Biography
A native of Atlanta, Andrew Johnston has been a personal trainer for over two decades. He got into the business for self-improvement, arming himself with knowledge to combat the performance enhancing drugs that inundate the sport of professional cycling. This strategy worked, and in 1992 he was invited to be a resident athlete at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.
Upon graduation from Eckerd College in 1994, he turned pro and took his ambitions to Europe to race for the Belgian Haverbeke GB team. After the 1996 Olympic Trials, he moved to Spain to race for the Palafrugell and Homs squads until 1998. Andrew devoted his full attention to personal training in 1999 after a crash ended his cycling career just as he was entering his prime. But his competitive drive was satisfied for only a year before discovering his interest in triathlon. In his first full season of triathlon competition, he was the 2001 Olympic Distance Champion of Georgia and 5th overall at the National Long Course Triathlon Championships, earning All-American status as well as a slot on the U.S. World Triathlon team.
Andrew founded Triumph Training in 2000, using his athletic experience and insatiable appetite for knowledge to build a successful training business. Not content with having obtained his Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist degree, arguably the most respected credential in the fitness industry, Andrew became the first Corrective Holistic Exercise Kinesiologist in the state of Georgia in 2001.
His passion for the body and its limitless potential has grown only stronger since Men's Journal named him one of the Best Trainers in the U.S. in 2005 and again in 2006. Perfecting what he preaches to his clientele as well as various audiences throughout the Southeast, in 2006 Andrew became the first Leukemia Survivor to qualify for and finish the Hawaii Ironman World Championships. The award-winning documentary Living Is Winning captures the events leading up to that race and takes the audience deep into the life of an aspiring triathlete.
After several years of "retirement" from competition to open up his private training studio in Atlanta and to author his first of two published books, Andrew stormed back onto the triathlon scene in 2012 to qualify for the 70.3 World Championships followed three weeks later with the Overall Win at the Great Floridian--the first Leukemia Survivor to ever be crowned the champion of an Iron Distance Triathlon. He then got permission from his wife and son to tackle the 3000 mile Race Across America, raising over $250,000 dollars for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Now he takes his knowledge as a CHEK Practitioner and one of the select few ELDOA Trainers in the world to guide people in their pursuit of wellness, ultimately helping them to realize that the only limitations they truly have are the ones they set for themselves.
Designations and Degrees
Athletic Experience