Danelle Kabush is a professional athlete and mental skills consultant. As a professional athlete, she has swam, biked and run her way through North America. As a mental skills consultant, Danelle works with coaches and athletes on team building, goal setting, mental imagery, race planning and evaluation, relaxation and stress management, and general life skills around sport and performance.

What does a typical Thursday look like for you, starting from when you wake up – to heading to bed?
The fun part about my work as a professional triathlete for the Luna Pro Team and my contract work as a mental skills consultant is that any given Thursday can change from week to week but a “typical” Thursday would look like:
6:00 a.m. – alarm goes off to get me out of bed and to the pool for an hour swim and workout
7:45 a.m. – back home for breakfast with my kids as my husband heads out the door for work
9:00 to 1:00pm – attend training sessions and individual or group meetings with the athletes and teams with whom I teach mental skills training
1:00 to 5:00 p.m. – home with my kids, take my daughter to preschool, answer e-mails, prepare work presentations and notes if needed. A run, ski or bike ride with the kids is something I always look forward to doing in the afternoon. I am a strong believer that active parents have active kids, so I want to be a great role model to my daughter. Thanks to my Chariot Carrier I can take my daughter along with me during my afternoon training. The Chariot Carrier was honestly the best investment I have ever made and has really given me the chance to be active with my kids!
5:00 to 7:00 p.m. – once my husband is in the door if not done in the afternoon, I often head out for a second training session, a run or cycling workout. This time it’s just me and the open road.
7:30 p.m. – dinner and put kids to bed
8:30 to 10:00 p.m. – clean the house and put feet up for awhile. If I’m lucky this is when I try to get some relaxation time with my husband!
10:30 p.m. – lights out!

What was your first job out of school?
A contract to race professionally in Xterra triathlon for the Timex Multisport Team in 2005. I also had a contract with the Canadian Sport Centre to do mental skills training for the 2004-05 season with the cross-country skiing, biathlon and long track speed skating teams

What are the 3 skills you require most to do your job well?
As an athlete – discipline, good time management and perseverance. As a mental skills consultant – empathetic listening skills, the ability to connect with different personality types and creativity to deal with different situations. I’m also a strong believer that with everyone’s busy lives you need to be inventive when it comes to making time for your family. Being an athlete, I love that I can have my kids with me while I train in my Chariot Carrier. Being a mom is my most important job.

What do you love most about your career?
I love the flexibility and being self-employed. I love that I enjoy what I do and that it doesn’t feel like work. Through my athletic career I’ve been able to travel all over North America to race and meet all kinds of amazing people as well as race in all sorts of places I would never have visited otherwise. As a mental training consultant I enjoy working with a group of very positive athletes and coaches. I’ve learned so much about different sports other than my own such as speed skating, cross-country skiing, biathlon, dancing, gymnastics and Paralympic goal ball to name a few. It’s fun to see how each sport is unique with different types of demands and yet many of the exact same principles apply to success in all sports.

Do you have any warnings?
Career doors will open up for you if you follow your interests and passion. On the other hand, if you decide to stay in school as long as I did (e.g. doing extensive amounts of graduate school) it’s important to really research the different career paths that a given program could take you on or open up for you. It’s tough to finish so many years of school and realize you need even more courses or training to follow the career you’d really like to. Make sure to explore all your options thoroughly before making financial and/or time commitments for extended schooling.

If you could try a different career on for a year, what would it be?
I’ve always wished I could sing or act. I would love to experience the career of a performing artist of some kind, which would be quite different from athletics and psychology!