As a part of this series, we had the pleasure to interview Dr. Trevor Turner.
Trevor W. Turner, MD, RMSK, is a board-certified Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation physician and Co-Founder of Pravida Health and CartiNova, a precision medicine company using multi-omics, advanced imaging, labs, and wearable data to deliver predictive, preventative, and personalized care. Pravida integrates DNA sequencing, metabolomics, AI-enhanced imaging, advanced blood panels, and digital health tools to create a “digital twin” that helps patients and clinicians better understand risk and guide care. Dr. Turner specializes in minimally invasive, image-guided orthopedic procedures using platelet-rich plasma and autologous cellular therapies. He is advanced-certified in diagnostic musculoskeletal ultrasound and serves as a laboratory director refining point-of-care cellular grafts. He trained at UT Southwestern, UCSF, and UAB, and spent four years at Andrews Orthopaedics treating elite athletes and Special Operations personnel. Dr. Turner is also an active healthcare entrepreneur, advisor, and national speaker focused on medical innovation and team performance.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to learn more about your personal background. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
I grew up in Dallas, Texas, and sports, especially football, were a major part of my early life. From a young age, I was a competitive player and eventually became a team captain and All-State athlete. When I was 16, I injured my spine for the first time. This forced me to make difficult decisions. I was torn between undergoing neurosurgery and trying to continue playing, or stepping back and rethinking my future.
I was always interested in medicine, and after extensive research and reflection, I realized that while I loved athletics, my strengths were more intellectual than purely physical. I declined surgery and instead committed to extensive rehabilitation and minimally invasive treatments. Over the years, my recovery followed a relapsing-and-remitting course, with periods of improvement, setbacks, and rebuilding.
That experience shaped everything that came later. It helped me empathize deeply with patients because I’ve lived through many of the same frustrations. More importantly, it made me passionate about helping people recover without having to give up the things they love, since losing that ability often creates a profound identity crisis, not just a physical one.
What or who inspired you to pursue your career working with high level professional athletes? We’d love to hear the story.
My earliest inspiration was my father, a deeply compassionate, old-school physician for whom medicine was truly his calling. At the same time, I worried about letting medicine completely consume my life, a concern I later had to confront in my own way. Early in my career, I was also influenced by Dr. Paul Farmer and his book Mountains Beyond Mountains. I worked in Haiti and sub-Saharan Africa and initially planned to pursue international family medicine. I even received a grant to work in pediatric HIV care. Eventually, I realized that while the work was meaningful, I wasn’t making the impact I hoped to at scale. After returning to the U.S., I explored trauma and surgery, and a mentor encouraged me to look into Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R). Once I saw how PM&R blended procedures with long-term patient relationships and focused on restoring function rather than just survival, it clicked.
Working with elite athletes, military special operators, and underserved communities gave me perspective. I came to see movement as medicine and access to high-quality musculoskeletal care as extending far beyond professional sports.
None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Was there a particular person who you feel gave you the most help or encouragement to be who you are today? Can you share a story about that?
There wasn’t just one mentor but a series of them, each appearing at pivotal moments in my journey. One such person was an attending physician during residency, someone I deeply respected who challenged me to examine how I functioned within teams. That experience pushed me toward greater self-awareness and better habits.
Building on this, Dr. James Andrews was another mentor who profoundly influenced me. He is among the most gifted and visionary physicians I have worked with. Observing how he thought differently and built systems that advanced medicine reshaped how I approach both care and innovation.
What advice would you give to a young person who aspires to follow in your footsteps and emulate your career?
I don’t think anyone should try to exactly emulate my career. I would say not to quit and never sell yourself short. Medicine and many professions tend to funnel people into narrow paths. You don’t have to accept a broken system just because it’s familiar. If you have a vision, courage, and a plan, you can practice on your own terms and make the work meaningful. Most people who become jaded feel trapped. You’re not. Step outside the mold and build something better.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
I’m most energized by work that translates what we’ve learned in elite performance settings into something accessible to everyday people. CartiNova is part of that effort, focusing on joint and cartilage restoration through advanced, less-invasive orthopedic approaches.
The goal is simple: restore function, preserve movement, and help people avoid unnecessary surgeries when appropriate. I’m also interested in integrating imaging, biologics, multi-omics, and wearable data to create a more predictive, personalized musculoskeletal ecosystem rather than reactive, one-size-fits-all solutions.
OK, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the core focus of our interview. As you know, athletes often face high stakes situations that involve a lot of pressure. Most of us tend to wither in the face of such pressure and stress. Can you share with our readers 3 or 4 strategies that you teach to optimize your mind for peak performance before high pressure, high stress situations?
High performers often follow a few key principles. They try to control what they can by making fewer decisions before stressful moments and sticking to simple routines. These routines — such as choosing what to eat, warming up, or focusing on a specific cue — help reduce stress and create a sense of stability. They also focus on a single important cue during performance and return to it when distracted. Rather than seeing stress as a problem, they view it as a sign they are ready to perform. If they make a mistake, they use a reset routine to keep it from affecting their next attempt.
How about your body? Can you share a few strategies that you use to optimize your body for peak performance?
When it comes to optimizing your body for peak performance, the fundamentals matter most. Prioritizing sleep is essential because it directly affects pain tolerance, recovery, and decision-making. Pairing strength training with mobility builds durability and helps the body hold up under stress. Nutrition should support stable, sustained energy rather than spikes and crashes, and training should be tailored to the actual demands of your sport or daily life, not just what looks good on paper.
These ideas are excellent, but for most of us in order for them to become integrated into our lives and really put them to use, we have to turn them into habits and make them become ‘second nature’. Has this been true in your life? How have habits played a role in your success?
Habits are at the center of my everyday life, and I have continued to prioritize them. I grew up and continue to be extremely high-energy and fast-processing. Rather than changing who I am to adapt to social norms, I built a routine around deliberate connection to purpose, sleep, nutrition, training, journaling, and technology that lets my strengths work with others rather than against me. Wearable data from glucose monitors, sleep tracking, and my smartwatch, have helped me refine my behaviors and build consistency over time.
Can you share some of the strategies you have used to turn the ideas above into habits? What is the best way to develop great habits for optimal performance? How can one stop bad habits?
You have to start smaller than you think. One of the most influential factors in my success has been tying new habits to existing routines. Track one meaningful metric for feedback like heart rate variability and make good habits easy and bad habits inconvenient. To break bad habits, I had to change the environment rather than rely solely on willpower. It was critical for me to replace the behavior with something healthier that meets the same need.
High-performance athletes often experience times when things are in a state of Flow. Flow has been described as a pleasurable mental state that occurs when you do something that you are skilled at, that is challenging, and that is meaningful. Can you share some ideas from your experience about how we can achieve a mind state of Flow more often in our lives?
Flow emerges when challenge and skill are balanced and the work is meaningful. Set a clear goal, remove distractions long enough to enter, and gradually increase the challenge. Flow lives just beyond comfort, not in chaos.
Do you have any meditation practices that you use to help you in your life? We’d love to hear about it.
I think of meditation as physiologically enhancing my vagus nerve. Five minutes a day focused on box breathing is enough. For people who struggle with sitting meditation, alternatives such as cold plunging, Wim Hoff breathing, or gratitude journaling can be equally effective.
What do you do to prevent injuries during your workouts or during your competitions?
It is essential to warm up with intention with some myofascial release techniques and to progress load gradually within both micro and macrocycles. Post workout sauna use seems to reduce muscle soreness and encourage more robust hormone health. When you feel fatigued and your resting heart rate is trending upwards, implement active recovery and maintain movement. If something hurts persistently, do not ignore it, as early diagnosis matters. Eating in a mindful way that builds a more diverse microbiome and minimizes glucose spikes and crashes helps to fuel maximum performance. Prioritizing adequate sleep and consistent recovery habits supports performance, resilience, and long-term health, allowing the body to adapt to training rather than break down. Arguably, these fundamentals matter most before layering in advanced strategies like supplements, IV therapy, peptides, or hyperbaric oxygen.
What type of workout regime has helped you to rehabilitate from injury?
Rehab works best when it’s phase-based, consistent, and tailored to the movements you need in life or sport. Using the OxeFit device, I have a stronger understanding of specific limitations from the adaptive resistance, force plate integration, and scalable data analytics. Using these metrics helps to integrate strength, mobility, and balance so that I can drive measurable progress. Then, I can make informed decisions about when to return to functional movements without limitation in CrossFit and the Tactical Games.
Ok, we are nearly done. You are by all accounts a very successful person. How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
Medicine is sacred work, and this mindset continues to ground me. The opportunity to be fully present with someone in their most vulnerable moments and to help restore what they’ve lost carries profound meaning.
At the same time, I’m driven to consider scale because this perspective fuels my work in education and innovation. The ability to prevent tens of thousands, or even millions, of unnecessary surgeries while restoring function represents impact at its highest level.
Can you share your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Why does that resonate with you so much?
One of my favorites is often attributed to Marianne Williamson:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. It is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
It resonates because people often hold themselves back not from lack of ability, but from fear of stepping fully into it.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them :-)
I would love to sit down with my grandfather Lt. Col William Woodworth, a World War II veteran with three Purple Hearts. He lived through the Great Depression and embodied a resilience that feels increasingly rare in today’s ever-changing landscape. While I knew him as a child, I’d love to speak with him now as an adult to learn how he endured and made sense of it all.
Thank you for sharing these insights!
