Travis Kelce dropped a teaser of sorts on his Instagram in March this year, about the energy that’s going to come from him in 2026. The tight end is animatedly yelling and cheering for his team in the video, never resting at one spot for a moment. But there was one brief segment that spoke of Kelce’s never-give-up mindset.

“All f—ing day, I’m working for y’all boys,” he told the players sitting on the bench.

Now that he is approaching 40, many have also called for him to hang up his cleats. This year, it looked like he would, as the Kansas City Chiefs were reeling from the 6-11 finish from last season. But Kelce was never going to go down that way. According to this mother, Donna Kelce, he’s pushing himself to the max to be able to contribute at the best possible level for his team.

“He always goes into his own routine with training, and it’s brutal,” Donna Kelce told People. “Then he goes to actual training camp. He has to get ready before he goes to training camp. It’s a long process. It’s months to get ready. That’s what he’s doing right now.”

This isn’t the first time Travis Kelce has undergone such a “brutal” offseason workout. After the Chiefs lost to the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX, the TE locked in on doing better for his team. ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler reported that Kelce had shed “about 25 pounds” for the 2025 season after playing at a relatively heavier weight in 2024. Since the past few summers, he’s also been training with Florida-based coach Tony Villani. They go back more than a decade, with Kelce having trained with him for his NFL Combine in 2023.

Even before the retirement talks, Kelce has always been going the extra mile when it comes to his fitness. Alex Skacel, one of three trainers constantly linked with the TE, told The New York Times that he wanted to go for a run at midnight in Paris, after sitting for nearly the whole day for a show during Fashion Week.

Travis Kelce might be a celebrity, but he’s going to work hard whenever the situation demands him to.

The TE, anyway, has to be ready for Andy Reid’s brutal practices during training camp. Both Kelce brothers agreed in a 2025 episode of their podcast that it is extremely tough to survive in the head coach’s routine. There was one time during Reid’s tenure in Philadelphia that he had to call a timeout in practice because Jason Kelce was on the ground because of exhaustion. But Travis Kelce hasn’t been an area of concern.

In 2025, when the TE was reloading, Reid told The Athletic that he was “training like crazy.” And the results showed. Kelce ended up leading the pass-catchers for the Chiefs last year, while wide receivers fell behind. He is still a key piece of the Chiefs’ system, regardless of his image as a pop-culture celebrity.

But that tag isn’t bad either, as Taylor Swift’s presence has only pushed him to do better.

Travis Kelce reveals Taylor Swift’s role in his return in the 2026 season

Kelce and Swift have gone through low points in their careers before reaching where they are now. Both of them have also defied time to still be some of the most relevant figures in their own arenas. That shared experience has been grounding for Kelce, especially as he navigates what could be the last stages of his career.

“We share the same love for what we do, and fortunately, we’ve had this desire since we were kids in our selective professions,” Kelce said of Swift on the Pat McAfee Show. “Of course, that’s motivating. That’s motivating for anybody to see, let alone my fiancée, knowing that I’m going through something where I’m trying to figure out exactly what the future holds for me.

“Something like that definitely motivates me to say, ‘You know what, I’m not done, either.’ I’ve still got some ideas in the back of my mind and still got some juice left to play this game.”

Travis Kelce will still be the same fiery Travis Kelce this year (except, of course, the wedding ring on his finger). He’s definitely planning to do better. But that zeal to give his best is the same as it always has been.