Ultimate Strength - Gymnastic Abs

About Eddie Baran

Eddie Baran has been involved in fitness for almost thirty years. Growing up in San Diego, California, he was your classic skinny weakling but always had an interest in strength and exercise. As a young boy, tired of getting sand kicked in his face, Baran sent away for the Charles Atlas muscle building course and thus began his strength training. He then dabbled in lifting weights for a brief period then stopped. In his late teens, Baran rediscovered fitness as an endurance athlete, becoming a road cyclist typically logging in three to four hour rides each day.

He later resumed weight training, doing bodybuilding routines. Being this was the mid 1980's, the age of big hair and big muscles, Baran hopped onto the bodybuilding bandwagon with reckless abandon and dived into weight training hoping to put some meat on his bones.

For the next decade, Baran continued on his bodybuilding quest, bulking up from a lean 155 pounds to a puffy, pumped-up, supplement-bloated 215 pounds. Although big, Baran was hardly strong and definitely not a conditioned athlete.

Realizing he was all fluff and no substance, and that bodybuilding was not about functional strength, Baran began training in Power Lifting, which eventually led him to the Olympic-style weightlifting. He admired the explosive real world strength, the timing and coordination, and the athleticism of this type of training.

In 1999 Baran met Matt Furey who further coached him in the Olympic Lifts. Furey's no-nonsense approach to teaching was just what Baran needed to dramatically improve his lifting. Baran went on to compete in Olympic style weightlifting, but he hungered for more conditioned based strength routines.

Impressed with Matt Furey's real world expertise of functional strength, Baran was the first ones to begin training with Furey's Combat Conditioning and to this day continues study under the instruction of Furey. Making tremendous gains in strength and conditioning, so excited about how effectively bodyweight exercises built functional strength and conditioning that he decided to start training in gymnastics at the age of 35.

Along with Matt Furey, Baran coauthored The Secret Power of Handstand Training and The Primate Power Super Strength System, as well as contributed his expertise in Furey's Gama Fitness course. He is on the advisory board on the Matt Furey Inner Circle membership website.

Baran continues to this day to study gymnastics. He coached the sport, specializing strength and conditioning, for recreational and competitive gymnasts ranging in ages 8-18. Baran developed a training program, Body Sculpting Bodyweight Exercises for Women specifically designed to give women an athletic and aesthetic body. Along with his twin brother Andy, he co-wrote the wildly popular Gymnastic Abs program which teaches adults of all levels how to get the strong and ripped abs of a gymnast.

Baran is a refugee from California who fled north across the border to Portland, Oregon in order to escape economic and social oppression of his native homeland.

About Andy Baran

Andy Baran has taught high school science and math, and has worked in the computer industry in the Silicon Valley. Like most everyone, he has had a long history of working out with little results to show for it. He went through his twenties, thirties, with hovering around the same fitness level. He and his twin brother Eddie trained together and tried many different weight lifting routines, styles and programs, but never achieved any real fitness.

While Eddie went on to Matt Furey's Combat Conditioning and bodyweight exercises, and ultimately gymnastics, Andy clung to weight training and the belief that this was the only way to train. He couldn't fathom how bodyweight exercises could get you strong. He believed they were for only warming up and for senior citizens who were trying to keep their bodies loose. He kept trying new weight-based workouts, each time believing the new routine was "the one."

After years of Eddie and Andy working on different routines it became apparent that Eddie was now the much stronger and the much more fit twin. While Eddie got stronger, more athletic, leaner, more muscular and was able to do some very impressive gymnastic moves, Andy seemed to digress. He was gaining fat but not strength, even though he was working out 4-6 times per week. Finally he had had enough. He asked Eddie to share his "secret" and from then on has been hooked on combat and gymnastic conditioning exercises.

It's ironic in a sense that Andy cowrote the Gymnastic Abs course with his twin brother Eddie, as abdominals had always been his weakest body part. However he has one of the strongest cores around due to this type of training.

Which is why his perspective is important. He has a long history of failed workouts like so many people out there. He understands what a weak, flabby and out-of-shape guy should do to train to get into superior physical condition; he knows how to take someone with a soft and weak belly to an animal with extremely strong ab muscles. Andy represents the everyman - the guy who has spun his wheels in the gym with nothing to show for it, the guy who has struggled with his body after years of failed attempts, but has now turned into a strong, conditioned athlete.

Andy Baran resides in the Sierra foothills in northern California with his wife and two children.

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