Watch Rob Gronkowski Take Ballet Lessons from a Real-Life Ballerina

What sometimes gets lost in the collective noise of people laughing at Gronk being Gronk (so: partying and twerking), is that Rob Gronkowski is a truly special athlete. His combination of size, speed, and strength doesn’t just make him an offensive coordinator’s best friend—it might end up making him the greatest tight end to ever play the game.

And though world-class ballerinas come in much smaller form than elite football players, they too possess a unique and rare set of talents, many of which they share with the guys that smash their bodies together for a living: footwork, balance, flexibility. So, naturally, we wondered what Gronk we might have become has his dad handed him a ballet barre instead of bench press. Could he have been the next great ballerina?

Wonder no more. We got Nathalia Arja from Miami City ballet to put the Patriots’ monster of a man through some drills that are likely not in Bill Belichick’s repertoire: the plié; the arabesque; the thing where you jump and kick your legs together. With all those moves conquered—or, at the very least, attempted—Gronk sets out to give us a full-on routine. How did it go? Well, Nathalia probably said it best, and most graciously: “Well… I think you did a lot better than how we started today.”

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