A Quote by Emmitt Smith
As a former football player who has carried a football more than 4,000 times, trust me, I did not go into ballroom dancing with my body being 100 percent, with no aches or pains or ailments coming with me. When you're dancing, you're doing stuff that your body's not used to, and so you start to aggravate those old injuries.
Related Quotes
Anybody can play football if they're healthy - that's easy. But at the professional level, injuries are part of the game. Aches and pains are bound to happen when you use your body like a battering ram for a living.
What dancing has helped me with is blocking; it makes me comfortable with my body. You know how to hit your mark, you know how to embody a swagger. But sitting down and looking across the table at another actor and being able to go to battle on screen is nothing to do with singing or dancing.
I had aches and pains when I played. No player is ever 100 percent, 80 percent, 85 percent. Guys that play 158 or 162 or 145, we are all in the same boat.
Ever since I've given up dancing, every physiotherapist or Pilates teacher has said you have to keep moving. If I don't, I'll have a hundred times more injuries because you get weak areas on your body.
One of the best things if you are a football player is to see the faces of the kids, when they see you and are dreaming of being like you one day. That's a big responsibility, to be a good image for those kids. A football player is more than just a football player.
Dancing is bigger than the physical body. Think bigger than that. When you extend your arm, it doesn't stop at the end of your fingers, because you're dancing bigger than that. You're dancing spirit.
When I was growing up, Asians weren't known for dancing. I knew all my older aunts and uncles did, like, ballroom dancing and stuff. And then you saw all those dance crews, like Quest and Jabbawockeez, and now they're, like, known for dance.
Growing up in the Soviet Union, ballroom dancing wasn't the coolest thing to do. But that probably made me tougher, because it wasn't an easy task to do ballroom dancing and not get bullied. And I never got bullied in my life, even though I changed to five secondary schools in three different countries.
My old dance teacher, Jimmy Wilde, a former European ballroom dancing champion, was so sophisticated.
I grew up dancing. When I was three years old, my mom would always watch Latin ballroom dancing competitions on PBS.
Dance is bigger than the physical body. When you extend your arm, it doesn't stop at the end of your fingers, because you're dancing bigger than that; you're dancing spirit.
I'm so bad at dancing that I've actually been in two movies where the director of the film saw me dancing and thought it was so funny that in one movie they had me do it as the mental dancing of a real simple person. The other one was, like, to-be-laughed-at dancing. That's how bad my dancing is.
I used to get upset with the word Bollywood, and what it means in the West. The stereotype of us being dancing, singing, puppet showgirls. Indians are nearly one fifth of the world's population; we have one of the most prolific film industries in the world. When people used to ask me about it, or replicate what they think is Bollywood dancing, thinking that they're being funny, I used to get offended. But now I show them the stuff we do.
My own pregnancies were all about me, me, me. My aches, my pains, my swollen feet, and my body that looked like the Michelin Man.
The old-timers taught me about psychology. Whatever body part, for instance, you decided to work on, well, you worked on. If you're working on someone's arm, you don't go to the head with headlocks. You don't go to the lower body. If you start with a body part, you stay with a body part.
The best thing I've learned is that you have to listen to your body, and you have to be your own physician. Don't ignore those little groaning aches and pains.
Related Authors
Allen Iverson Quotes
American
Athlete
Andy Murray Quotes
Scottish
Athlete
CM Punk Quotes
American
Athlete
Conor McGregor Quotes
Irish
Athlete
Georges St-Pierre Quotes
Canadian
Athlete
Jack LaLanne Quotes
American
Athlete
Jillian Michaels Quotes
American
Athlete
Jon Jones Quotes
American
Athlete
Kenny Smith Quotes
American
Athlete
Kevin Durant Quotes
American
Athlete
Rafael Nadal Quotes
Spanish
Athlete
Ronda Rousey Quotes
American
Athlete
Scottie Pippen Quotes
American
Athlete
Shaquille O'Neal Quotes
American
Athlete
Stephen Curry Quotes
American
Athlete
Usain Bolt Quotes
Jamaican
Athlete