Jeremy Renner Says 'Sprinting' Up His Driveway Gave Him 'Hope' After Being Told He'd 'Never Walk Again' (Exclusive)

“You can’t keep progressing without failing. I’m progressing,” the 'Mayor of Kingstown' star tells PEOPLE

Jeremy Renner is celebrating his wins.

More than a year after his traumatic snow plow accident, the Mayor of Kingstown star, 53, has been focused on his recovery and returning to a new normal.

In order to do that, Renner has partnered with Brooks Running for their newest “Let’s Run There” campaign, and he says the fact that he can even move at all — never mind run — is a miracle.

“I was barely walking, so I didn’t know what these shoes were going to do for me,” Renner tells PEOPLE of his condition following the near-fatal incident in January 2023 and the subsequent sneaker gift he received from Brooks Running.

Renner was helping his nephew get a stuck vehicle out of the snow when he was run over by a 14,300-lb. snowplow on Jan. 1, 2023. The actor broke more than 30 bones and had to undergo multiple surgeries as a result.

After coming home from the hospital, Renner stayed focused on his recovery, no matter how small his steps of progression were. He says he started by wearing his new kicks around the house until he felt strong enough to take it to the next level.

“When I really got to use them was one day after a workout, maybe 10 months into the recovery,” the actor recalls. “I was feeling really great and strong, and I felt pretty good about trying to move around in these things and see if I could do it.”

Related: Jeremy Renner Says He Had 'a Lot of Callousness Squashed Out' by Accident: 'I Feel Wonderfully Sensitive' (Exclusive)

That day, Renner was able to skip down his driveway, and his trainer filmed the moment. Naturally, Renner’s next instinct was to turn around and run all the way back up.

“I said, ‘I'm going to try to sprint up this thing,’” he says, “and I did.”

In fact, Renner says he sprinted along the driveway “a couple of times” after realizing he could do it, and the feat really struck him.

“For me, it meant so much because to go from a wheelchair and limping around with the cane and [being] told you’re never going to walk right again and you're never going to run again, it was pretty hopeful for me," he explains. "It gave me an ally.”

Renner says the knowledge that he was improving and the hope that he’d continue this upward progression served as “a superpower or a fuel,” for him, much like when a “Jedi gets a lightsaber."

“You got something on your side. When you get hope, hope is a powerful ally. A lot of things help us build hope, and progress helps us build hope. That's the easy one," he says. "Failures don't feel like they do, but they also really fuel hope because you could get progress out of failures. You can't really keep progressing without failing. You got to have both. You have to fail to succeed.”

Related: Jeremy Renner Is 'Full of Gratitude and Inflammation' While Out for a Jog: 'Be Better, Get Stronger'

And, while Renner has accepted that his recovery will be “for the rest of my life,” he is happy to report that he’s always making new strides (literally).

“I'm progressing. I'm waiting for [Brooks] to get some spike tracks out after this, and [then] we're sprinting," he says with a laugh.

The star is also making strides behind the scenes of his Paramount+ show Mayor of Kingstown, where he even performed his own stunt work for the upcoming third season.

"The stunt work, it was pretty violent – and surprising that I was even able to attempt it, for me personally. I wasn't sure I was gonna be capable of it, but in the first episode, we were surprised, no injuries," Renner said in a featurette shared exclusively by PEOPLE.

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Season 3 of Mayor of Kingstown premieres Sunday, June 2 on Paramount+.

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