10 Things We’ve Learned in 10 Years of Ski Babes
We've Been Training For This: 10 Years of Ski Babes
This year, Ski Babes turns 10. 🎉
In celebration, we commissioned a special piece of artwork from longtime Ski Babes alum Rachel Davies to commemorate the anniversary. I’ve enjoyed seeing how Rachel uses art to convey the heart of a thing and teach along the way. I was excited to see what she would come up with!
Looking at Rachel’s artwork feels a little bit like looking back through the last decade. She captured the lessons, mantras, and values that have become part of the way we train here at Mind & Mountain and it’s very cool to see it reflected out in this way.
So, in honor of 10 years of Mind & Mountain 🎉🎂
Here are 10 things we love about Ski Babes, and a bit of the lore behind them.
1. I’ve been training for this.
If you’ve done a Ski Babes workout, there’s a good chance you’ve heard me say this one.
I’ve been training for this.
It’s a touchstone in the workouts, but it really shines when we take it outside.
Sometimes when we find ourselves in a challenging moment - in the mountains or in regular life - our minds and nervous systems can get overwhelmed by what’s happening right now.
In those moments, it can help to remember all the work that came before.
You practiced. You prepared. You built strength. You navigated other hard moments.
You’ve been training for this.
And we mean that pretty literally in Ski Babes, too. We train for slips and wobbles. We move our bodies in strange directions. We practice recovering our balance and responding when things don’t go exactly according to plan. We train our nervous systems too.
Those are the movements our bodies actually have to make out in the world.
So when you catch an edge, stumble on an icy trail, or find yourself in some weird body position you definitely didn’t plan for, hopefully there’s a little part of your nervous system that remembers: Oh yeah. I’ve been training for this.
2. Moving is winning.
Another classic Mind & Mountain mantra.
The lore behind this one took place on a Winter Wilderness Classic in the Wrangell Mountains here in Alaska.
We - my brother Ben and I - were absolutely slogging up a huge river valley. We were going slow, so slow. But after I stopped to pee and have a snack, I looked up and the people I’d been skiing with were tiny dots upriver. I hadn’t been stopped very long. And I knew they were moving just as slowly as I was.
I realized in that moment that we didn’t have to be moving fast to be making serious progress.
The phrase “moving is winning” popped in my head then. Helpfully, the rhythm of those words was about the pace I was skiing to, and that became my mantra for the 7 long days we were out skiing that round.
This “moving is winning” idea has become a central part of my approach to movement.
The details, like pace or reps or how much you do, doesn’t usually matter as much as we think.
Sometimes moving is a full workout. Sometimes it’s ten minutes of mobility. Sometimes it’s a walk around the block, the warm-up, some gentle stretching.
Every movement counts.
And sometimes the thing that actually moves us toward our goal is stopping. Resting is winning, too.
It all gets us closer - to ourselves.
3. The way you talk to yourself matters.
Self-talk is powerful, y'all.
And workouts can be an interesting and effective place to notice and play with it!
Our Members consistently refer back to the Self-Talk Mindset Modules in Ski Babes and Summer Strong as the most powerful, and it’s no small surprise why!
Little shifts in the things that our minds are saying to ourselves can make a huge difference to our experience.
Here’s a quick story:
One of my earliest experiences with really noticing my self-talk happened while descending a tricky talus slope in the Arctic. Think big microwave to fridge-sized rocks that weren’t always perfectly stable.
I was moving slowly, feeling uncomfortable, etc. Then I became aware I had a little self-talk loop running through my head:
“Why are we doing this? I suck at this.” (and repeat)
I’d been learning about self-talk in grad school (go UAA Social Work!) and this was my frist time noticing my own inner dialogue. I tried changing the script.
“I’ve got this. I’m good at this.”
It’s still so wild to me - I swear the slope got mellower.
And who knows, maybe it actually did. 😂
We’ll never know if the change was terrain or nervous system state, or both!
Either way, my experience of it changed significantly.
That moment taught me how powerful it can be simply to become aware of what we’re saying to ourselves while we’re doing hard things.
Workouts, too, can be a fruitful time to notice your self-talk patterns and to introduce something different. Physical challenge gives us an opportunity to notice our inner dialogue in real time - and experiment with changing it.
Practice it in a workout, take it outside, and see what changes. And report back pls - I still need to know if it was just in my head 😂
4. Trust your body when things get hard.
Much of our work inside Ski Babes - and Mind & Mountain in general - is about coming into relationship with your body and building trust with it.
Trust isn’t something we can think our way into. Embodied trust is built through experience, listening, and presence.
That’s where the workouts come in.
Yes, we’re building physical strength and capacity.
But we’re also practicing moving through the nervous system cycles that come with doing challenging things: feeling activation rise, responding to what we need, and experiencing ourselves successfully move through to the other side.
- We meet a challenge
- We notice what happens in our body and nervous system.
- We respond.
- We recover.
- And then we do it again.
Over time, those experiences accumulate. It’s the practice of pendulation and titration, in nervous system nerd terms.
Along the way, we learn what our bodies are capable of. We learn what it feels like to approach our limits. We learn when to keep going and when to back off. We learn that activation can rise and then come back down again.
And along the way, we accumulate small wins. Small pieces of evidence:
💪🏻I can do hard things.
🥳I can listen to myself.
💛I can take care of myself while I do them.
⚡I can stop if I need to.
Little by little, that evidence becomes trust.
5. We’re in this together.
Sometimes the outdoor community can feel a little… individual.
The toxic-bro adventure culture I often reference is part of this. Emphasis on personal records, conquering terrain, and sayings like “no friends on a powder day” are all part of it.
I’m not saying that competition or pushing each other is bad! I’m a double Aries ❤️🔥🐏 and take a lot of pleasure in winning (see #2) lol.
And also, lot of the toxic version of this energy can lead to pressure to prove yourself, go harder, be tougher, have the fanciest gear, know everything already, and definitely never admit that you’re scared or ask a question.
It can also be a really, really big barrier to entry for someone who is new to the world of outdoor rec.
We’re interested in being a part of something different.
A culture where we can do challenging things and take care of ourselves and each other along the way.
Where asking for help is normal.
Where we celebrate each other’s wins.
Where someone else being strong doesn’t diminish our own strength.
Where connection and community - with ourselves, each other, and the land - are part of the experience, not something we sacrifice in order to prove something.
And - it’s happening! The culture is shifting. It’s really different than it was 10 years ago when Ski Babes started.
We’re doing it. We’re in this together.
6. Rest is just as important as training.
This one seems obvious, and yet, in fitness culture, it can still feel surprisingly radical.
Your muscles don’t actually get stronger while you’re doing the workout. The workout provides the stimulus - and then your body uses the rest time after to recover and rebuild.
Rest is part of training.
The same is true for our nervous systems and, really, for so many forms of growth.
Challenge needs integration.
In Mind & Mountain, one way we build this into our training is to train in cycles that build then break. And inside of each weekly cycle, we have space and options for active recovery and lower-intensity movement.
Learning what kind of rest supports your growth is part of it too. Sometimes we need active rest, like a warmup, a workout done on Mobility Track, or a neighborhood walk. Other times we need real horizontal time. Nap or bath! Or social rest with the besties.
Rest isn’t always blissful, especially for those of us whose nervous systems have come to associate activation with safety. But it’s worth practicing.
We’ve been training for this!
7. Consistency over perfection.
Many folks who find their way to Mind & Mountain are recovering perfectionists. Maybe because that’s a part of my own story.
Starting this small business 10 years ago was an exercise in healing my perfectionism. Grad school too. It was very clear, very fast that it was just not possible!
Workout Perfectionism is what I call it, when applied to the fitness world.
It’s that feeling when you start a new thing and immediately decide you’re going to do ALL OF IT. Every workout. Every week. Exactly as written. (relate?)
Personally, I don’t relate at all anymore! This is one I’ve totally cleared, and in fact now that kind of pressure gives me the ick 🫣
Instead, here we expect things to be a little wobbly. It’s meant to be that way. That’s life in a human body!
I built Ski Babes with that in mind.
And we’ve seen that proven since the program has been running.
People imperfectly show up every year and still report back with incredible stories of catching themselves before they slipped on that ice, of the backcountry hut trip of their dreams, and of the way they were able to keep up with their kiddos on the ski slope for the whole day.
Sometimes consistency means picking up exactly where you left off.
Sometimes it means wiping the slate clean and starting fresh.
Sometimes it means choosing the mobility track instead of the harder workout.
And sometimes it means doing a very meh workout.
Those workouts count, too.
Over the long haul, continuing to return to your body matters so much more than checking every box, and the results our members have experienced speak for themselves.
8. It’s okay to be a little wobbly.
Let’s start literal with this one.
If you’ve ever done the Balance Challenge in a Ski Babes workout, you know that we spend a fair amount of time wobbling around on one leg.
And I love it.
Because the wobble isn’t evidence that you’re bad at balancing.
The wobble is the work.
When your body loses balance and recalibrates, your balance systems and connective tissues are responding to a challenge and learning from it.
The goal isn’t to eliminate every wobble. It’s to build our capacity to respond to them
And I think there’s something useful in there beyond balance training, too.
- Being new at something is wobbly.
- Coming back after a break is wobbly.
- Learning is wobbly.
- Growth is wobbly.
If we can stop treating the wobble as evidence that something has gone wrong, maybe we can stay with ourselves through those awkward learning moments a little longer and come through on the other side with new hobbies/friends/adventures/fill in the blank!
Let the wobble be fun; it’s worth it.
9. Outdoors are for everyone.
This is one of our core values at Mind & Mountain.
There isn’t one right way to be an outdoors person.
For some people, being outside means charging up mountains.
For someone else, it might mean sitting on the porch with a cup of tea.
Both count, and neither is better than the other.
There are very real cultural and historical barriers that have shaped who has traditionally been made to feel welcome in outdoor spaces. There's still plenty of work to do to create the outdoor community we dream about.
And there are also so many people doing that work! Shout out to our Outdoor Allyship series, where we get the chance to learn from these folks a few times a year inside the training membership!
[We bring in Outdoor Allyship speakers a few times a year to share knowledge, experience, and ideas about how we can build the outdoor culture we dream of. These talks are free for members and occasionally open to the public. We started these in 2020 and have quite the library built up by now - it’s all included as bonus curriculum for Mind & Mountain Members. We’re always looking for new voices in this space too. Send an email if you have suggestions]
We’re doing our best and also are messy humans at this work of allyship and worldbuilding. Learning as we go seems to be part of it, and making mistakes too. We’re sticking with it.
All bodies are good bodies and that outdoor joy doesn’t belong to one gender, race, sexual orientation, ability level, body type, or definition of athleticism.
If you want to be outside, we hope you can find a way of being outside that feels like yours.
There’s room for you! You can sit with us.
10. There’s always time for a little dance.
If there is one truly essential Ski Babes training principle, surely it is this:
Never underestimate the power of a dance break.
A few years after bringing Ski Babes online, I started adding Dance Move Rewards at the end of workouts.
They’ve been a hit ever since.
After working hard together, we get a moment of shared rhythm, connection, silliness, and play - a little coregulation moment that reminds our nervous systems:
We’re safe.
We’re playing.
This isn’t that serious.
One of my favorite outdoor dance memories happened on a cold packrafting trip with a group of women. We were climbing out of our boats, absolutely freezing. I didn’t know these women very well, but I did think I knew what might help - I suggested that we all start twerking to warm up our cores and get our blood moving again.
It worked.
But more importantly, it became a super fun silly moment of play and connection that changed the whole mood.
And that’s what we’re here for.
To feel good in our bodies.
To connect with each other.
To experience the natural world.
To do challenging things.
And to remember that play belongs there, too.
Here’s to the next 10 years
Looking back at these lessons has been such a fun way to celebrate 10 years of Ski Babes!
And maybe that’s fitting, because another thing we practice around here is celebrating the small wins, the imperfect completions, and the moments when we showed up without needing any of it to be perfect first.
Ten years feels pretty celebration-worthy.
Thank you again to Rachel for creating this beautiful artwork and helping us tell some of these stories.
And thank you for being part of what we’re building here.
Whether you joined us this year or you’ve been doing Ski Babes since the beginning, your attention, presence, wobbles, dance moves, rest days, meh workouts, outdoor adventures, and willingness to keep showing up are what make this community what it is.
Here’s to everything we’ve learned in the last 10 years - and everything we’ll learn together in the next 10.
💙