About

About Tanner

I began lifting in high school, my junior year.  It was right after one of the seniors got in my face and I decided that I would get bigger so that no one could push me around.  I started lifting there at the high school and was at 130 lbs when my Junior year started.  By the Christmas break, I was at 150 lbs.  Then the principal decided to lock the weight room so I couldn’t lift the rest of that year.  After working all summer, in the fall I had enough money to buy some weights and get started in a garage.  I lifted there for 3 months and the weights became too small so I had to find a gym, about 30 minutes away where I lifted the rest of my senior year.  By that time I was up to 165.  It was hard to practice basketball, and then go lift, so I decided to give up basketball.  My lifting partner, was Matt Burton. He lifted with me from the beginning until I went away to college and he went to boot camp.

In the college weight room, I met John DeCoursey, during the second week of classes.  We started talking about lifting and decided to work out together. He had put on some of the bodybuilding contests at the college and was the one that talked me into doing a contest.  I didn’t think I was cut out to do a contest, but he convinced me otherwise.   My first contest was at the end of that Freshman year.  It was the Circle City OCB contest.  I won the teen contest and the novice I class.  My first show and two swords from it.  I weighed 170 at the contest.   Mr. DeCoursey was the one that taught me to eat big and helped me realize that it took a lot of calories to pack on size.

As school began my sophomore year in college, I was chosen to be the teen bodybuilder of the week at bodybuilding.com.

That fall, I entered my second contest, the ABA Mr. Indiana.  I won the teen class, the novice medium and then the novice overall.  Following that was the OCB DeKalb contest in which I took second in the teen class and fifth in the open middleweight class.  My weight was 190 for these contests, I didn’t cut for these contests. 

During that fall, I was able to go to California for Muscle and Fitness magazine’s photo shoot for the March issue’s Training Notebook article.

After bulking the rest of the winter, I sat my sights on three contest for the Spring of 2009.  The first one was the Northern Kentucky NPC contest in Covington, Ky.  I won the teen tall class and the teen overall.

Two weeks later was the Evansville NPC Southern Indiana contest.  Again I won the teen tall class and the teen overall.

On the following weekend, I traveled to Cleveland, Ohio for the NPC Northern Ohio  Natural contest. I won the teen tall class and the teen overall and placed second in the Junior class.  This class had 19 competiitors and was the toughest class yet.  I felt this was my best win so far. 

After I that contest I turned 20 and could no longer compete as a teen, so I decided to take time off from contests and try to bulk some more.  I am now at 213 on June 15, 2009.  I wil get back into contests this next spring and hope to compete at the national level then.

"Get Buff or Die Tryin" 
Peace!