Bobby Bones Has Little Time for the Gym—So He Built One at Home
Once Bobby Bones drops the mic on his nationally syndicated show each morning, he can head home, pick up a paddle, and play a few games on his backyard pickleball court.
The court is just one corner of Bones’ personal performance center—what he calls a necessary luxury made possible by his long, time-consuming road to success. The setup exists because of the work Bones has put in over the past three decades. He has built The Bobby Bones Show into iHeartMedia’s country-music flagship, a nationally syndicated morning juggernaut now broadcasting on more than 200 stations across the U.S. and Canada and reaching nearly 10 million monthly listeners.
As his brand continues to expand under a development deal with Netflix, his reach has also pushed into sports, where he co-hosts the weekly NFL podcast Lots to Say with former quarterback Matt Cassel.
The more he’s in front of a camera, Bones says, the more his appearance starts to matter.
“It’s never really about a number. I just like to feel good in my clothes, and I don’t like to look fat on TV, honestly,” he admits. “The camera does make your face look fat. So it’s not even an aesthetic thing in real life. It’s just I have to look a certain way on camera all the time.”
That “look” is the product of a media empire he’s been building from the ground up since he was a teenager. Bones took his first radio job at 17 in Arkansas, then moved to Austin after college, turning a local pop morning show into a syndicated brand by buying the gear himself and hustling stations one by one.
He downplays raw talent but leans hard into the one trait that’s carried him the whole way.
“I don’t have a lot of skill. I’m not naturally talented, but I have a lot of tenacity and I have really good awareness of when it doesn’t work out, then what can I learn from it?” he says. “I’m always scared of not learning anything if it doesn’t work out.”
His pickleball palace is just part of a comeback story he can tell his family, colleagues, and listeners about dealing with injury. In 2024, he says he felt a “tug” in his ankle during a tournament, but gutted it out and still finished third. He kept playing through the pain until late 2025 when doctors finally diagnosed torn cartilage in his left ankle. It required surgery—including roughly three months without lower-body training—and a long stretch of upper-body-only workouts.
That’s partly why Nashville-based trainer Kevin Klug—a former college football player who also trains artists such as Sam Hunt—has become central to Bones’ routine. Under Klug’s guidance, Bones has quietly joined the 300-pound deadlift club, a modest but meaningful feat for the entertainment mogul. More important to the naturally competitive Dancing with the Stars Season 27 winner, nailing the landing on a simple box jump was the fitness feat that solidified he could once again cut and pivot off both feet when he returned to the pickleball court.
“Box jumps were a big thing because I think I could get them, but in my head I was wondering, am I going to hurt myself again?” he says, “but now I can do them pretty good.”
Now 46, the 6’1″ celebrity questioner still has a competitive streak he’s not willing to relinquish, even with time at a premium. This past March, he and his wife, Caitlin, became first-time parents, compressing an already tight schedule down to the minute. With a newborn in the house and multiple shows on his plate, the on-property setup keeps the whole plan sustainable. Bones is blunt that a 40-minute round trip to a commercial gym would make consistent training nearly impossible. Instead, he finds ways to get the work in, even when it’s tempting to punt a session to “tomorrow.”
When time is short, micro-workouts in his home gym give him enough volume and intensity to keep getting stronger and leaner. Just as important, the home sessions don’t crush him, allowing him to reset for the next morning and still give 100 percent, both on air and at home.
“Even if I am so tired, if I can just get 20 minutes in, that feels like a small victory for me that day,” he says. “And I’m just tallying up wins at this point.”
Bobby Bones’ Role in Turning Music City into Muscle City
In Music City, there’s no shortage of muscle these days. While Bones is perhaps most famous for his studio sit-downs with what seems like every star in country music—Riley Green, Russell Dickerson, and Sam Hunt, for starters—his own challenge is keeping pace with the regimens of some of the industry’s fittest performers.
At the top of that list, he says, is a legendary singer who, even as he approaches 60, still sets the bar higher than anyone else.
“Tim McGraw goes harder than anybody that I know,” Bones says of the notoriously fit 59-year-old. “He had his shirt off—I counted 41 abs. I don’t have that many bones in my body. He is a monster, and more shredded than anyone else in country music.”
Longevity has taken on new priority for the new parents. Staying in shape for his expanding career and part-time pickleball competition remains high on the priority scale, but being physically strong and present for his daughter for decades to come has elevated the importance of every minute he can afford to spend in the gym.
“Those guys come to mind first because I see all of them, and all of those guys are natural athletes too,” he says. “But they put in the work, and that’s inspiring to see people who are killing it on one level, but they’re also prioritizing their health and fitness as well.”
To accomplish this, Bones has built a home fitness facility fully decked out with essentials for both him and his wife: In one room is a squat rack, treadmill, barbells, plates on the wall, medicine balls, kettlebells, and even a Pilates reformer. In another room, behind a curtain, there’s a full-body red-light bed and a sauna. Outside, there’s a full pickleball court.
The home setup is a long way from where he started. Bones says he began training seriously around age 19, when he was living in Austin and going to the gym three days a week. Over time, those sessions became a habit.
Back then, he worked with trainer Ahmad Watson, who is still a close friend, and relied on a well-worn treadmill he had picked up for his college apartment so he could get miles in while studying. Even as he was building his brand in Austin, he was finding ways to keep fit with whatever tools he had.
Today, even with a fully built-out facility, Bones still has to squeeze his fitness into the small gaps between fatherhood and fame. His day starts around 3 a.m. to prepare for the radio show, so his goal is to complete a full workout after the broadcast wraps. On a good day, he gets to it around 3 p.m.; on a long stretch, the workout may not happen until closer to bedtime.
“It’s easier to lift later,” he says. “But I won’t do cardio later because then I can’t sleep. But if I’m just gonna lift, I can always get in a bit of a lift later in the evening.”
That short lifting block, however, is something he can fit in without driving his heart rate too high before bed and wrecking his sleep. It’s why having every essential at home has become a necessity for Bones.
“I think people that love their health and have success and realize that their time is stretched thin, they have the ability and the means to make it easier on them to be fit,” he says. “To Riley [Green], he’s got to get his time in. And if you don’t have time, you can save time by having one near you or with you.”
From 30-plus Rejections to 300-Plus-Pound Deadlifts
For all the broadcasting “wins” Bones has worked to accumulate, he’s quick to point out that each one came on the heels of several failed projects. Bones remembers, in the early days, mailing audition tapes to 36 stations and hearing nothing back. Then there was the “can’t-miss” daytime talk pilot with football legend Deion Sanders that never materialized, a failed CMT talk pilot, and Breaking Bobby Bones, the Nat Geo series that lasted only one season.
The same persistence built The BobbyCast, which he worked on for 10 years without real revenue—until Netflix picked it up and a new audience discovered what he had been building for a decade.
“I know the game now,” Bones says. “The game is, most stuff doesn’t work, but the more you keep your line in the water, the better odds that something does.”
That delayed success, when it finally arrived, shaped his approach to virtually everything he puts his heart into, including business and training.
With his calendar packed from sunrise to sunset, Bones relies on Klug—the owner of Nashville’s Klug Fitness, with whom he has worked for about six years—to make short workouts count. Instead of high-volume marathon sessions, they focus on efficient workouts that support his primary goals: looking lean and feeling athletic.
“I don’t need to be motivated. I also don’t need any sort of discipline because I have those things,” he says. “What I like about Kevin is there’s an expectation from him that even if I’m coming in a little worn out, I’ve dedicated myself to that hour.”
What he did need, however, was a solid plan for coming back after doctors told him to avoid lower-body work following ankle surgery. Bones did some upper-body moves, but that didn’t suffice.
“When my ankle was hurt, I did a lot of upper body, so I still did [something], but I felt so lame,” he says. “It was a pretty difficult three months or so.”
After surgery, Klug’s first priority was gradually returning Bones to full training strength by keeping him moving at a pace that wouldn’t aggravate the injury. “If we did a movement that wasn’t cooperating with him—if the pain’s higher than a three—we’d find something different,” Klug says.
At first, that meant stripping out everything high-impact, including sprints, side shuffles, and jumps.
“We could squat with that ankle, but we’d go heels elevated. We could do our split squats, but we kept things a little less dynamic and more low impact,” Klug says.
Over time, the less-is-more approach worked, to the point where small jumps gradually became higher and higher. Once Bones cleared that major hurdle, his mindset shifted to a new challenge: surviving leg day.
“I have no interest in doing heavy squats or heavy lunges,” Bones says. “But he has interest in me doing heavy squats and heavy lunges for a lot of reasons.”
Today, a typical session starts with a five-move, two-round warmup: 30-second intervals of jogging in place, jumping jacks, air squats, lateral lunge-to-curtsy lunges, and narrow-stance squats with an overhead reach. A short plyometric block follows, using squat jumps to add explosiveness.
Squats are still part of the program, but only as a supporting piece of Bones’ standard full-body, four-times-a-week sessions. He comes in and does the work—especially when it’s the last thing he feels like doing.
“I like to prioritize single-leg work because we can load it up,” Klug says. “He’s not a guy who loves lifting heavy, but we’ll pick and choose some.”
To accommodate Bones’ busy schedule, Klug programs full-body, athlete-style sessions built around a handful of key lifts and single-leg movements. From there, he layers in upper-body strength—overhead presses, rows, and bodyweight pull-ups—along with hinge patterns such as deadlifts and Romanian deadlifts. The goal, he says, is to help Bones feel and move like an athlete, especially on the pickleball court.
“When people train with me, they’re gonna feel a lot of athletic types of movements—it’s not like a lot of biceps and triceps split,” Klug says. “We’re gonna be moving, and we’re gonna put some strength training in with that.”
Bones has checked all the boxes, including that box-jump test. He started barely able to deadlift 95 pounds and has worked his way up to a respectable three-plate pull.
“He’s definitely gotten stronger,” Klug says. “That 315 number was a byproduct, not the goal. He just so happened to hit 315 because of the work he’s been putting in.”
Like anything else, Bones takes it in stride, seeing the big picture over obtaining mass monster status.
“I feel like if I’m not healthy, I’m not able to do my job to the best of its ability,” he says. “I look at it as something that I have to invest in so I can do the thing that I do the best. It’s never been, ‘Let’s see how big my muscles are,’ because I’m a pretty thin guy.”
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A Bronze Medal Story for the Ages
On Lots to Say, the co-hosts often joke that they bring a “combined” 17,500 NFL passing yards—all from Cassel—and one Dancing with the Stars Mirrorball trophy, courtesy of Bones, to the microphones. For Bones, though, there’s been a post-surgery silver lining: The once-hobbling host can now offer his own perspective when the topic of injuries comes up.
Bones’ road to recovery involved more than just a steady training progression that finally led to a pain-free box-jump landing. It was also a mental game, the pickleball competitor explains, and the real turning point came when he stopped thinking about the possibility of pain altogether.
“A great thing about it has been that I don’t think about it anymore,” he says. “I have friends that played professional sports, and they would talk about their real injuries, and when they knew they were better was not when it didn’t hurt, but when they wouldn’t think about it when they were playing. And so I feel good because I don’t think about it anymore.”
For Bones, that’s been the philosophy: turning losses into a steady stream of small wins—whether stacking 45s on the deadlift bar or digging into the lives of singers such as Dustin Lynch—that have expanded into big gains. Getting through both a long workday and a workout, with a 1 p.m. crash almost guaranteed, is even more remarkable considering the former Mountain Dew junkie now does it almost stimulant-free.
These days, he might sip an LMNT hydration drink more for the “burning,” soda-like sensation it gives his mouth than for any perceived energy boost, but coffee or anything similar is out of the question.
“I can’t deal with the crash,” he admits. “And also, caffeine doesn’t really stimulate me that much, so it’s not worth it.”
He’s also had to cut out plenty of foods in his quest to look good physically on the court and aesthetically sharp in front of the camera. Bones says that blood work revealed a dairy allergy that forced a full nutrition overhaul including eliminating comfort foods such as pizza, cheeseburgers milk, or milk chocolate. Instead, he leans on proteins, fruits, and vegetables—a shift that helped him lose nearly 15 pounds he had added after surgery.
“There’s dairy in everything, and I didn’t know that until I couldn’t eat it anymore,” he says. “I only started doing a crazy protein breakfast a year ago, but that helps me tremendously. It allows me to hit the wall with a little less intensity.”
Now he estimates his diet is about 90 percent clean.
“I’m not so obsessed with it that it drives my wife crazy, but I do eat clean enough to where I think it makes a difference in my life,” he says. “The more clean food I eat, the better I feel, and I don’t put on a lot of weight.”
The result is a version of Bobby Bones who’s back on the court, back to training, and fully engaged with the next phase of his career and newfound family life as he heads toward 50, still a few years away. His résumé is already rock solid—he’s the youngest living inductee into the National Radio Hall of Fame, with four ACM Awards, four CMA Awards, three CRS Awards, an honorary degree from the University of Arkansas, and, of course, a Season 27 Dancing with the Stars Mirrorball trophy.
Still, adding a gold medal from a future pickleball podium wouldn’t hurt. And if that never happens, he can still tell his daughter about the tournament when he played through a damaged ankle and still came away with a medal.
“If I’d have finished first, it would have been an awesome story,” he says. “Maybe in five years I do finish first in this story, but right now it’s still so recent. It’s not as sexy when you say you finished third, but I did get a medal.”
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