Jerry Rice went to the Pro Bowl 13 times, won three Super Bowls wih the San Francisco 49ers, holds the NFL record for all-time receptions and receiving yards, and he is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Still, Rice says the moment that defined his career happened when he was trying out for his high school team. After practice ended, his coach asked him to run up a steep hill for some extra work. Exhausted, he trudged off the hill without finishing the workout, and started walking toward the locker room.

"Something told me: 'You can't do that. You can't give up,'" he says. "And I turned around and I went back and I finished that hill. And I think that was the most defining moment for me because it taught me the meaning of not quitting. You never want to quit."

Rice was known for his tenacity and determination on and off the field. He underwent legendary conditioning drills, sprinting up long, steep hills in the off-season to keep him in peak condition.

Rice has focused this work ethic on life after football as well. To a new generation, he is best known as a semi-finalist on ABC's hit show Dancing With the Stars. His fancy footwork and determination got him all the way to second place on the reality show, introducing him to many people who weren't sports fans.

His adjustment to life off the football field wasn't easy. He was used to a strict routine, thousands of screaming fans, and the adrenaline of playing every week. When he first hung up his cleats, he couldn't even bring himself to watch football games on Sunday afternoons.

"It was very challenging, but I was able to endure it," he says. "And then the focus went somewhere else, on other opportunities. And everything that I had applied into football, I put that into those other endeavors."

Dancing with the Stars brought up a whole new set of challenges, and Rice attacked them with abandon, even when he sensed people were skeptical. After all, he knew nothing about ballroom dancing, and some could have thought he was risking his reputation by exposing himself to ridicule.

Instead of focusing on how he might fail at his new challenge, Rice decided to take a chance, learning along the way and earning a whole new legion of fans.

Rice credits his ability to take risks with a confidence born out of hard work. If he dropped a ball on the football field, he put it out of his mind and moved on, assuming he would catch the next one. He trusted in his training off the field, and knew that any doubts could lead to further failures.

"A lot of people I think, would love to do that, but they're afraid to," he says about his decision to go on television doing something he had never done before. "They don't want to step out of their element and take a chance, but I was willing to do that."