Jeremy Renner’s trainer, Christopher Vincent, opened up for the first time to People magazine about the actor’s physical therapy following his snow plow accident in January. The incident left the “Hawkeye” actor hospitalized with blunt chest trauma, orthopedic injuries and over 30 broken bones in his body. Nearly three months later, Renner walked the red carpet with a cane at the world premiere of his Disney+ series “Rennervations.”
“He’s an extremely unique and rare person. I’ve worked with hundreds and thousands of athletes, celebrities, regular people, and it’s really a special personality that has that drive and determination,” Vincent said. “[He will] get through it to where you are back stronger than you were before the accident.”
Vincent is a chiropractic sports physician and trainer who Renner has been working with since 2011. As expected, Vincent said that Renner’s pain in the first weeks after the accident was “excruciating.”
“I mean, it’s bad enough with one of those traumas,” Vincent said. “The fracture through his tibia was so severe that that alone…mentally you can’t deal with that much pain.”
“When you’ve got 30 of those, your body is just sending pain signals to your brain from every part of your body. You can’t override them,” Vincent continued. “You’re mentally just trying to quiet them down. It’s happening 24 hours a day, so it’s not like he gets a reprieve when he’s sleeping. It doesn’t sleep, so it’s affecting your sleep, and that lack of sleep is affecting your recovery.”
Vincent started Renner’s physical therapy by getting the actor on an anti-inflammatory diet and providing him supplements that help reduce inflammation and the “pain signals getting to his brain.” Renner was also “meditating and just trying to calm himself to override this.”
“As he’s in bed, we’re moving his shoulders, moving his hips, moving his limbs,” Vincent told People. “Just trying to fire off some of those signals and keep the joints from freezing up, keep him moving.”
Vincent turned Renner’s home “into a full rehab center,” adding, “We just started shipping things to his house. His mother was there going, ‘What’s this box? What is this machine?’ I’m like, ‘Just put it in the living room. We’ll use it later.’”
Rehab equipment included an exercise bike and the NASA-developed Boost Treadmill, an anti-gravity treadmill that changes the amount of weight Renner could put on his limbs while walking. Renner posted videos to Instagram of both machines during his rehab.