Julie Goodwin says she was “absolutely shattered” when she injured herself while training for Dancing With The Stars. Julie, 53, was unable to perform in the show’s first episode after tearing a calf muscle while launching herself towards partner Andrey Gorbunov for a lift.
“I just felt it go,” Julie tells TV WEEK. “I’ve never been shot but I imagine if I was shot in my calf that is what it would feel like.”
The former MasterChef Australia winner had put in “months and months” of training for Dancing With The Stars.
“We’d trained for a month on the Central Coast and of course I’d trained for a couple of months before Andrey arrived,” she says. “We’d worked so hard – we worked weekends, we worked weekdays – and we were so optimistic. It was just about to begin when this happened, so we were absolutely devastated.”
Julie was told that she should rest, but she wanted to do more than that.
“I didn’t just wait and see if it healed,” she says. “I got extremely proactive.”
She tried everything from ice and massage to acupuncture and homeopathic remedies – and even listening to healing meditations and healing tones in her headphones.
“I did absolutely everything within my power. It was just that feeling of ‘I’m going to give this everything so I’ve got no regrets at the end of it.’”
Two of Julie’s celebrity rivals on Dancing With the Stars, former AFL players Ben Cousins and Shane Crawford, gave her advice about recovering from the injury.
“They were helping me along and really giving me a lot of encouragement,” she says. “So I was very grateful to them.”
Will Julie recover in time to perform in the third week of Dancing With The Stars – or has her injury knocked her right out of the competition?
Either way, Julie says there were a lot of positives to come out of the time she spent training for the show.
“It was just pure fun. I had a real sense of accomplishment when I was able to actually put a few steps together. Once or twice I said, ‘I think I’m actually dancing!’
“Injury aside, I am so glad I did it.”
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