Finally, a sport community built for YOUR body, identity, and life.
A sport psychology membership built for women, trans, and non-binary athletes—and the allies who support them. Live workshops, monthly challenges, and community support for building mental skills that work for your body, identity, and actual life.
We tackle the questions mainstream sport culture ignores.
You've Been Looking for This
Most sport psychology advice assumes you're a 25-year-old male athlete with a textbook nervous system and zero life complications.
That's the problem.
You know what you "should" do—visualize more, stay present, trust the process. None of that accounts for your body, your identity, your actual life.
The Skadi Community is where that changes.
The advice wasn't built for you
You're not struggling because you lack discipline or mental toughness. You're struggling because the advice you're getting wasn't built for you.
Most sport psychology research centers male athletes. The "gold standard" mental skills don't account for menstrual cycles, perimenopause, chronic health conditions, disability, body image pressures, identity-based stress, or the fact that your nervous system might not respond the way the textbook says it should.
You've tried the cookie-cutter approaches. Downloaded the worksheets. Listened to the podcasts. Hit a wall when you couldn't figure out how to make it work for your specific situation.
Maybe you're an anxious perfectionist and "just relax" has never worked. Maybe you're navigating injury and nobody talks about the fear that shows up with reinjury risk. Maybe you're in a larger body and every performance conversation gets hijacked by diet culture. Maybe you're LGBTQ+ and tired of sport spaces that weren't designed with you in mind.
What you need isn't more information. You need guided implementation, expert feedback that accounts for who you actually are, and a community where you can ask the questions Facebook groups shame you for asking.
That's what we built.
How the Skadi Community works
Here's what makes it different:
You don't just consume content—you build your version in real time.
Every month, we host a hands-on workshop where you work through guided exercises using your sport, your goals, your body, your identity as the starting point. You leave with a concrete 4-week game plan. Not a template someone else made. Yours.
You practice with community support.
Then you try your approach over the next four weeks. Share what's working and what's messy. Get feedback. Refine. This is how mental skills actually get built—through practice and reflection.
You get expertise that accounts for athletes like you.
We bring in physical therapists, sports dietitians, researchers, and coaches who understand that diverse bodies and identities exist. Bone health. REDS. Hormonal transitions. Disability and sport. Gender-affirming care. The topics that get skipped elsewhere.
You find community where you actually belong.
Experience-based channels for chronic health concerns, LGBTQ+ athletes, perimenopause, injury recovery, athletes in larger bodies, and coaches. Moderated by trained humans who enforce inclusive, evidence-based norms. Zero tolerance for diet talk, weight stigma, or discrimination.
Private Community Where You Belong
A safe, moderated space to practice your monthly challenges, ask questions without judgment, and connect with athletes who share your lived experience.
Experience-Based Channels
Safe, moderated spaces to connect with athletes who share your lived experience.
🏥 Disability & chronic health concerns
🏳️🌈 LGBTQ+ athletes
💪 Athletes in larger bodies
🙌🏻 Pregnancy, postpartum, & perimenopause
🧩 Neurodivergent athletes
📣 Coaches
👩👩👦 Parents
And more!
This is the space for questions you've been afraid to ask elsewhere. Where "I'm struggling" doesn't get met with toxic positivity. Where you can say "this popular advice isn't working for me" without getting dogpiled.
Clear community agreements. Trained moderation. Zero tolerance for racism, sexism, ableism, fatphobia, transphobia, homophobia.
Complete Course Library (included)
Everything you need to learn, revisit, and apply, on your schedule:
Skadi Master Class (9-week mental performance fundamentals)
The Mindful Comeback (injury recovery program)
Ultimate Guide to Race Day (race prep and anxiety management)
Skadi Athlete Summit Recordings (~30 expert presentations)
All previous workshop recordings and challenge materials
Your month-to-month game plan
Every month, you follow a simple three-step process with expert and community support the whole way.
1.Build your personalized approach
We introduce each month's focus with a hands-on workshop—building a pre-race routine, managing pre-competition anxiety, fueling without fear, navigating injury setbacks. You work through guided exercises in real time.
We address the messy parts: what to do when your hormones fluctuate, when your schedule is unpredictable, when you're navigating disability, when textbook approaches don't account for your nervous system.
Can't make it live? Recordings include all materials so you can work through them on your own time. But showing up live is where the magic happens.
2.Practice with community support
Building mental skills requires practice. After each workshop, you get a guided challenge to practice your approach for the next month.
Week-by-week prompts. Community check-ins. Troubleshooting support.
You'll share what's working and what's not. Find support when life gets messy. Refine your approach based on real experience.
The goal is consistency and messy action. That's how we learn what works and what doesn't.
3.Dig deeper with expert sessions
We bring in specialists who get it. Physical therapists who understand bone stress injuries in female athletes. Sports dietitians who reject diet culture. Coaches who train diverse bodies. Researchers who acknowledge what's missing from mainstream advice.
These are the conversations where you can ask what you've been afraid to ask elsewhere. REDS. Nutrition psychology. Hormonal adaptations. Disability access. Gender-affirming care. Perimenopause. The topics that actually matter.
Month by month, you build a comprehensive mental performance toolkit adapted to your reality—alongside a community that understands and supports you.
Pre-race routines that calm your nervous system. Fueling strategies that work for your body. Self-talk that doesn't tear you down. Personalized skills you actually use.
Why Skadi?
We're athletes serving athletes—with the credentials that matter.
Dr. Erin Ayala (she/her)
Sport psychologist. Certified Mental Performance Consultant. Published researcher. Endurance athlete who lives and breathes this work.
She knows what it's like to wonder who you are when you're injured. To navigate identity questions sports culture doesn't want to touch. To try mental skills that didn't account for an anxious nervous system or hormonal fluctuations.
The lived experience—combined with over a decade of work with athletes and rigorous training—is what shapes everything in the Community.
We cite peer-reviewed research. We name sample sizes, populations studied, and what's missing. We acknowledge when barriers are structural—access, bias, policy—not just individual mindset.
You'll learn from our vetted community of specialists who understand that bodies, identities, and contexts differ: PTs, dietitians, sports medicine physicians, researchers, and coaches.
We support messy action, not performative perfection. We create space for vulnerability. We enforce safety through actual moderation, not just posted guidelines.
What’s Included
✅ Monthly hands-on workshops with Dr. Erin Ayala (PhD, LP, CMPC)—working sessions where you build your mental performance toolkit in real time
✅ Monthly expert sessions with specialists who understand diverse athletes—PTs, dietitians, coaches, researchers who go beyond textbook advice
✅ Private community with experience-based channels, daily support, and moderation that actually protects safety
✅ Complete course library ($450+ value included)—Master Class, Mindful Comeback, Ultimate Guide to Race Day, and 30+ Summit recordings
✅ Monthly challenges with structured activities, weekly prompts, and community accountability to practice what you built
✅ Access anywhere via mobile app—Mighty Networks app (iOS/Android) means workshops, challenges, and community support stay with you between training sessions
Join the
Community
$390/year
All for less than the cost of TWO therapy sessions
Not ready to commit to a full year?
Give us a try for $39/month
Join Athletes Who Are Done With Generic Advice
You deserve support that fits your reality.
Not generic templates designed for someone else's body, nervous system, and life.
Not advice that ignores your identity, your context, your actual challenges.
Not isolation when you're trying to figure this out alone.
The Skadi Community is where you build mental skills that work for YOU.
Hands-on workshops. Expert guidance. Community that gets it. Evidence-based approach. Inclusive space.
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That's exactly why we built it this way. Monthly challenges take 10-15 minutes per week. Live sessions are recorded. The community is asynchronous. This fits your training schedule, not the other way around. Take what serves you, skip what doesn't.
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Every strategy we teach is research-backed, and because you'll experiment to find what works for your unique circumstances (rather than following rigid formulas), you're more likely to sustain the practices long-term. This is skill-building grounded in sport psychology research, not motivational fluff.
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Given the digital nature of this community, we do not offer refunds.
That said, we’re happy to answer any questions before you sign up to help you make sure this community is the right fit for you. -
Not at all! If you train regularly and care about improving, you're serious enough. We welcome all athletes, even those who don’t consider themselves athletes. What matters is your commitment to growth, not where you fall on someone else's definition of "elite.”
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Absolutely! This community centers women, trans+, and non-binary athletes because research has historically focused on cisgender male athletes, leaving gaps in how we understand performance across different bodies and identities. You'll learn approaches that broaden everyone's understanding of performance.
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You can get information for free, but you can't get expert guidance adapted to YOUR situation, live Q&A’s where you ask follow-up questions, applications tailored to YOUR body and identity, or a vetted community with enforced safety standards. We're providing ongoing support as you build mental performance skills that actually work for your life.
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We provide evidence-based frameworks, expert guidance, and diverse perspectives, then you decide what to try. The goal is to help you discover what works for YOUR unique situation, not prescribe a one-size-fits-all formula.
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No. The Skadi Community is educational and community-based. We teach mental performance skills, provide evidence-based resources, and create space for peer support. If you need clinical mental health support, we can help you find a provider.
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Everything is recorded and accessible. But we encourage showing up live when possible—that's where real-time questions, hot seat coaching, and community connection happen.
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We don't just post community guidelines—we enforce them. Trained moderators. Zero tolerance for discrimination, diet talk, weight stigma, or harm. Evidence-based, size-inclusive, gender-affirming language is non-negotiable. We act when harm happens.
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You don't have to. Participate in the channels that feel relevant to you. Skip the rest. We honor that identities are complex and overlapping.