He’s a Grammy-winner and one of the biggest touring country artists over the past two decades. He's also a highly regarded actor, and for years has been well-known for his dedication to working out and staying in shape. Tim McGraw has now joined forces with Snap Fitness to launch the TRUVMAV Fitness franchise. McGraw cut the ribbon for the Grand Opening of the flagship club in Nashville.
“TRUMAV is a community,” he explained, "but it’s really about how you can find your work out at your own speed. We provide a foundation for what you can do and the things you can learn. It’s about working with great people, great trainers, and a great environment to figure out the things that work to make you a better person and motivate yourself and the people around you.
McGraw says while he’s always been athletic and tried to stay in shape, it was about a decade ago that life on the road started catching up with him.
“I was really not taking care of myself as well as I should,” he recalls. “I was up until 3 O’clock in the morning, having that extra beer with the band, eating cheeseburgers late and not getting to the gym in the morning. It was just getting out of control.”
His wake-up call came at a movie theater, where he’d taken his young daughters to see a Christmas film. McGraw had recently wrapped up a role in the film Four Christmases and suddenly the trailer for the film came up on the screen.
“My face popped up on the screen and my oldest daughter looked at it with her eyes really wide,” McGraw says. “And she looked at me and said, ‘Geez, Dad, you really need to do something.”
He was back at the gym the next day. To get himself in shape while traveling, he and his band members began using different things to create full-functional fitness circuits so they could work out.
“My band and I started putting together all kinds of crazy stuff, tires and ropes and chains and those sorts of thing outside the venue and would work with those all day.”
They ended up getting dramatic results. So, the idea of incorporating part of that approach in a gym setting became a reality after McGraw began talking to Snap Fitness founder Peter Taunton.
“We got to kicking around this idea,” Taunton says. “Obviously Tim’s in amazing shape. We started talking about bringing a concept, a gym to Nashville.”
Fitness entrepreneur Wirth Campbell owns the Nashville club and says the facility will have an open gym area, personal trainers, and classes offering a unique type of workout.
“The workout itself is a high intensity class, intervals. It’s 45 seconds on, 15 seconds off, it’s just enough time to get your heart rate up. Those 15 seconds recovery before the next station is just enough time to keep it up, give you a little break, but not let it drop too much.”
High-tech equipment will allow everyone to monitor their progress.
“Heart-rate based training, that’s where it’s at today,” notes Taunton. “If we want to get people to the promise land, the promise land being whatever your wellness goal is, it starts with the heart rate. Because until I can measure your rate, I don’t know how hard you’re willing to work. And once I know that, that’s the Holy Grail of getting fit.”
Taunton says they'll pay close attention to the Nashville club for the next six months and continue working with McGraw to fine tune things before expanding regionally, then nationally.
McGraw’s new business venture comes at a time when a number of other high-profile country artists are opting to open Honky Tonks along Nashville’s Lower Broadway. Blake Shelton, Luke Bryant, and Jason Aldean are among those who've opened new clubs downtown within the past year. McGraw says this is a better fit for him.
“The honky tonks are fine and good and great," McGraw says. "But for me, that wasn't where my interests lie. I wanted to find something that really took what we did on the road, how we worked out on the road, and I guess the principles that we have for preparing ourselves for a show, we wanted to take that into a gym."
He says his own renewed focus on fitness over the past ten years has improved every aspect of his life, physically, mentally, his relationship with friends and family, and even his music and his career. He hopes to encourage others to feel healthy and be able to do more than they did yesterday, so they can be inspired to do more tomorrow.
