Hello there! Thanks for visiting and welcome to Mirror Friendly. It is my honor to have you here.
This is just a little story about myself. I am Andrew, from Malta, born in November 1984. Fitness is my biggest passion, and my identity has been shaped around sports and healthy living.
My earliest childhood memories are characterized by flashes of sporting moments around the age of 5, with the highlights being of Carl Lewis crushing the sprint and long jump events at the Olympics.
There was also the famous Dutch trio of AC Milan lifting one trophy after another in the late 80s and early 90s. As a child, these athletes were my heroes so the seed was planted very early.
My own sporting career started at the age of 7. From then until the age of 24 I grew up as a competitive sprinter, running the 100 meters both in Malta and abroad. Throughout the years, I won consecutive national championships across various age categories, setting a national record in the Youth 100m along the way. I also represented Malta in several international events, including the World and European Youth Championships.
As a senior, I took my 100-meter personal best to 10.87 seconds and made it to the 4x100m national relay team. However, several recurring lengthy injuries gradually forced me out of the sport that by then had shaped me for life. In fact, I had to make a hard-fought decision to quit sprinting and totally devote myself to something that had been burning at the back of my mind (since my early teens when, as part of athletics training, I started performing bi-weekly gym sessions); i.e. building the most muscular and lean physique possible without the use of steroids or doping.
This triggered my desire to dig deeply into literature on bodybuilding and nutrition. The more I read, the more I realized that building your best body is not only dependent on lifting weights. It also relates to holistic healthy living, including proper nutrition, sufficient rest, quality sleep, and a stress-proof mindset.
While accumulating this knowledge, I was keen on putting it into practice through my weekly routine, making sure I left nothing behind in chasing my goal. For the past 15 years, I have, therefore, been working out at the gym religiously with the same discipline and frequency I followed as a sprinter.
I train six days a week late evenings after work.
Not too long after my transition from athletics to fitness I enrolled in my first bodybuilding contest at the age of 25. Fast-forward to today and along the way I won 5 national titles in the IFBB Men’s Physique and clinched 10th, 8th and 4th place at three separate editions of the IFBB European Championships, with the 4th place being achieved this year at age 39.
At the end of 2013 I launched mirrorfriendly.com and the related pages on Facebook and Instagram on the back of several years during which my network of friends had been showing support and interest in my sporting journey. On these platforms, I have been sharing my journey through healthy living while educating and inspiring people from different spheres of life – regardless of their fitness level. I also seek to raise awareness in my country which unfortunately has always been stigmatized with obesity and lack of recognition when it comes to anything sport-related.
In 2015 I was encouraged by the positive response received within the first months of launching my blog, so I spent a sabbatical year in Melbourne, Australia.
There I became qualified as a Master Personal Trainer at the Australian Institute of Fitness and the Personal Training Academy. While there, I also had the opportunity to satisfy my wanderlust as I explored the rest of Australia, New Zealand, and Asia, before returning to Malta. In fact, traveling is another passion of mine and one of my missions is to explore as many countries as possible.
As of this writing, my tally stands at 56 countries, and I am looking forward to growing this number, not just for the sake of it but as part of my personal growth, given that I consider travel, together with sport, to be the best school of life.
Parallel to my career in athletics and bodybuilding, I graduated as an accountant from the University of Malta. After that, I started working as an auditor with one of the Big 4 firms before joining a locally publicly listed company as an accountant. After three years in this role, I was promoted to CFO, a role I held for three years before moving to Australia. Once back in Malta, I was offered the role of COO, which I still hold today.
The simultaneous running of my sporting and professional careers taught me a great deal about time management and discipline, which I intuitively transposed onto my daily routine. This allowed me to learn how to successfully juggle my commitments while prioritizing healthy living. And this is one of the main skills I have been conveying to several people over the years. In fact, ever since I got qualified as a trainer, I have been offering personalized training and nutrition coaching services where I mentor like-minded people to shape their lives in a healthy and sustainable way.
I hope you find my content helpful in your own fitness journey.
If you’re looking to achieve your best results in the quickest amount of time, I’d love to work with you one-on-one.
To fitness with love,
Andrew