YEE-HAWTIE!
At 52, singer Tim McGraw has one of the most ripped bods in the biz. Here’s how he stays countr y strong
IN 2008, Tim McGraw was more swollen than swole.
That winter, he was catching a movie with his family when the trailer for the film “Four Christmases,” in which he played a small role, came on. McGraw was shocked that he looked “inflated and doughy,” with “tired and dull” skin. His daughter Gracie, now 22, also noticed, commenting on his 215-pound frame, “Jeez, Dad.”
The country star, now 52, embarked on a transformation, cutting back on booze and “truck-stop foods.” He took up running and weightlifting, and ultimately lost 40 pounds.
These days, he maintains that fit physique — and “clearer” mind — with the help of stuntman and martial artist Roger Yuan, who sculpted Daniel Craig’s James Bond bod for “Skyfall,” and helped “Superman” actor Henry Cavill fight like a mythical warrior in “Immortals.”
They met seven years ago when McGraw was looking for a change from his usual running and the popular high-intensity P90X sessions. Yuan was initially skeptical: “I had no knowledge of the whole country music thing, but I knew the name Tim McGraw,” he tells The Post.
They’re still working together, and McGraw is releasing his own wellness book, “Grit & Grace: Train the Mind, Train the Body, Own Your Life,” on Tuesday.
McGraw credits Yuan in the book for having shaped his “fitness attitude and workout plan over the past seven years more than anyone else.”
Yuan overhauled McGraw’s routine to include floor gymnastics, yoga, martial arts, tai chi, and animal flow — a regimen meant to take a body back to its primal roots by mimicking natural movements of beasts such as apes.
“I started reading and researching about what the human body is capable of doing, but we no longer do very much of because of everything that’s available, like cars and technology,” says Yuan. “Tim totally bought into it and loved it.”
McGraw encourages readers to embrace Yuan’s cycle of “21-day chunks,” in which you commit to three weeks of one particular activity, such as swimming or body-weight strength training.
“If you do something for 21 days in a row, it basically becomes a habit,” says Yuan, who can be seen in the upcoming remake of “Mulan.”
“It gets you into a thinking process and into a physical practice process, and without knowing it, you start to jones for it. You crave it.” McGraw certainly seems to crave peak fitness. Yuan says the singer is the hardest-working person he’s ever trained.
“That’s a compliment, but it was also a critique,” says Yuan. “I said to him, ‘You need to not train so hard because you’re going to tear apart your body.’ ”
It’s been a hard lesson for McGraw to learn. At a March 2018 concert in Dublin, Ireland, he performed his hit “Humble and Kind” and then collapsed onstage from dehydration.
Yuan suggested McGraw had likely not given his body enough rest after flying overseas and jumping into another grueling workout.
“I [told him], ‘You’ve got to tone down the training,’ ” says Yuan, “and I think he’s taken me up on [that].”
But you wouldn’t know McGraw has toned anything down, given the sizzling six-pack he shows off in the book. He doesn’t count calories, and fills up on fiber, veggies and main dishes made with lean proteins, such as turkey burgers and garlic shrimp.
Though the star will occasionally splurge on a chili dog or pizza, Yuan says you’ve ultimately got to have grit to get McGraw’s abs.
“Hard work,” he says. “It’s just hard, hard work.”