Grit & Grace: Train the Mind, Train the Body, Own Your Life

By Tim McGraw

From Grammy-Award winning music superstar and actor Tim McGraw comes a one-of-a kind lifestyle book that melds his personal fitness transformation story with practical advice to inspire healthy changes in readers’ lives.

Tim McGraw is as well-known for his unparalleled accomplishments in the entertainment industry as he is for his boundless energy—he is the embodiment of vitality and success. But only a decade ago, he found himself struggling with his health. The demands of his meteoric career and life on the road had taken a toll. McGraw came to a crossroads where knew that unless he made his physical health a priority, he would put his personal happiness and professional success at risk. In Grit & Grace, McGraw shares his transformation story along with encouragement, inspiration, and real-life, practical advice to help readers become healthy, strong and fit in mind and body.

For the first time, McGraw will share the details of the mental and physical routine that got him in the best shape of his life. He suggests that there is no magic formula to getting stronger and healthier: it is about making a commitment to do and be better, and holding yourself accountable each day. McGraw didn’t follow a playbook or have a squad of trainers overseeing his every step. He describes his way of getting into shape as more "maverick"--tuning into a vision of what you personally want to achieve, staying focused, and putting in the work.

McGraw says his physical transformation has ignited a whole-life transformation. "My mind is clearer, my sense of purpose is sharper, and my relationships are deeper. Consistent physical exercise helps me bring focus to my life and to the people who mean the most to me." In Grit & Grace, McGraw makes this transformation accessible to anyone, sharing with readers the physical and mental tools they can use to create the life they deserve.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9780062915948

Tim McGraw

Tim McGraw has sold more than 50 million records worldwide and dominated the singles charts with a stunning 43 #1 singles. His most recent and first ever joint album with wife Faith Hill – The Rest Of Our Life – was released November 2017 and debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart and #2 on the Billboard 200 Albums chart. He is the most played country artist since his debut in 1992, with two singles spending over ten weeks at #1 (“Live Like You Were Dying” and the genre-breaking “Over and Over”). His multi-week #1 single “Humble and Kind” from 2015’s Damn Country Music won the Grammy for Best Country song, spawned a New York Times Best Seller book and won a coveted Clio Award for Best Integrated Campaign.

Book preview

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Introduction

Part I: Why Movement Matters

Chapter 1: From Losing It to Owning It

Chapter 2: A Maverick’s Manifesto

Part II: Train the Mind

Chapter 3: Drive

Chapter 4: Discipline

Chapter 5: Deep Focus

Part III: Train the Body

Chapter 6: Get Moving

Chapter 7: Own Your Diet

Conclusion: Never Stop Moving

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

Kansas City, Missouri: In the predawn light, a convoy of tour buses and tractor trailers park in a row at the Sprint Arena, where later that night I’ll take the stage with my band. Setting down coffees and sleepily rolling open the doors, the crew starts to unload and organize the kind of gear that a large-scale musical tour production requires: tiers of sound equipment, walls of video monitors, cases of instruments, racks of wardrobe, and catering for a small army.

Except for one of them: the trailer with TRUMAV emblazoned on the side. Unlike the others, it didn’t travel 500 miles through the night from last night’s show to bring electronics for the stage and set. Instead, it parks in the very back parking lot, next to my tour bus. And when the guys roll open its doors, there’s no sonic equipment in sight except for an old stereo and a couple of small speakers. Instead, it’s stocked with stuff that takes extra muscle to move: fifty-foot battle ropes for fierce full-body conditioning; giant tires for flipping, sledgehammers for pounding, and a cluster of rowing machines, kettlebells, and barbells, all intended to push our bodies and minds to the edge.

Welcome to what my longtime fiddle player Deano fondly calls the Gorilla Yard—our functional fitness playground filled with things to throw, pound, lift, and pull. It’s part garage gym on overdrive, part Ninja Warrior obstacle course, and part town-square gathering spot. It’s where my band and crew and I sweat together, leave our frustrations on the asphalt, and get all cylinders firing so we can bring the best we’ve got to the audience waiting on the other side of the stage. It’s about as far away from my former pregame rituals as I could imagine—kicking back with a cold one or two in order put a blur on any jitters. One thing’s for sure: my band and I don’t roll into town the way we used to.

Now, instead of dulling our senses, we’re heightening them. There’s a kind of peacefulness that settles into you after a great workout; your body has built up tension, then released it, and a flush of clarity and wakefulness moves through you even if your muscles burn and shake. Spending energy has actually given you energy—and if you take a minute to notice it, you realize you’re feeling every part of yourself more acutely. You’re finding aliveness in every nook and cranny, as if someone just turned up the lights.

Come 8:00 p.m., the first notes of the night play and I grab my hat, ready to fire things up. I feel a whole lot better at fifty-one than I did ten years ago, when I was at a respectable height professionally but operating more than a few levels shy of my personal best. I’m more energized and stronger physically, and I’m stronger mentally, too. Who knows if the audience feels the difference, but I feel the difference, and I credit it to a single decision I made just over ten years ago. That one, seemingly small, but life-changing decision was to move my body every day so I could take ownership of my health.

I came to it like a lot of us come to turning points: By touching a place I don’t care to go back to—a dark place where I felt like a lot of my life was out of my control. Maybe I had to make contact with that bottom in order to push back to the surface, determined to turn things around before my luck ran out and a slide became a crash. It wasn’t comfortable, and I’m not always proud of the ways I behaved, obscured as I was back then in a mix of denial and neglect, but it launched a journey of trimming the fat in every area of life and carving away the excess to get to a better version of myself. Today my body is leaner, my mind is clearer, my sense of purpose is sharper, and my relationships are deeper. Health might start in the body, but it extends way beyond the physical; it’s about your connections to the world and people around you, and your ability to serve and give. The decade since I chose to once and for all take ownership of my health has taught me that lesson most of all.

This book is about what happened when I made that one small choice and how it led me from a low point to the better path I’m on today. It didn’t happen overnight and it certainly involved a few mistakes along the way, but it schooled me in three important lessons:

1. One small choice to move your body daily can spark a cascade of changes that will turn around the health of your body and mind.

2. It’s never too late to start, and, if you commit with purpose and push a little more than you might normally push, even small efforts count big. A journey can start with just a few degrees of change. Keep at it, and over time that few-degree deviation will lead you to a whole new place.

3. Transforming your health is not just about knowing what to do. It’s about knowing why you’re doing it, and discovering what stands in the way. Without getting your mental muscles in shape, the road can get rockier than it needs to be and have more stops and starts.

Athleticism and sport have been intertwined into my whole way of being since an early age. It’s literally in my DNA. Even so, I lost contact with that part of myself and—foolishly—let the fire dwindle to the point where it almost went out. Life served me a good lesson in humility, and that led me to starting over from close to scratch. I leapt out of a slump at age forty, hit full stride at forty-five, and now at fifty-two it’s coming together quite nicely. I didn’t follow a playbook or have some guru squad of trainers overseeing every step. I’ve taken more of a maverick approach: Get a vision of what I want to achieve, go by gut instinct, and figure it out by doing it. I’ve always thought that if you can just get started, and keep at it, then you’re more than halfway to something. You can learn techniques and refine things as you go.

Except that . . . how do you get started and how do you keep at it once you start? That’s the million-dollar question! If we had it solved, our present crisis in physical and mental health wouldn’t be hurting us quite as hard as it is. I’ll do my best to share what works for me and what has helped more than a few (willing) recruits from the McGraw music family—all of whom started from different places—take ownership of their health, too. Getting moving in any which way is like striking a match or sending a flare into the night. It can help you find a part of yourself that might have been lost in the woods for a while but, I promise, is out there nonetheless: the part of you that wants to feel good. I call this your inner maverick; it’s the bigger, better part of you who believes better is always possible and that nobody else’s experience or opinion of who you are, how you look, or what you can accomplish need apply.

If I’ve learned anything in my life—finding my way out of small-town Louisiana, dirt poor as a kid and sometimes laughed at for my dreams—it’s that the greatest asset we have is feeling that burn to be better. The burn can be frustrating. It can get uncomfortable. It can even get destructive if you don’t know how to use it. But heat properly directed can drive change. What I want to share is that there’s a lot of energy available inside if you know how to find it, fan it, and keep some oxygen on it. And sometimes it takes another person showing you some in-the-field tricks for catching an ember and turning it into a fire.

Focusing on my physical health hasn’t just made my body healthier, it’s made me healthier at every level. Moving daily and exercising regularly were pebbles that set off a ripple effect, improving the way I eat, sleep, relate to others, and show up both personally and professionally. It made me a better person to be around. I’ve been blessed to meet folks before my shows who tell me that seeing me take control of my fitness inspired them to do the same with theirs; something about my journey tilted their axis a little and helped them change course. If even just part of what follows ripples out into your life, I hope it ignites the urge to take a chance like I did and choose one small thing that, if you let it, can change the next thing, then the next thing, until one day you look up and realize you’ve turned yourself in a new direction.

Though you’ll find the mental and physical tools I use to maintain my health in the pages that follow, you certainly don’t have to use them exactly as written. Everyone’s road looks a little different, and personally rigid rules aren’t my thing. I’ve written the two main sections of the book, Train the Mind and Train the Body, in such a way that—hopefully—you’ll find some wisdom you can use whether you’ve already established a fitness practice and have an activity you love doing, or whether it’s been a while and you’ve been waiting for inspiration to start something new. Even if you do already work out regularly, I’ve learned from experience that just when you think you have it dialed, you realize how much more there is to discover. That’s what makes the path never-ending and always interesting. So keep an open mind, dive in, and let’s have some fun!

Part I

Why Movement Matters

I remember the moment when I clicked into fully owning my health. We were touring in the summertime back in 2011, the nights as hot and sweaty as country music’s supposed to be—jeans-and-white-T-shirt kinds of nights where it’s all about slinging sweat and having fun. We rolled into Detroit to play at the DTE Energy Music Theater. There’s always an incredible crowd for a show like that, and the guys and I were out back of the amphitheater working out harder than usual to get fully primed and as amped as could be. All of a sudden, I had an epiphany. It was like the seas parted and I could see so clearly how the work I’d been doing seriously for the previous two years, staying consistent and honing my discipline, was paying off; the vision I’d been working toward of best shape of my life was becoming a reality that I could continue to take further. My body felt good, my mind was clear, and there was a lot less falling off track than in years prior. I saw how the benefits were rippling out into my career and my home life, and I could see where I was headed. I understood how no matter what unfortunate events, mistakes, or embarrassments had happened prior to that moment, I had the complete right to good health and I could claim it if I worked for it. This realization came with a countercheck: It was also overwhelmingly clear that nobody could give that good health away but me.

Taking ownership is the first step in creating a different kind of relationship with yourself. Ownership means taking responsibility for your health and being fully invested in building a better version of yourself. When I say invested I don’t mean financially, because developing fitness doesn’t have to cost you if you don’t have much to spend. I’m referring to an investment that is mental and spiritual as well as physical. You buy in with your mind by aligning your thoughts with your goals, developing discipline, and embracing routine and structure. You buy in with your spirit by having trust, faith, and hope in the process. And you buy in with your body by putting in the work, by starting strong and finishing stronger each time.

Ownership isn’t a flash-in-the-pan resolution that burns bright then goes out. It’s not a thirty-day cleanse or transformation. Ownership means you’ve bought in fully for the long haul. It’s like owning a home rather than renting. You sink some resources into keeping it well cared for, shore up any leaks and holes, and repair the foundations and infrastructure if it needs it, knowing that doing the hard work now will prevent depreciation over time. And because you’ve invested time and effort, when you have a bad day or you’re in a bad mood, you don’t just give up on a whim. In that regard, I guess you could say it’s like a ride-or-die relationship with your best friend. Or a marriage. Actually, both of these comparisons are pretty apt, because on this journey you become your own soul mate.

Chapter 1

From Losing It to Owning It

I had never done anything so wild during a show before. I’d just crossed to the far right of the stage in the middle of performing Real Good Man in front of thirteen thousand people at an amphitheater in Tampa, Florida. My band leader and guitarist, Denny, had met me there for a beat—syncing his movement to arrive at the same spot simultaneously—and then, pivoting on my heel to face forward again, I spied it: the long metal runway that extended from the middle of the stage out into the audience like a big letter T. The ramp wasn’t exactly close by; it lay a good few feet below me and at least twelve feet over to my left, and in between me and it was not only a swathe of airspace, but the heads and raised arms of audience members, swaying to the music, faces turned to the lights. And for some ungodly reason, or maybe some godly inspiration, every cell in my body yelled at me, Jump!

I leapt off the step with my left leg outstretched, like a hurdler taking off for the 400-meter race, arced over the outstretched hands, landed one foot on the metal runway with my ankle, knee, and hip absorbing the impact easily, and then felt my whole back body propelling me into a medal-winning sprint to the end of the runway. A sensation of indescribable liberation shot through me like lightning. I’d seen something big, wanted it badly, and done it all-in, fully trusting my body to pull it off.

Then my brain screamed, "Damn. I did that?!" I’d just transgressed my cardinal rule: Never risk busting your ass live onstage, because you will never live it down.

For a musician, hitting that spot where you can really let it all pour out, performing without conscious thought or calculation, comes down to training consistently—practicing and then practicing more so that when it’s game night, it feels easy. It also comes down to an X factor, something you can’t as easily quantify, but that involves confidence. When you have both, you get to feel free, and that’s when the magic happens.

The way I view performing is that when you’re in the audience and I’m on the stage, we’re in a relationship together. When I walk into that arena through one entrance, and you walk into it through yours, no matter how each of us has been feeling up until that moment, we enter a contract with each other. I agree I’m going to suspend ordinary life for a minute; you agree you’re going to suspend ordinary life for a minute, and neither one of us is gonna scrutinize the other too closely. We’re going to jump in the stream together, let the energy move us and agree that this is not who I am all day, and this is not who you are all day, and let’s both not be those people tonight and just have fun.

And boy is it easier to show up for this relationship when your instrument is tuned up, well calibrated, and comfortable to play. In my case, my instrument is my body. And when it’s in peak condition, it feels as if the gates are open. I can step past the me of daily life, let the spirit move me, and together we can connect through music. Those are the shows when we all feel it—we have the time of our lives.

A decade before making that soaring leap, when I was technically the age that, had I been an athlete, I would’ve had just one or two good years left in me, I would never have attempted such a feat. Let alone stuck the landing.

I was doing well by anyone’s standards. My wife, Faith, and I had just come off the top-grossing tour in the history of country music, and I was starting to make some of the most meaningful music of my career. I’d had a few roles in movies on the side and developed some philanthropic endeavors that were making an impact, like Neighbor’s Keeper Fund, a charity that Faith and I started to address communities in need or the work for the Tug McGraw Foundation devoted to enhancing the quality of life for those diagnosed with debilitating brain conditions that I helped launch in honor of my dad, Tug. To the outside world, these efforts had been meeting pretty high targets and even sometimes exceeding them. But on the inside, I had been letting things slip gradually—first a little, and then a little more, until it eventually added up to a lot.

I was forty pounds heavier than I should have been; had considerably more body fat than my frame wanted on it and a lot less muscle than I have today. My energy levels, which have always been high, even borderline off-the-charts, were unpredictable, dipping at times to sluggish levels of fatigue. My immune system was struggling to keep up with my lifestyle and I was getting sick too often. And my mind was muddled, its bandwidth crowded with more anxious thoughts than normal. That made me quick to tip into reactivity and stress. My mind races at 90 mph on a good day—it can be a little manic in there, but it’s how I’m wired. I’ve come to accept my brain’s restless motion as the source of my best ideas—the driver of my creativity and my art. But walking it can be a high-wire act because worry, doubt, and anxiety can move along it equally fast, and if I’m out of balance these thoughts can eclipse the others, clouding my outlook and turning it stormy—which is what I was now experiencing.

I hadn’t just arrived in this state out of nowhere. The years leading up to turning forty had thrown a few curveballs my way. My father had passed of cancer at the age of fifty-nine, way too soon. Losing a parent at any age will cut you to the core, but when you didn’t know your dad growing up and only became close to him as an adult, and when there are still a lot of unresolved feelings about the relationship tangled up in your heart, unexpected loss can put your emotional state into a tailspin. Around the same time, my stepdad died, too; a man who’d occupied a big space in my life as a kid, and not always in the best or most supportive ways. And then my high school coach passed away, adding a further shot to the heart. Coach Butler was one of the only positive male influences I’d had growing up. He saw something special in me and nurtured it through sports. He was tough on me at times—as he should’ve been—but he always had my best interests in mind, guiding and looking out for me.

When three complex father figures pass during the time when you yourself are being asked to step into a strong father role for your own kids, it can create quite a turmoil inside. Nothing highlights just how little you learned about fathering than having three adolescent daughters who are starting to push you away while profoundly needing you to show up. I’m a pretty tough judge of myself when it comes to just about everything. The fear I might be messing up the most important job I’d been given—fatherhood—shook me to my core. Making things even tougher, the grandmother and grandfather who had been my rocks as a kid passed in the same short span of years. In one clean sweep, five of the elders who’d raised me were gone.

Grief will do funny things to you. It’ll make you turn inward to lick your wounds, and if they hurt too much when you look at them, it’ll tempt you to dull the soreness with distraction or consumption—anything to make the sorrow recede into a place your senses can’t quite detect. I used both those tactics, filling my world with career commitments that made enough noise to drown out the heartache and kept me busy enough to avoid a childhood worth of hurt. That way, in my mind, nobody close to me had to see me sit in a place of vulnerability and pain. And though getting a buzz through drinking was never something I especially liked, it’s never too far from hand when you’re in the music industry—it’s a norm that most everyone agrees on, one color in the paint box of the rock ’n’ roll fantasy life. A few beers here and there began helping me be that guy I thought I had to be—the upbeat guy who starts the party and ensures a whole lot of people have a good time. Then there’s the other guy I had to be: the leader that keeps a big ship on course, because the unseen side of success in the recording business is that you are running a company, acting as president and CEO. Dozens of people work with you to keep the whole machine working—over a hundred of them when you’re on tour—and their livelihoods depend on the artist they work for to hit the ball out of the park again and again. A decade or two ago, a performing artist could afford to have a few off years here and there or make an album or two the public didn’t quite get. Today, the stakes are higher and attention spans are shorter and when your name is on the marquee, there’s a lot more pressure to get it right.

In my case, there was another, more contentious layer of challenge: a long-simmering conflict with the record label that, for better or worse, owned my recorded music catalog. For years, they’d been exploiting my contract to dictate when I could and couldn’t release new music. As an artist, you always feel you’re only as good as your last good song, and to counter that fear, you feel an incredible need for free rein to create and innovate, to take risks and make bold departures. Instead of a working creative collaboration with my label partners, it felt like a dictatorship, and the angst of not holding the reins on my career was excruciating.

The irony is that though you’re faced with constant pressure to perform, the lifestyle of a performing artist doesn’t exactly lend itself to peak performance. A tour will become a constant party if you let it. You come off a show feeling electrified, and your body, already on an