resilient and capable. I decided that exercise was going to be the way I helped clients. I decided to study kinesiology and never looked back.

I started out as a personal trainer in a big box gym. But I quickly realized that the nature of corporate gyms are more about hitting sales numbers than about helping people improve their quality of life. I just don’t jive with that culture. I chose this career path to help people, not to milk them for corporate greed. I knew I would need to go out and do my own thing at some point. I’ve also come to realize within the last handful of years that I am actually quite neurodivergent, and thus working within a system and culture that doesn’t work well for me and how my brain works was going to be very challenging. Being my own boss just made sense. I’ve been on my own for over 10 years now, and have been able to help many clients heal, overcome their pain and other physical limitations, and it has been a very rewarding career thus far.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
When I started out as a personal trainer, my emphasis from day one was to help clients with pain and dysfunction moreso than focusing on aesthetic or body composition goals. Getting someone out of pain is much more of a challenge than getting someone more fit. Naturally, there was a lot more I needed to learn if I was going to help people in the way that I wanted to.

My natural curiosity led me to go down many rabbit holes learning as much as I could that I could use to help my clients get better results. I studied like a maniac. Biomechanics, anatomy, kinesiology, functional neurology, etc. I became a massage therapist, learned different applied kinesiology techniques, manual therapy techniques, and even energy-based and psycho-somatic techniques.

Even with all that knowledge, it’s taken me the better part of 10 years to be able to put it all together in a way that feels comprehensive, as effective as possible, and that I feel fully confident in. They say it over 10,000 hours of practice to master anything. While I’m always striving to improve, I feel confident in calling myself as master of my domain. When clients see me, they get results.

There have been and continue to be many challenges. Running your own service-based practice is incredibly demanding. When you’re a sole operation, it requires you to wear many hats. I’m the CEO, CFO, primary accountant, marketing director, HR, etc. of my business. Doing it all can be exhausting sometimes. As much as I can confidently say that I’m a master of what I do, I can also admit that the business-side of things is something I’m still very much learning as I go.

As with any business large or small, there are always ups and downs. Sometimes you’re busy and have a super full schedule, and sometimes things go a little dry. Sometimes your clients are not always ideal clients, and can be difficult to work with. Sometimes marketing can be tough, especially when the primary techniques you use, as incredible and effective as they might be, are just not known by people. Word of mouth and clients successes have always been my primary marketing success.

Perhaps the biggest challenge I notice for myself, is the feeling of not being able to create even more of a positive impact on more peoples’ lives. I only have so much time and energy, and thus can only work with and help so many people. My goal is to continue to find ways to help more people heal and become realize their full potential in this life.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
If I’m being honest, I’m both a homebody and an adventurous soul. My favorite things about Denver tend to be outdoors. I love taking my truck out on the weekends and 4x4ing. I love going out into the mountains to hike, camp, visit hot springs, and connect with nature. I love how dog friendly it is. The Denver Nuggets are the best they’ve ever been, and

In showing a visiting friend the best time ever, I’d kick it off with grabbing some breakfast burritos from Santiago’s, and then heading out for a nice little weekend overlanding trip out to Idaho Springs to do some 4x4ing, hiking, and camping. After that, I would opt to take my friends to a few local breweries and distilleries. Then later than evening, go to a Nuggets game, which would likely be a win (we always win at home!).

Denver has everything to offer, but especially if you love the outdoors and have a strong sense of adventure. I love it here!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I’ve had many amazing people I’ve connected with over the course of my career so far. In general I want to shoutout all of the amazing people I have met throughout my process of furthering my education and skills. There are so many inspiring and passionate people in this field who are doing amazing work, and helping to heal the world. It inspires me to know that are dedicating their lives to helping others, and bettering themselves in the process.

Specifically, I’d like to shoutout my colleagues at Denver Pain and Performance Solutions. Each one of my colleagues at DPPS are amazing practitioners, compassionate healers, and ultimately are amazing people at their core. We have a very special team of people, and I think we are one of, if the not the best collective of healers in Denver. I’m grateful to associate and work with such talented and loving people.

Website: www.integratedstrength.training

Instagram: integrated_strength_training

Youtube: UCHSQrjAhOWgNYM287rb4n2w

Image Credits
JcArtistry