Danielle Fishel finished her first dance on Dancing with the Stars despite suffering a minor injury leading up to the show’s premiere.
“So my hamstring actually has a minor tear,” she revealed on a quick post-dance episode of her podcast “Pod Meets World,” that was recorded right after the show aired live.
“Right before I went out for the live show, after having gone all out for five other runs for dress rehearsal and practice, my legs really started getting tight and I was like, ‘What am I going to do?'” she recalled. “And I kept trying to stretch a little bit, wasn’t really working. It was really cramping and then adrenaline just took over in the middle of the dance and I was able to do it.”
The Boy Meets World star also shared that she’s been “icing twice a night,” and taking Epsom salt baths and ibuprofen to help her hamstring tear.
Fishel and her partner Pasha Pashcov, who have earned themselves the nickname “Topasha,” danced a tango to Kelly Clarkson‘s “Stronger.” The two earned 12 out of 20 points from judges Derek Hough and Bruno Tonioli, with 6’s from each of them. Scoring was altered during the show’s premiere as third judge Carrie Ann Inaba was sick and did not attend the show.
“I still haven’t been able to watch it, so I don’t know exactly what it looked like,” Fishel said of her first dance. “I know it felt good, I trust Pasha implicitly, I trust him with everything and he swears that this was the best performance we’ve ever done an we’ve now done it over 1000 times in the last couple of weeks.”
Related: Former ‘DWTS’ Contestant Jodie Sweetin Gives Unexpected Warning to Newbie Danielle Fishel Ahead of Show’s Premiere
Fishel had support on and off the dance floor as she thanked her husband, Jenson Karp, for picking up the “100 percent of the stuff I normally do,” on the podcast recording. And in the audience her fellow podcast hosts and costars of the hit 90s show, Will Friedle and Rider Strong, were also there to cheer her on.
The reason behind Danielle Fishel’s Dancing with the Stars song choice
Kicking off the new season of DWTS, the theme for song choices was “Anthems” and Fishel knew immediately that she wanted to dance to “Stronger.”
“When they asked me what my anthem was, it was a really quick answer,” she said. “I’m a Kelly Clarkson fan. That song has always meant a lot to me, but really it took on a whole new meaning for me last year when I had breast cancer and I used to listen to it on my way to radiation and I used to listen to it before my surgeries. The minute they said ‘We need an anthem song,’ that was the one that just came to me immediately.”
The next episode of Dancing with the Stars airs next Tuesday, Sept. 25.
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