Dancing With The Stars favourite reveals secret pre-show injury: 'Pretty bad'

After competing on three seasons of MasterChef Australia, it’s fair to say that Dancing With The Stars was quite a different reality TV experience for Hayden Quinn. The Channel Seven series is known for pushing celebrities to their physical limits as they battle it out on the dance floor, with former MasterChef judge Matt Preston withdrawing from the competition last year after suffering an ankle injury.

Speaking with Yahoo Lifestyle ahead of Sunday night’s premiere, Hayden describes the experience as one of the most “challenging” and “intense” things he’s ever done. Not only was the training “mentally intensive” having to remember all the moves and perfect his coordination, but he also obtained a back injury.

“Obviously with dancing, there's a lot of different body positions you need to be in,” he details. “You’re very structured in what you do and the big part of dancing is those big lifts that you see happen. They’re quite dramatic and quite fun, but you’ve got to do them again and again and again.

“I actually got a weird inflammation in my lower back that got pretty bad, but worked through it with the physio and a bit of massage and we took it easy for a couple of days and that sort of settled.”

RELATED:

• Ant Middleton's surprising comments resurface ahead of Dancing With The Stars

• Dancing With The Stars 2024: Secret romances, walk offs and contracts revealed

• Dancing With The Stars 2024: Everything you need to know about the new season

The celebrity chef reveals that training was “long and enduring” and the contestants practised eight hours a day, six days a week for seven weeks before filming even kicked off.

“It was just non-stop,” he remarks. “We'd get in there on Sundays some mornings and do a couple of hours just to sort of do some refresher and some revision work, but it was a lot.

“It was so hard. So much time, so much effort, and then that first dance is terrifying, to put it lightly, but a lot of fun. At the end of it, it's exhilarating, you're puffed, you're out of breath, the endorphins are running, and then you're just hoping for the best when it comes to the scores from the judges.”

Hayden reveals the most surprising part: 'Didn't realise that was a thing'

While he never expected he would get the chance to compete on Dancing With The Stars, Hayden says he signed onto the show to fulfil a “personal challenge” and he knew he had to lean into every part of the experience.

“You've got to be vulnerable, you’ve got to want to wear the outrageous outfits, do something different, the sequins, the glitter, the shiny bits and pieces, getting the oil on and all that sort of stuff,” he describes.

“The fake tan, I didn't realise that was a thing. I had more fake tans than I think I ever will in my whole entire life. But coming off the back of it I thought, you know, a fake tan’s not a bad idea this time of year in Sydney.”

SHOP:

• The simple ingredient that will keep you warm all winter long

• Emma Sleep's beds and mattresses praised by customers: 'We wake up happier'

• The sustainable razor that means 'less charging and less clutter'

He adds that he and his dance partner Lily Cornish weren’t afraid to try new things and make history in the competition, which he's excited for viewers to see.

“We wanted to really challenge ourselves and do things that hadn't been seen before and hadn't been done before on the show,” he says. “Did we get there? Not every time, but it was about pushing ourselves and having fun with it, and that was the goal.”

Dancing With The Stars premieres 7pm Sunday, July 7th on Channel 7 and 7Plus

Want the latest celebrity news? Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.