NEWSKym Johnson's 'DWTS' Diary: Practicing for the Big Premiere With Hines!
March 14 2011, Published 10:49 a.m. ET
Hi, everyone, and welcome to my OK! blog! Every week, I’ll be sharing with you all the behind the scenes stories as I train NFL wide receiver Hines Ward for this season’s Dancing With the Stars, trying to make the Pittsburgh Steelers pro look as cool in the ballroom as he does on football field for season 12!
This season, I'm dancing with Hines Ward (check us out at the Lakers game!). I didn’t really know how good he was! He’s incredible, I really like having an athlete for a partner. He’s an incredible athlete. He’s really intelligent, quick at picking up all the steps and choreography. Footwork is amazing, I’m sure that comes from football, he never has danced before but he gets up early for practicing, and is just perfect partner to have.
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One weakness of his is that if we do the dance too many times, he starts over-analyzing things, but that’s the athlete in him. It’s great that he’s so concerned about what he’s doing. He’s very visual, and is good at correcting his mistakes. corrects mistakes.
Even though Hines is not a small guy, he's so graceful, and a natural rhythm — and he has this amazing smile! As long as he smiles while he’s out there, he’ll be fine. He’s got the happy football player thing going on. He's easy to teach, and he looks natural, when he’s out there he can enjoy it. Since the show starts next week, it's a lot of practice. We have one day off a week. Five hours a day. He didn’t expect it to be so hard — he said it didn’t look as difficult from what he saw on TV! He's already got a good grasp on faster dances like Foxtrot and the quickstep, and a natural rhythm for the jive and ChaCha.
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It's too early to tell right now who our biggest competition will be, we haven’t seen or heard of how anyone else is doing, but we’re happy with how he’s doing, you never know. I’m sure Chris Jericho could be good because he’s a wrestler and kind of independent in what he does.
I'm having fun going out with Hines in Atlanta, people have been showing us around and taking us to great restaurants, it's not what you’d expect and it’s been a really fun time. We've had fun going to big Atlanta shopping malls and having a little bit of down time.
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It was Hines' birthday as well, so I made him rehearse on his birthday! But I felt kinda mean about it so I made him some cupcakes — for after we danced, of course! I didn’t know what to get him cause he’s got everything! So I ended up buying him gold cuff links to remind him of what the goal is. They could be like a good luck charm.
I think he’ll be wearing them during the first dance!
Until next week — and tune in on Monday, March 21 for the premiere!
Kym
