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Synopsis

Certified Performance Coach, Kate Mackay shares her journeys on the piste from snowboarding newbie to BASI instructor training. Working through doubt, setbacks, injury and grief, in TAKE IT ALL ON BOARD Kate applies some hard-knock lessons from the slopes to daily life and delivers a unique confidence program for any woman seeking greater self-esteem.

Snowboarding is an extreme sport dominated by young men, but Kate first strapped into a board in her early thirties, soon finding her passion for the mountains and for the freedom that the sport promises – if only she could master the skills. An art and a science, a craft layered upon technique, snowboarding requires effort and commitment. Its challenges become a metaphor for living, and we rally with Kate as she carves her path through failure and uncertainty towards success, joy and self-esteem in the most unlikely of pursuits for a British mother.

Along the way, we meet some of the brightest names in British snowboarding with whom Kate has shredded or from whom she has learned her craft: Jenny Jones (Olympic Slopestyle medalist); Ben Kinnear (former GB Junior Team coach); Neil McNab (winner of eleven British Snowboard Championships); Ash Newnes (resident coach on Channel 4’s The Jump); and Tammy Esten (founder of MINT Snowboarding, 2016 World Snow Awards winner for Best Snowsports School). And we dream a little of the mountains, too – each valley comes alive in its appeal, the slopes above it distinct in their particular challenges and risks.

At each stage in the eight chapters that define Kate’s run to self-discovery, we are encouraged to do the work with her, to chart our own potential for success as we define and desire it. Sets of scored exercises have been devised to provide a meaningful understanding of self via quantifiable metrics and against which future progress can be measured.