Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/1089662
t m c » p u l s e | m a r c h 2 0 1 9 23 He ended up winning the pro-tour title there in 2011, so he moved to Canada in 2012 and then entered the United States on a sports visa in 2013. "I've been back and forth for the last six years riding full time on the professional circuit," Thomas said. "I moved to the United States to make the national finals and be a world champion one day." Despite his injuries, Thomas is more certain than ever that he'll get there. "I'm definitely more fit and agile and fast and stronger than I've ever been," he said. "These guys went to school to study how the human body works in a performance aspect, and once they put that together with an understanding of the rodeo event that I do, they've helped me target the muscle groups that I need specifically for what I do. There's no amount of training you can do to prepare yourself for a bucking horse—you can't simulate the violence that the bucking horses have toward your body in a gym. You just can't. But what we do in here is we prepare so that I'll have full control over my body so it'll minimize injury." Maintaining health and fitness year-round is the key to success. In rodeo, the most consistent guys win, Thomas said. "It's just being flawless in your technique and being able to ride every single kind of horse," he added. Despite 15 surgeries prior to the last one in Fort Worth, Thomas had never undergone any type of physical therapy before arriving at the IRONMAN Sports Medicine Institute. And that just may hold the key to his championship title. "I've never rehabbed before in my life," Thomas said one day at the gym. "So he's a true cowboy," Duncan observed. had a couple of hip surgeries he'd never rehabbed—both hips were reconstructed—so we're working on those, too. It's hard to recover in rodeo. You ride and then you're off to the next rodeo, you sleep on the way, then you're riding again." Duncan and Schmidt monitor Thomas' schedule and progress regularly, even on the weekends when they're not at work. Schmidt has also created a warm-up schedule for Thomas to complete before each competition to reduce the risk of injury and help with soreness and inflammation. "I used to get much sorer and more inflamed before I did the competition workout he made for me," Thomas said. "We might drive 12 or 14 hours or something and ride a bucking horse and use everything we have and use all our adrenaline and the lactic acid is flowing, and then we have to jump back in the car and sit for another 10 or 12 hours, so you get sore and stiff easily." It's an incredible amount of strain on a body, but for Thomas, it's worth it. Growing up in Western Australia, Thomas was first introduced to horse riding when he was 12 years old. "I kind of had a bit of a rough childhood and I decided to move away from home. I went to agricultural boarding school in the middle of nowhere," he said. "I ended up moving to a cattle station with friends of mine that I went to school with, and we had a lot of wild horses and wild cattle, so I was kind of drawn to the danger of it and I never really got hurt that much and it was something that I just always had a craving for and something I was good at." He fell into rodeo after that, competing and winning at local competitions. He decided to move to the eastern states in Australia, where the pro-rodeo circuit was and set small goals for himself.