'Dancing With the Stars' Season 23: Laurie Hernandez Thought Experience Would Be 'Easier' [VIDEO]
Even if Laurie Hernandez has turned into an undisputed frontrunner on ABC's Dancing With the Stars, she hasn't necessarily had an easy time with the experience.
Hernandez and her pro dancing partner, Val Chmerkovskiy, scored one of this season's only perfect scores from the judges on Dancing With the Stars, and she has shown that she is one of the celebrities to beat. While her Olympic gymnast experience may have set her up well for this athletic-based competition, the 16-year-old admitted recently that it's been tough.
"Coming into 'Dancing With the Stars', I thought it would be a lot easier," she wrote in her Us Weekly blog this week. "I didn't think it would be just a breeze, I knew it would be difficult, but I wasn't expecting it to be this hard. It's really hard to stay patient with myself and realize this is a whole different world than gymnastics."
Judges Carrie Ann Inaba, Julianne Hough and Bruno Tonioli have expressed that they expect a lot from Hernandez considering her high level of skill, but the gymnast noted that she is not a professional dancer!
"The judges' criticism is helpful, but at the same time, each week is a different dance so I can't always apply their advice," she wrote. "It's interesting that they're telling me they're judging me like a pro, because I want to say, 'I'm not a professional dancer, but OK! If you want to judge that hard, you can!' But it's all good. And it's nice that they think I can live up to their expectations and dance at the high level that they want me to."
Dancing With the Stars airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.
Watch Hernandez and Chmerkovskiy's latest dance on Dancing With the Stars below:
