Meet Mitchell Schroeder | Physical Therapist and Athletic Trainer

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

Hi Mitchell, where are you from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?

I’m proud to say that I’m a Colorado native having grown up on a ranch in Franktown, CO. Actually, according to my parents, they ended up finding that property when I was an infant and had colic. I would only sleep in the car, so they were out driving one day when they found 50 acres of land for sale. They decided to end up buying it, building a house and a barn on the land and that’s where I grew up. My sister, her fiancé and my mother still live there over 30 years later.

Growing up on a farm had a lot of responsibilities that at the time, I wasn’t a big fan of. We’d have to get up often around 5:30-6:00am to go take care of the animals before school (we had horses and pigs). A lot of our weekends were spent helping with chores as there’s never a shortage of work to be done on a farm. As a teenager, I’d complain about not getting to sleep in, or wanting to go spend time with friends instead etc. but in hindsight, growing up that way was such an incredible opportunity!

It may sound cliche, but I learned a lot about responsibility, time management, expenses, the value of a hard day’s work, the desire to work with my hands and be outdoors as much as possible. As I’m older now with a son of my own, I see a lot of future weekends at Grandmas helping her and my sister to manage all the tasks on the farm. I’m sure he’ll complain just as I did, but hopefully he’ll also learn some of those same values over time.

In addition to growing up on a ranch, I owe much of who I am today to my parents. They were both in the medical profession as well, my mother a nurse and my father a respiratory therapist. It was actually my dad who was the first to suggest that a career in physical therapy may interest me as a way to stay involved in athletics my entire life. That piqued my interest and so in my senior year of high school, I took a Career Internship class and spent one semester in an outpatient PT clinic and the other following hospital based physical therapists. After doing that, I knew that was what I wanted to do!

Or so I thought…when I went to college, I was studying Exercise Science on a pre-PT pathway and part of that entailed working as a student athletic trainer. I fell in love with that environment and the feeling of camaraderie that is so unique to sports. I started to think that might be a better career option. However, instead of making a decision between the two, I decided to pursue both in Graduate School which is how I ended up at Shenandoah University in Virginia. At that time, it was the only school I found that had a specifically designed Dual Degree program to receive both your Masters in Athletic Training and your Doctorate in Physical Therapy.

I grew up playing a wide variety of sports, much like most kids. As I grew older, I really settled into playing soccer as my primary sport and I had such a passion for playing! That passion allowed me to continue playing collegiately at the NAIA level and then gave me the opportunity to do an internship with DC United of MLS when I was in graduate school. Even now, I coach youth soccer teams with Boulder County United and also do all of the athletic training for the club. I’ve been involved in soccer since I was about 5 years old, and I can’t imagine a future without some aspect of soccer remaining in my life!

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
As with any journey to starting your own business, mine was a winding road. I started my career out in a traditional outpatient physical therapy facility in California. It was a high volume clinic, and though seeing 11-18 patients a day was great for building my clinical experience fresh out of school, it didn’t take too long before I started feeling burnt out. After about three years there, I realized there wasn’t any potential for career advancement and I didn’t feel like I was providing the quality of care to my patients that they deserved.

At that same time, my friend and roommate from PT school was a few months into starting his own PT clinic out of the CrossFit gym we attended. I decided to take the leap and join him in working to grow and build a clinic that truly had an emphasis on patient focused care. We worked for two years and had great success, not only professionally, but also personally as we both found that feeling of burnout was gone. Even though it was a constant grind to build a new business, when it’s something you have passion for, it doesn’t feel like pointless effort.

Unfortunately, after two years of great growth and experience there, my father was diagnosed with cancer and I made the decision to move back to Colorado to be closer to my family. I was worried that it would be difficult to find a job that I was so passionate about again, but that’s when I found Colorado Sports Chiropractic and the owner, John Minen. He was a chiropractor who had the vision of building a multi-disciplinary clinic that also had a focus on providing “Olympic quality care” to all of their patients. I shared in his vision and always had the dream to be part of a multi-disciplinary team as I felt that different backgrounds and experiences really provided the diversity that patients could truly benefit from. I joined as an independent contractor with the responsibility of growing the physical therapy side of the clinic and I have been greatly enjoying the past three years there and everything the Boulder community has to offer!

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Living in Westminster and working in Boulder, there’s so much to do in this area! I’d say some of the musts would be hitting Pearl Street in Boulder to check out all of the shops, restaurants etc that it has to offer. Wonderland Brewing by our house would be another spot for some great food, drinks and a round of putt-putt golf. A few hikes would also be in order, including some of the classics like hiking the Flatirons and Sanitas. A day trip up to Estes Park would also be great. We could go into Rocky Mountain National Park and go hiking or snowshoeing depending on the time of year and visit downtown Estes to also check out all of their unique shops and restaurants.

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’d like to dedicate my shoutout to my family (my sister – Mikayla, my Mom – Lynne, my Dad – Gary who’s now passed, my wife – Melissa, and my son – Grant), all of my professors at Shenandoah University who were fantastic instructors and helped install a passion for my career. My former roommate and friend, Patrick Everett, who took a gamble with me to help him grow his own Physical Therapy clinic and thus gave me the vision to find alternative avenues to provide the highest quality of patient care. And finally, John Minen, the owner of Colorado Sports Chiropractic and the whole team at Colorado Sports for allowing me to work in such an amazing, multi-disciplinary clinic where the focus of our patients is the highest priority.

Website: https://www.coloradosportsphysiotherapy.com

Image Credits
Erica Johnson at EJMJ Photography