Andy Long: Make Mindset Your Point of Differentiation

After a distinguished rugby career spanning 24+ years, Andy has immersed himself in a variety of elite sporting environments, as both a player and a coach. Now, he brings a unique combination of business coaching, elite sport and extreme adventure to his work. 

From boardrooms to dressage arenas to 270km across the Sahara, Andy uses Red2Blue as his constant, and he's now building an entirely new strand of the business around adventure-based coaching.
Andy's connection with Red2Blue runs through every area of his life: "I use Red2Blue every day – one hundred percent. I refer to it every day. I think about it if I'm going for a run, if I'm preparing for a run, if I'm having a bad day, if my wife's having a bad day. We use it as a common language in terms of accepting, letting go and resetting."

It's this everyday accessibility, he believes, that makes the framework so powerful. "You don't need a textbook in front of you. You've got the concepts in your mind, and you've just got to go and access them."

Own your own mindset

For Andy, Red2Blue’s appeal lies in the structure, the tools, the language around it and its accessibility. “It isn't just its simplicity, it's what that simplicity gives to people. "I love the fact that you're owning your own mindset. Giving people the agency to own their own mindset is a really powerful thing," he explains, "As opposed to your mindset being an external thing that's controlled by other things around you." 

That shift, from thinking of mindset as something that happens to you, to something you can actively manage and develop, is what convinced him it would work not just for himself, but for everyone he coaches.

From boardroom to saddle

Andy's varied client base demonstrates how Red2Blue can be applied across many different sectors. He coaches senior leaders and business teams, helping them recognise when they're "creating fog and not clarity" and supporting them to build clearer plans, both for themselves and the people they lead.

He also works with dressage riders at a high level, three rowers preparing for an Atlantic crossing, and uses it himself as an ultra-endurance athlete.

Andy gave an example of one dressage rider he coaches who used to get overwhelmed during warm-ups, comparing herself to other competitors before she entered the arena. Over time, she began using the Red2Blue language on herself, building in proper resets before her tests. 

"That was a real win for me when she started using the language around it, understanding that mindset was a skill she had to practise, rather than just a bolt-on. She realised it had to be integral to what she was doing.’ Andy points out that a horse has its own nervous system and picks up on a rider's state, so when a rider can reset and stay calm, it makes the connection with the animal more powerful.

A gruelling test in the Sahara

Andy's most vivid personal example comes from the Marathon des Sables, a 270km self-supported ultramarathon across the Sahara. Two nights before the race began, he was struck with a stomach bug, which meant he couldn't fuel up properly and had to abandon much of his careful pre-race planning. 

"It literally chunked everything down into: right, what do I need now, this hour?" he says. Rather than being overwhelmed by the scale of the challenge ahead, he narrowed his focus to what he could control in the immediate term, whether that was fluids, medication or simply deciding when to see a medic.

That same clarity carried him through blisters, kit failures and searing heat later in the race. "I was able to stay blue and make good decisions, not push through pain and ignore it," he says. Having a clear sense of purpose for taking on the challenge in the first place helped too. 

Looking back, he describes the experience as a complete run through the Red2Blue cycle: from the pre-performance planning, structure, skills and mindset, to using the tools in the moment, and reviewing what did and didn’t go well afterwards to draw out lessons for other parts of his life.

Challenged-based Red2Blue coaching 

It's this personal experience of adventure under pressure that's now shaping a new Red2Blue programme Andy is developing with us – challenge-based coaching. The goal is to take individuals or corporate teams through expeditions, treks or endurance events, preparing them beforehand with Red2Blue, supporting them through the pressure of the event itself, and then debriefing afterwards to translate the lessons back into everyday life and work.

Andy already coaches around events such as Apex, which involves climbing the height of Everest on Helvellyn in 48 hours. He has also taken part in a canoe expedition along the Great Glen in support of Challenging MND. Canoeing with his friend Alex, who has motor neurone disease, highlighted the challenges of how people communicate and hold up under sustained pressure.

"It might be an expedition, it might be a trek or a hike, something that's going to put people under pressure," Andy says. "Then you kick out the back end of it and go: okay, how did that work, and how can we use that in your everyday life?"

For Andy, that's the real opportunity: using adventure not as a one-off team day out, but as structured practice for the pressure everyone faces back at their desk.

Why Red2Blue?

When asked why he chooses Red2Blue over other performance under pressure programmes, Andy keeps returning to the same idea. "Mindset could be the differentiator between where you are now and really hitting your goals," he says.

"Imagine making mindset your point of difference over everyone else, because not everyone else is doing that." Underneath it all lies the same principle he lives by personally: the ability to own your own mindset, rather than waiting for someone else to control it for you.

To find out more about the work Andy does using Red2Blue with Impact² click here. To learn more about Red2Blue click here. If you're interested in becoming a partner or you have any questions get in touch!