Tim McGraw is in the new issue of Men's Fitness, talking about his healthy habits, and how he got into better shape at 50 than he was at 30. Ok, Tim, we're listening.
Why is staying fit important to you?
In my early 40s, when I really started taking it seriously, I started running a lot. That's the first thing I started doing, and I found that made a big difference for me. It just started my day out better. I just realized how much it raised the bar on everything that I did. It raised the bar on my career. It raised the bar on my relationships with my friends. It just made me feel better, gave me a better mental outlook on everything that I was doing.
Would you say it gave you an openness to new experiences?
Absolutely. It gives you a confidence in yourself as well. It became a discipline for me, and it allowed me to become more disciplined in all the other things that I did, including learning to fly an airplane and spearfishing with my friends in the Bahamas. Just different things that being fit and being mentally alert led me to do.
What’s your workout schedule like on tour?
We start in the morning, and I always start all of my workouts with a 30-minute walk on the treadmill just to get everything loosened up and flowing. Then we'll do some stretching and stuff. Typically in the mornings it’s more of active yoga and bodyweights. Then we go in and run stairs in the arena.
We do a big CrossFit training session in the afternoon that usually goes from an hour to an hour and a half. It depends on how everybody holds up. It starts with 10 or 15 people; it ends with four or five sometimes. That's our afternoon workout. Then we go get showered up and have dinner, and get ready to do a show.
You and your wife [Faith Hill] are on tour together. Does she do the workouts, too?
She likes to do some of the yoga and the stretching. Roger, my trainer, is really good with martial arts and boxing, and she likes to do a lot of that stuff with him.