Ben Reid spun out of injury trouble with the help of ballet

WITH his career at the crossroads and emotionally drained from repeated failed comebacks, Ben Reid was desperate for answers. He found them in an unlikely place.

Ben Reid dives for a loose ball.

BEN Reid walked into the Arts Centre, desperate for answers.

His career was at the crossroads and emotionally, the anguish of another season’s worth of soft tissue setbacks was turning the laid-back country boy into a more stressed and anxious person.

He wasn’t enjoying the lonely rehab training at the club, and wasn’t keen to socialise.

“My girlfriend, Erin, did it tough because I was would come home and probably be selfish. She wanted to do things (with friends) but I was too frustrated,” Reid said.

“I just worried about my body.”

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He wanted to play football and, in late 2014, was yet to begin the radical actovegin (calf blood) injection program and shock treatment in Berlin that has helped sporting superstars Usain Bolt and Kobe Bryant.

But what has really transformed Reid from a broken-down footballer two years ago into an All-Australian contender this year was a form of ballet training.

Reid, 27, first met Australian Ballet body conditioning expert Paula Baird-Colt at the end of a harrowing 2014. He was immediately blown away.

“I remember watching these girls who weighed about 40 kilos and I’m closer to 100kg and they were making me look like a weakling, really,” Reid said.

“I would be doing some of the same exercises, and I’d be shaking.

“It was all about holding certain positions for extended periods of time to get stronger.

“They were in there for eight hours a day, working on their body, it was phenomenal. I really looked up to them.

“And Paula has been (pauses), well, the stuff I’m doing now I don’t think I would be doing if it wasn’t for her.”

Ben Reid can’t hide his frustration after suffering another injury setback against Brisbane last year. Picture: George Salpigtidis

At the start it was tedious, if not excruciating, work for up to two-and-a-half hours at a time.

And teammates took the mickey and joked about the No. 8 draft pick performing “pirouettes out on the field”.

“The funny thing now is that about 20 blokes, or probably half the (Collingwood) list, go and see her,” Reid said, laughing.

“They were hanging crap on me, but now the tables have turned.”

Baird-Colt warned there would be no quick fix. It would take Reid no less than 12 months to fully rebuild his body and correct all the muscle imbalances and weaknesses that haunted him.

I was thinking, ‘Is this even working?’. Every time it happened you wondered, mentally, how you could keep backing up?

- Ben Reid

The premiership swingman’s right calf was the main problem. The crisis point arrived in Round 21, 2014 against the Brisbane Lions, when he lasted less than one minute, this time going down with a hamstring tear in only his fourth game of the season.

He went to Germany in early 2015 for controversial therapy, but Reid said last season felt like a soul-destroying carbon copy of the year before, with each comeback followed by a setback.

He said the low point occurred mid-last year, as he set himself for yet another return.

The Bright product tried to run some laps at Collingwood’s Olympic Park training base, but felt the dreaded twinge in the back of his leg — and the immediate crush of despair.

“I got to the far side (of the oval) and I felt it go again and I just thought, ‘Are you kidding me?’,” he said.

“How can this be happening again? What is the problem? I was so frustrated.

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“I was doing the stuff with Paula, and, yeah, I was thinking, ‘Is this even working?’. Every time it happened you wondered, mentally, how you could keep backing up?

“But she said that it was only a little hiccup, it is going to happen because of how far back I was coming from.

“But every time I went to the medical centre I think I had a camera in my face.

“The most frustrating thing was that people kept asking me ‘When are you going to get back?’. All you can say is, ‘As soon as I can. Hopefully, soon’.”

The turning point came towards the end of last year when Reid strung together the last five games of last season, growing in confidence with each one.

He took only two weeks off in the summer break and started a pre-season running program earlier than ever before.

Things are looking up for Ben Reid this year. Picture: Michael Klein

This year, despite another setback that sidelined him for all three NAB Challenge games, the 195cm linchpin has flourished as one of the competition’s premier key defenders.

Reid’s intercept marking and precision kicking has been a silver lining to Collingwood’s up and down season, with teammates believing the key defender’s form has been as good as his 2011 All-Australian campaign.

The 114-gamer (in his 10th AFL season) still sees Baird-Colt up to four times a week, mostly in his own time.

“I’ve definitely grown more resilient out of it all, and more mature,” he said.

“My professionalism has gone to an even higher level.”

Immediately upon his Round 2 return, it was clear how important Reid is to Collingwood, settling in defence after previously mixing his backline work with semi-regular forward assignments.

“Against Richmond, I felt like I just settled in and took a couple of marks,” he said.

“Reading of the play is probably the hardest thing to get back, but I felt I got that and it is great to be back playing again.

“I have missed a lot of footy over the past few years and there have obviously been a lot of low points. But I always had that confidence that I could get back to playing some decent football.

“But this is the first time in my career where we haven’t been winning, so it’s been tough from that point of view.

“Now there is another challenge to try and turn that around and get back on track as a team.”

Ben Reid enjoys his return to footy with coach Nathan Buckley. Picture: Colleen Petch

PIE’S SHOCK THERAPY

BEN Reid received multiple calf blood injections in his back and leg every day for one week, as part of his unconventional soft-tissue treatment in Germany last year.

The Collingwood backman also wore a vest which sent electric pulses through his body during exercise as part of the dramatic bid to cure his chronic problems.

“They use this vest to turn on every muscle in your body, it was the weirdest thing ever because it would shock you,” Reid told the Herald Sun.

“It was nuts. You would do an exercise — like a push-up on a bosu ball — and you were using 70 per cent of your muscles, but the vest would turn on all of the muscles around them as well.”

Reid this week opened up on the AFL-approved trip to see soft tissue guru Hans-Wilhelm Muller-Wohlfahrt, who had previously treated former Cat Max Rooke and ex-Tiger Mark Coughlan.

Nicknamed Healing Hans, the former Bayern Munich club doctor has helped fix some of the biggest names in world sport, including sprint champion Usain Bolt, soccer king Ronaldo, tennis ace Boris Becker and basketball legend Kobe Bryant.

Reid said the trip was “at a time when I was pretty angry and was not enjoying coming in (to the club) every day, and sitting in the altitude room by yourself”.

He said the actovegin, or calf blood injections, helped stimulate the problematic scar tissue in his leg muscles.

“I went in every day for seven days and had a few (injections) in my hamstring, a few in my calf and back,” he said.

“I don’t want to say how many, but there was enough.

“With the needling and stuff, it’s not really something people want to talk about here, but over there it’s the norm.

“He was even saying he would have guys — if they came off the soccer training track with a tight hamstring — he would put some actovegin in straight away, and they would be all right.”

Collingwood offered to send injury-ravaged speedster Nathan Freeman to Munich but the midfielder declined before joining St Kilda in last year’s trade period.

Reid said he received a definite short-term boost at the start of last season, despite suffering more soft tissue problems throughout the year.

BEN REID

SuperCoach points: 84 (elite)

Disposals: 18 (elite)

Kick rating: +5.2% (above average)

Metres gained: 309 (elite)

Intercept possessions: 8.2 (elite)

Intercept marks: 3.3 (elite)

Source: CHAMPION DATA

Originally published as Ben Reid spun out of injury trouble with the help of ballet