About Tim Gardner

By: Hugo Rivera and Roger Cox

Tim Gardner began weight training in 1977 for high school football.
"I remember reading the old Muscular Development, Strength & Health, Muscle Mag and Iron Man magazines.... At that time, the sport of bodybuilding was at its infant stage and was publicly viewed as mere oddities from the circus, not quite ready for mainstream America, that's for sure."

Through the 80's, he continued to workout and eventually attended a competition, where he had the privilege of meeting the "Myth" himself, Sergio Oliva. That did it.. he was hooked.

In his first contest, in 1988, he placed dead last. However, this was not a deterrent. Over the next ten years, he continued to compete, raise a family, and maintain a demanding job. At the time he was already a professional in the building industry, selling and designing architectural glass projects. It was a job that he had started in high school working on the loading docks. By the early 1990's, he had risen to the position of a top level professional with a demanding client base that extended over several states. Needless to say, training had to be woven around, work, travel, and family. This meant training at many gyms in various locations to meet travel, home and business schedules.

Season after season and diet after diet would pass, and Tim continued to learn what diets and training techniques would work, and what was hype. This valuable information led him to discover the "why's" of the results he would see. More success would sometimes be followed by setbacks, as he experimented with many training and diet concepts, keeping what worked, and discarding what failed. He was becoming a graduate of the "Been There - Done That" school of bodybuilding.

His hard work began to pay off as judges also acknowledged and rewarded his efforts on stage. He began to win local contests, then moved on to state, regional and eventually the national scene. He became an NPC judge and continued to train hard, learn,and compete.

As with most successful bodybuilders, he would get asked for help and advice from gym friends or others who were also training for competition.

That is when he realized that what he had learned could apply to others as well, if adjusted and dialed in properly.

"Honestly, (it was) personal experience and trial and error. When I first started, I would camp out at the local vitamin store and wait for the biggest guy to strut in and wait to see what he would purchase. Then, I would grab three of whatever he bought and consume it in a week. I realized that sometimes more is not always better, I began applying logic and researching thoroughly what each vitamin and sport supplement would do in the body as well as for the body. I applied logic to my training and nutrition, basically worked off of fundamentals and basics."

The "why" question had been studied and answered. He had gone beyond the dogma of "just do what I do". In order to bring out the best in each athlete who approached him, he would adjust his suite of tools depending on how they responded to each adjustment. His eye had been focused. He knew what would win on stage (after all,he was a judge), and which adjustment would lead to success, and what to apply to each body type and personality.

He started building a new kind of client base. This time it was making a different kind of building... he was making physique champions. He had developed a side business of athlete clients would sought him out for contest training and advice. Weight management and diet counseling began in 1993 and contest preparation since 1995.

BODY*TECH Fitness Emporium had been a dream since the beginning. It was born out of conversations with friends around the squat rack, and on return trips from NPC judges meetings. His concept of a "competition team" was initiated in 1995, and Team BODY*TECH materialized, and began to consistently produce champions. The counseling side business continued to grow, and eventually he resigned from the architectural world completely in 2000, when the first BODY*TECH Fitness Emporium became a reality.

"Who can honestly say that their occupation is their passion? I can. When BODY*TECH increased in its popularity, it was very difficult to hold back the reigns. Our members were pushing us to build a larger gym, by 2003, Brandie & I outgrew our training facilities and expanding to a full-sized health
club in Tampa."

I am blessed and feel fortunate to be able to work in my passion, my dream. - Tim Gardner