A series of concussions not only ended Tommy Shavers’ football career when he played for the University of Central Florida; it led to cognitive decline that doctors told him would only get worse.
Shavers set out to develop a training regimen to improve his cognitive health, he said at tech convention Synapse Orlando on Oct. 15. “I refused to accept that narrative. I made a commitment that if it's never been done before, I’ll be the first.”
Nearly 20 years after he played his last game at UCF, Shavers launched Orlando-based Nestre Health & Performance Inc. in 2018. The company got a big boost when it was accepted into the first cohort of the Lead Sports & Health Tech Accelerator in Lake Nona last year.
The company also has a crew of active and retired professional athletes as investors and partners who back Nestre’s training method to improve brain health and mental wellness. Two of them, retired Detroit Lions wide receiver and NFL Hall-of-Famer Calvin Johnson and Olympic gold medalist Michael Cherry, streamed in to Synapse Orlando to discuss the effect Nestre’s methods can have on athletics.
Central to Nestre’s training is a “mindset profile” developed through a 10-minute survey, said Shavers, founder and CEO of Nestre. For example, Johnson’s mindset profile revealed a balanced mind that was rarely too high or too low emotionally and demonstrated “temperament, laser focus and determination,” Shavers said.
The Nestre mindset profile wasn’t available when Johnson played football; he retired two years before the company launched. However, it appears this balanced mindset helped Johnson during his football career. While the wide receiver nicknamed “Megatron” set the NFL record for most receiving yards in a season, he also played for one of only two NFL teams to finish a season with a winless 0-16 record: the 2008 Detroit Lions.
Despite playing several losing seasons in his career, Johnson said he always was able to reset his focus the next season and not linger on past mistakes. “When you get into high-stress situations, people react differently. You either can evolve or react the same.”
Meanwhile, Cherry’s mindset profile shows he performed better when he makes plans before a major undertaking, Cherry said. A member of the U.S. 4 x 400-meter relay team at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Cherry trained with Nestre leading up to the games, Cherry said. “It allowed me to see I’m the type of guy that needs to plan stuff out before going out there. Before, I was going to a gunfight with a knife.”
Next, the company will offer brain health training and exercise routines based on a customer’s mindset profile through its app. Nestre will launch its app before the end of the year, Shavers said.
Nestre is another example of efforts to build a sports and health tech industry cluster in the southeast Orlando community of Lake Nona. Berlin-based sports tech startup accelerator Lead established its first U.S. incubator in Lake Nona in 2020, and it’s helping local companies like Nestre grow while also drawing out-of-state firms, like Portland, Maine-based KinoTek Inc., to the region.
“What’s being built there is truly game-changing,” previously said KinoTek co-founder and CEO Justin Hafner.
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