Colin Kaepernick Stays Ready for Football with 5 AM Workouts

3 min readFOR SOME PEOPLE, a 4:30 a.m. wakeup is an event. For Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback-turned civil rights advocate, it’s a Tuesday.Even though Kaepernick is almost a decade removed from his last snap of organized football, he's still in game shape. He made that clear when he appeared on MH's Strong Talk podcast, saying he's "absolutely" ready to play. "We'll hit the ground running," he said. "We do all of our training to make sure that we are prepared for that."And yes, Kaepernick still wants back in the league. While he no longer watches the NFL, he regularly checks box scores and stat lines, searching for teams that could use a QB. That means early morning workouts five days a week, hitting plyometrics, sprints, skill work and heavyweight lifts. That level of discipline is deeply ingrained in him—he says it started when he was just eight years old.Kaepernick’s youth football coach challenged his players, often pushing them to run laps and push through rounds of pushups and leg lifts as a team—and forcing them to start over if anyone made a mistake. “What I learned through that process is the ability to push the bounds of what you're capable of,” Kaepernick tells MH fitness director Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S.It’s one of the foundational memories Kaepernick chronicled in his memoir, The Perilous Fight. The new book covers his early life, football career, and the protest that turned into a larger civil rights project for the athlete.He joined Samuel on MH’s Strong Talk podcast to share more about the book, his current training regimen, and what drives him to keep challenging himself—and he made it crystal clear that, even at age 38, he wants one more shot at the NFL.“One of the things that you constantly battle is this idea of complacency,” Kaepernick said of his training “Like, ‘Hey, I've gotten stronger. Do I keep pushing further? Like, am I doing too much?’”Clearly, his answer would be no. And it’s not just for football.“I look at all of it, in everything that we do in training, whether it's physical or whether it's mental, as how you show up,” he says.He uses that mentality to keep pushing through his workouts. Even a decade after his last game, Kaepernick is still putting himself out there for another shot at pro football. In a league where 44-year-old Philip Rivers played for the Colts to close the 2025 season, the idea isn’t totally out of left field.“To me, I have to do everything that is in my control to make sure that I'm prepared,” Kaepernick says. “And whether that's training, whether that's making sure I'm making the right calls, I want to make sure that what I have control over, I'm showing up the best way possible.”He doesn’t just stick to his routine because it’s the only thing he knows. He wants to play football because he loves the sport—and the camaraderie it builds amongst a team. He recalled a moment in the NFL where he challenged his offensive line to push harder in the weight room during what was meant to be a “light” session: “I'm going to push you to your limits. And I also need you to push me to mine when I may not be showing up in the best way possible,” he says. “You build this environment where everyone is constantly pushing and leaning on each other, but you know it's towards that same goal. It's very hard to get that in any other place.”But Kaepernick hasn’t had a football team in a decade. So how does he continue finding motivation to pursue his ultimate goal? Simple: Stay focused.That doesn’t just mean blocking out external factors and controlling the controllables—it means taking every opportunity to be better. “The work and preparation that you do on the day-to-day, that benefit—you're not doing that for today. You're doing that for the future opportunities that you're hoping to get, or what you're seeking to accomplish. And when those moments arise, it's more so going to be an indicator of all the past work you've done, more so than the present.”Watch the Latest EpisodesGillian MacLeod/MH IllustrationPhotograph by Cory VanderploegGetty ImagesGetty ImagesGetty ImagesGillian MacLeod/MH IllustrationGillian MacLeod/MH IllustrationGillian MacLeod/MH IllustrationCourtesy of Subject/MH IllustrationGetty ImagesMen's HealthGillian MacLeod/MH IllustrationCourtesy of Sadik HadzovicGillian MacLeod/MH IllustrationGillian MacLeod/MH IllustrationBrett Williams, NASM-CPT, PES, a senior editor at Men's Health, is a certified trainer and former pro football player and tech reporter. You can find his work elsewhere at Mashable, Thrillist, and other outlets.