Val Chmerkovskiy had to experience some early humbling during his career on Dancing with the Stars.
The 38-year-old professional dancer is Maksim Chmerkovskiy’s brother and began appearing on the show in various capacities in Season 2.
Val officially joined ABC’s competition series as a pro dancer in 2011’s Season 13 alongside model Elisabetta Canalis.
However, he entered the competition thinking he was above the others and had an early exit that season.
It took him until his eighth season to finally succeed, as he and Rumer Willis won the Mirrorball Trophy in Season 20.
Since then, he’s won it twice more and said some early growing pains helped him develop into the professional he is on the show.
Val thought he’d ‘run over everybody’ early in his DWTS career
In an appearance on this month’s Lightweights Podcast with Joe Vulpis, Val Chmerkovskiy spoke about having an overinflated ego and false confidence during his first-ever season competing on DWTS.
“My first season, I came in, I’m like, ‘These guys are all rich and fat. I’m gonna come in here with my technique and stamina and athleticism, and like, I’m just gonna run over everybody.’ And I didn’t. I got eliminated second, should have probably got eliminated first. I was humbled really quickly,” he told Vulpis.
He explained that being successful as a pro dancer on DWTS required skills different from those required by being a competitive dancer outside of the show.
Val said a competitive dancer required “an athleticism and a physical discipline” to succeed.
To succeed as a performer on DWTS, he said, “You have to be a great teacher, you got to be a great choreographer, you got to be a great performer. And performer is split into – as a dancer and as an on-camera personality.”
Val called Season 15 a ‘turning point’ in his DWTS career as a pro dancer
After his first season resulted in an 11th-place finish with Canalis, Val returned for Season 14 and partnered with Sherri Shepherd. They finished 10th overall.
He began to experience some success in Season 15, which he called a “turning point” in his career. For that All-Stars season in 2012, he partnered with soap opera star Kelly Monaco, who previously won DWTS.
Working with a talent like Monaco allowed Val to focus on really improving his skills for the show. They finished third overall.
Season 16, his fourth, featured him and actress Zendaya finishing as the runner-up couple.
In Season 20, Val finally gained enough experience, skills, and confidence on the show to hoist the Mirrorball Trophy with celebrity partner Rumor Willis.
Val won the trophy twice more, including in Season 23 with Team USA gold medal-winning Olympic gymnast Laurie Hernandez and in Season 32 with actress Xochitl Gomez.
In the video below, Gomez returned for the Season 33 finale to perform a beautiful dance with her former partner on the show.
While the recent Season 33 was an eighth-place finish for Val with Real Housewives star Phaedra Parks, he was ecstatic to watch his wife, Jenna Johnson, capture the Len Goodman Mirrorball Trophy with Joey Graziadei. And Val is still fully capable of winning several more times on the show.
It just took him learning those early humbling lessons to adjust from being a great competitive dancer to a great DWTS pro.
Dancing with the Stars Season 34 premiere is TBA for ABC and Disney+.