Meet Andreas

My story

I was 19 when I deployed to Afghanistan with the British Army. When I came home, my job was to get other soldiers ready for what I'd just been through: as a Physical Training Instructor serving with the Gurkhas, I trained troops for operations around the world. You learn something quickly in that role. The training that works isn't the hardest training. It's the training people can keep doing when they're exhausted, stressed and short on time.

When I left the Army I went into personal training in central London, then opened bootcamps across the UK as part of the Bootcamp UK franchise. Thousands of people came through those sessions. At the same time I was coaching clients one-to-one and raising my daughter on my own. So I know what it's like to build a workout around a school run, or to reach 9pm with good intentions and nothing left. That's not me trying to sound relatable. It's the part of my life that taught me how fitness has to work for parents.

Along the way I've helped people lose as much as 150lbs, get in shape for their wedding, rebuild after having a baby, and feel like themselves again after years of putting work and family first. Different starting points, same lesson every time: nobody was short on motivation. They were short on a plan that fit.

I moved to Florida and built an online community of parents, because I kept meeting people who'd been told to "just make time" by someone who clearly didn't have kids. I now coach clients in Sydney, London, Vancouver, New York and plenty of places in between. I home-school my daughter and we travel between countries whenever we can, so I run my business the way I ask you to run your training: around real life, not on top of it.

Outside coaching, I do the ridiculous stuff so you don't have to. I've completed four-mile burpee challenges for charity, and once ran 456km in seven days with a beer keg on my back, one kilometre for every British life lost in Afghanistan. Here in Florida I organise river and beach clean-ups. None of that is what I'll ask of you. But I do think a coach should turn up for things that matter, and I'll ask the same of you, in a version that fits into a Tuesday.

Credentials

• Former British Army Physical Training Instructor
• Active IQ personal training qualification
• Ultramarathon runner
• CrossFit Level 1
• Spin coach
• Fully insured
• 15 years coaching

As seen on

• Escape to Florida
• It's Your Fault I'm Fat
• FOX 35 Orlando Good Day Orlando — man to honour veterans with a burpee challenge
• Barrel along: Afghanistan veteran prepares for marathon running challenge
• Barrel runner Andreas Beirne who took on 456km run for charity welcomed home
• Andreas rolls out the barrel for charity run
• Ex-Army trainer running 300 miles for Combat Stress
• Trainer completes two miles of burpees for charity