Pittsburgh Steelers player Antonio Brown is switching from hitting the field to hitting the dance studio for the next couple months.
The athlete will be competing in this season’s Dancing With the Stars, which premiered Monday (it airs at 8 p.m. on ABC). He’ll experience a different type of practice from the usual football drills, learning new skills that he insists require the same amount of discipline as training for a football game.
On Friday, he was with his partner and choreographer Sharna Burgess, practicing their quickstep routine at a dance studio in Hollywood.
“It’s coming along. I’m super excited,” said Brown, who was born in Miami and played high school football at Norland High. “It has been challenging being that you have to move quick with good posture when for me [on the field] I’ve moved quick but not keeping good posture.”
Brown believes he has been improving, and he looks forward to showing everybody what he has been practicing.
“Being an athlete brings a lot to the dance floor,” he said. “The hard work, the discipline, the wanting to perform at a high level and obviously the fan support; Steeler Nation is a huge fan support.”
“Quickstep is definitely a tough one for Antonio to do the first week,” she said. “He’s got so much to learn. He has never danced before so I have to teach him the fundamentals of dance, and he’s going to do one of the most difficult dances [on the] show, so it has been an intense couple weeks. But he is doing great.”
