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

Contents

K ansas 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 Ill 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 didnt travel 500 miles through the night from last nights 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, theres no sonic equipment in sight except for an old stereo and a couple of small speakers. Instead, its 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 Yardour functional fitness playground filled with things to throw, pound, lift, and pull. Its part garage gym on overdrive, part Ninja Warrior obstacle course, and part town-square gathering spot. Its 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 weve got to the audience waiting on the other side of the stage. Its about as far away from my former pregame rituals as I could imaginekicking back with a cold one or two in order put a blur on any jitters. One things for sure: my band and I dont roll into town the way we used to.

Now, instead of dulling our senses, were heightening them. Theres 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 energyand if you take a minute to notice it, you realize youre feeling every part of yourself more acutely. Youre 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. Im more energized and stronger physically, and Im 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 dont care to go back toa 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 wasnt comfortable, and Im 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; its 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 Im on today. It didnt happen overnight and it certainly involved a few mistakes along the way, but it schooled me in three important lessons:

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.

Its 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.

Transforming your health is not just about knowing what to do. Its about knowing why youre 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. Its literally in my DNA. Even so, I lost contact with that part of myself andfoolishlylet 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 its coming together quite nicely. I didnt follow a playbook or have some guru squad of trainers overseeing every step. Ive 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. Ive always thought that if you can just get started, and keep at it, then youre 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? Thats the million-dollar question! If we had it solved, our present crisis in physical and mental health wouldnt be hurting us quite as hard as it is. Ill do my best to share what works for me and what has helped more than a few (willing) recruits from the McGraw music familyall of whom started from different placestake 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; its the bigger, better part of you who believes better is always possible and that nobody elses experience or opinion of who you are, how you look, or what you can accomplish need apply.

If Ive learned anything in my lifefinding my way out of small-town Louisiana, dirt poor as a kid and sometimes laughed at for my dreamsits 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 dont know how to use it. But heat properly directed can drive change. What I want to share is that theres 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 hasnt just made my body healthier, its 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. Ive 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 youve turned yourself in a new direction.