Physio the perfect choice for former footy star

Alan Obst remembers it clearly. He was a football-mad kid in his first year of high school in Adelaide when his teacher asked him and his classmates a timeworn question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” 

The young Alan had no hesitation. He picked up his pencil and scribbled down his answer. 

“I didn’t even have to think about it,” he says. “I wanted to play AFL football and I wanted to be a physio. Having that in place from such a young age has really helped to streamline my career, because I’ve always had specific goals to focus on.” 

A few years later, Obst had kicked the first of those two goals, playing his AFL debut for the North Melbourne Kangaroos. But his opening match was cut short when he was injured during an on-field collision, breaking his rib and puncturing his lung. 

It was a sign of things to come, as Obst’s AFL career was to be dogged by injury. 

“I definitely had more downs than ups in professional football,” he says.   

Thankfully, the second of his goals was already in play. 

When Obst first moved to Melbourne after securing his spot on the Kangaroos’ playing roster, he studied exercise science units at ACU, with a long-term view to become a physiotherapist. 

He describes his decision to combine sport with study as “one of the best choices I’ve ever made”. It meant that when he returned to Adelaide to see out his footy career in the SANFL, he was able to honour his promise to his teenage self, scoring a job in a physio clinic with a focus on sports injuries.

While the transition from athlete to clinician was tough at the beginning, he soon found his feet in physio. 

“As a kid I was the universe’s biggest AFL fan – I knew every player’s name and I lived and breathed footy,” Obst recalls. “Alongside that obsession, I was really interested in the human body and what it’s capable of, and so physio was a great way to put my interest in science and human anatomy together with my love of sport. It was the perfect choice.”  

A golden opportunity 

Things couldn’t be better for Alan Obst when he secured a job in the other sport he played and loved as a youngster: cricket. 

For almost four years, he was a physiotherapist for the South Australian Cricket Association, preparing Redbacks players to compete in the first-class Sheffield Shield competition. 

Being back in a team sporting environment was a homecoming of sorts for the former athlete, who described the role as “the best job in the world”. 

“Sport is where I feel like I belong,” says Obst, who took on the role in 2018. “I fell more in love with cricket as I learned more about the sport, and working in that team environment with the Redbacks while living in Adelaide, it was just a really great time of my life.” 

Then, in the lead up to his wedding with fiancée Jamie in early 2022, Obst answered a call to provide treatment to an unnamed female tennis player who was in Adelaide for an Australian Open warm-up event. 

While Obst expected to be treating a low-ranked qualifier, the unnamed player ended up being the former world number one Victoria Azarenka, a two-time Open champion.

Alan with Victoria Azarenka.

So impressed was Azarenka that she asked Obst to join her entourage and trot the globe as her personal physiotherapist. Before long, he was buckling in for the ride of a lifetime. 

“It was an amazing experience,” says Obst, who lived and travelled with Azarenka from April 2022, his wife Jamie joining him when she could. 

“Tennis was a completely new sport for me, so in that sense it was daunting to be responsible for treating one of the world’s elite players. But I was really honoured that Vika trusted me to be the sole health professional around her, and I love experiencing new things and stretching myself, so it was an opportunity I couldn’t refuse.” 

Lifelong learning 

Never one to shy away from dual-pursuits, Obst chose to juggle his new role with more study, enrolling in ACU’s online Master of High Performance Sport. 

When he wasn’t at work treating Azarenka, he was getting stuck into course content on anything from performance nutrition to data analysis and interpretation. His desire to give his new client the best service possible was one of the reasons why he enrolled in the course. 

“I certainly don’t claim to have mastered physio, and my philosophy has always been that you can never stop learning, because you don’t know what you don’t know,” says Obst, who completed the postgraduate degree in October 2023.

Alan on the tennis tour.

“It really excites me to branch out my skillset, to keep growing and improving by exploring different aspects of the high performance sporting environment, and I’ve always been someone who enjoys a good challenge.” 

After 15 months on the road with Azarenka, Obst took on a new physio position, joining Tennis Australia to treat the country’s leading professionals. His current role is a mix of treating players to facilitate peak performance, and helping with injury prevention and management. 

Being a former athlete has its benefits when you’re a physiotherapist, says Obst, in that you’re able to speak from experience and empathise with the players you’re treating. 

“The power of saying, ‘Look, I’ve had something similar, I’ve been through this, I know it’s hard and I know it’s painful and I’m here to help’, it really can’t be underestimated,” he says. 

“Unless you’ve lived through it, it’s difficult to understand the immense pressure that athletes are under, and that lived experience certainly shapes the way I approach my job as a physio.” 

Throughout his clinical career, he’s kept mindful of the fact that at its essence, physiotherapy is about helping people: alleviating pain, restoring function, and aiding others in their effort to perform at their best. 

“I love that about physiotherapy,” says Obst. “It’s interesting and challenging and fun, but at the end of the day, your profession is to do your best to help people. If you ask me, that’s a pretty cool thing to do.” 

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