Standout defensive end and TEST Football Academy graduate Tuzar Skipper talks about using top-of-the-line coaching and supplements to reach his NFL dreams.
Unlike with the Gronks and Mannings of the world, football wasn’t ingrained in Tuzar Skipper’s family tradition, but it’s clearly in his DNA. “It was something I wanted to do in high school,” Skipper says. “I didn’t have a football background, so I was just jumping right into it. It was one of those stories—you try it and it turns out you’re pretty good at it, so I just continued with it.”
It wasn’t long before his natural talent, coupled with his imposing 6’3″, 250-pound frame, had him turning heads at the University of Toledo, where he and his coaches began setting their sights on pro-level dreams. “I knew it was kind of far-fetched, but hey, might as well shoot for the stars,” Skipper says.
He credits much of his athletic development to the TEST Football Academy in Martinsville, NJ, and supplementing with CarnoSyn. “My goals were to get bigger, faster, and stronger. At TEST, they helped me do exactly that,” Skipper explains. “Kevin Dunn is the overseer of things there, and he’s just a scientist when it comes to building strength and conditioning. He helped me understand the science behind the sport.”
Kyle Lieberman / M+F Magazine
Dunn carefully prescreens TEST athletes to tailor training and nutrition programs that involve grueling schedules of six days a week with two sessions a day, plus he creates custom meal preps based on their weight and body-comp goals. Dunn also starts all his athletes on a supplementation program. “Supplements containing CarnoSyn and SR CarnoSyn beta-alanine have been our secret weapon,” Dunn says. “Beta-alanine is a lactic acid buffer, allowing athletes to push through barriers we never thought possible.”
The mentorship from TEST combined with CarnoSyn took Skipper’s strength and physique gains to new heights. “In just four months supplementing with CarnoSyn, I’ve definitely gotten stronger. I have a lot more energy, and I’m more fired up,” Skipper says. “I started at 19 reps for the 225-pound bench press, and now I’m at 31. I went in weighing 236 pounds, and now I’m at 250. Plus, the recovery is so much easier with CarnoSyn. It helps me get back to training the next day right where I left off.”
Skipper’s hard work and planning are paying off—in May, he signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers after attending the team’s three-day rookie minicamp.
Dunn sees Skipper as the model for what a program like TEST and proper supplementation can do for an athlete’s performance. “Tuzar is the perfect example of how we took an athlete already in great shape and pushed him through barriers and plateaus he never before achieved,” Dunn says.
