Ep. 99 Summiting Peaks & Building Mental Resilience with Tia Banks

In this episode, I had the honor of interviewing Tia Banks, an inspiring resilience coach, speaker, and mountaineer. She shared her powerful journey from childhood struggles to professional sports, depression, and ultimately personal transformation through nature and mindset work. After overcoming injury and climbing volcanic peaks, she now helps students and educators build resilience through her Mind Over Mountains tour, breathing techniques, and Summit Saturday hikes. Her story is a masterclass in perseverance and purpose.

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Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a longtime fitness professional and Midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. And combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking, I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your one stop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female wellness, trail talk and adventure. Hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active, looking to level up your health, unlock your potential, and become inspired to live your most vibrant life, you're in the right place. You're listening to the fit for Hiking podcast. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the fit for Hiking podcast. Today we have a special guest. I'm going to be interviewing Tia and Tia. Banks is an award winning resilience expert, motivational speaker, and mountaineer. She empowers students and educators through her Mind Over Mountains tour, sharing her journey of overcoming adversity with 15 plus years of leadership experience, she offers transformative mental health strategies, fostering resilience and success in schools and communities worldwide. Wow, what a bio! I'm so excited for this conversation. Welcome to the show Tia and thank you so much for having me. I'm glad to be here. Awesome. So tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into mindset and resilience coaching. Yeah. So I actually was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and, uh, in Lincoln, you don't see a lot of kids of color. So I was out of 500 students in my elementary school, I was the only black kid. But the cool thing about that is that kids don't care. They were like, T is good at soccer. We want her on our soccer team. Yeah. Um, and it wasn't until my parents they got a divorce. My mom, she drove me and my sisters from Lincoln, Nebraska down to Fort Worth, Texas. I feel like you gotta have a twang in your voice when you say Texas. Yeah. Oh, but. But I went to a middle school where it was 50% black, 50% Hispanic. And now I'm seeing kids that look like me. And I'll never forget the first time that my teacher asked me to introduce myself. She said, class, we have a new student. And I walked up in front of the class and this is my first time ever doing public speaking. And I'm like. My name is Leticia Banks and everybody just roared with laughter like I saw people pointing and I heard whispers and they said, she sounds like an Oreo. So black on the outside, white on the inside. And I didn't know there was something wrong with my voice. I didn't know that the way that I spoke, there was something wrong with it. It wasn't cool enough and they called me proper. And so that was the first time where I thought being me just isn't enough. So let me change who I am. I changed the way that I dressed I changed the way that I talk. Brady, where are you from? I'm from Indiana, actually. And okay, so you're from the Midwest? Yeah, but when here in Texas, they have a saying it's it's thinner. There's a word. It's thinner. I'm thinner. Go to the locker room. It means I'm going to. So I started using language like that. I'm like I'm finna go to shoot some hoops. And I changed who I was so that I could fit in. And I know there's so many kids out there that, you know, they they struggle with their own identity and they feel like they have to change who they are the way that they talk, especially with name, image and likeness and social media, we just feel like we have to be someone other than who we are. Yeah. Um, and then also, I'm a former pro athlete. So as a former pro athlete, I played professional basketball, professional flag football. And I was raised by a man named Dennis Banks. That's my dad. I'm a daddy's girl. But my dad, he had this thing called suck it up. Suck it up. Yeah. Uh, so I remember we were playing softball one day. The ball bounced off my glove, smashes my nose, and my dad runs over to me, and I thought he was going to say, it's okay, but he's like, t suck it up. I'm like, that'll teach you to be tough in a hurry. Yeah. So I'm like, okay, this means you don't tell people when you're in physical and emotional pain. Mhm. So now I'm a poor communicator. I'm a poor communicator. I don't have confidence because of who I am. And this led to a space of where I always hid how I felt and never told people how I felt. And so as I'm getting older, I'm just poor at communicating. And I fell into a space of depression. Um, and I just knew that there was a way out of it. I just didn't know how. Yeah. Um, so I when you're in a low place in life, you're willing to do anything to try to get out of that low place. And so even if it means, like, unhealthy habits and unhealthy coping strategies. Thankful for me like I leaned into. I watched YouTube videos of motivational speakers. I did something that not a lot of black people do. I got outside and I got in nature and I started hiking and meditation. And one day this is where the mindset shift comes, because I know this was a long journey, right? But I wrote in my journal, Brady, I wrote, I want to climb the highest freestanding mountain in the world. I didn't even know where it was. First of all, nobody in my family's ever climbed a mountain. I don't know where that came from, but I have this birthmark on the side of my face. It's kind of hard to see, but it's in the shape of Africa. And that's where the highest freestanding mountain in the world is. And so that is where my journey of mindset shifted. I had a goal, and now I'm going to do everything it takes to get to that goal. That's so powerful. I love that you talked about like nature and getting outside, being a part of kind of like that therapeutic time for you because nature is so healing. And I feel like when we can lean into that, it really is a game changer and a perspective shift for sure. Yeah, absolutely. It's a natural healer. So anytime I feel any kind of disconnect, I'm going to go outside, get some fresh air, go for a hike. Absolutely. Okay, so you were the second black woman ever to summit North America's highest volcano. Tell us a little bit about that experience and what you learned. We climbed two. The first one was la malinche. It was about a 14 or 14,000 foot mountain. All of this in a four day span. We. We hike this mountain. We get to the top. And it was very difficult for two of the four of us. Um, to a point where I didn't even know we were all going to make it to the top. Yeah, but we did. So two days later, we've got to take on Pico de Orizaba, and that's even taller mountain. And it's. This is a more technical mountain. This is where you need an ice axe. This is where you need, like, rope and harness. And so 2:00 in the morning, the alarm goes off. Our guide says let's go. And we all start hiking in the dead of night. It's pitch black. All you can hear is footsteps. And you can see the person in front of you. And you could feel the drop like there was just a drop or on the ledge of, of this huge mountain. And we hiked for hours. And next thing I know, I'm like, team members are dropping off like one team member. I'm like, hey, we're Talgo. She went back down. We're still hiking. There's three of us left. Hey! We're Crisco. Chris turned around. It's a very challenging mountain. Mhm. And so by 7:00 that morning, we barely got to the base of this part where it's just a sheet of ice. And this is the hardest part of the mountain. This is where you need your ice axe. This is where you need your crampons, the rope all of the things. But by the time we got there it was 7:00 in the morning. And our guide said, we're not going to make it because, you know, when you get to the top of the mountain, like you have to make it in a certain amount of time so that you have enough time to come back before it gets dark, he said. We're not going to make it. We're just. And I'm like, yes, we are like, come on, let's be resilient. We can do it. But he said, no, like it's dangerous. And then, you know, my other, my other we were spent, we were spent. And so it was the best experience to fail. Mhm. Yeah. It was the best experience to fail. And so the next year I said. I'm going to Restrategize, I'm going to retrain, I'm going to train differently. And Imma get to the top of that mountain. I ask the same friends. None of them came there like I'm good one and done. None of them came. And so Brady, I had to do it alone. I got one guide and we used a different route. Uh, took a little bit longer, but I made it to the top of that mountain. Wow. And it just reminds me, like, sometimes failure is not like the final unless you decide that it is. Yeah. And I'm. Well, let's go bring on another mountain. So now setting up for another expedition for another volcanic summit. And I love the journey of getting to the top, because now when I come down, I know exactly what to do to help others get to the top of their summits. That's so cool. So inspiring. Oh my gosh, I have chills. Um, okay, so how do you prep both mentally and physically for something like that? Like that year between the first time you attempted and then the second time, what did you do differently to prepare? Yeah. So I ate differently. Um, that's one thing, is I. I'm already a pretty healthy person. Uh, I was vegan for seven years, but I started to incorporate more lean meats, so, like lamb, venison, and a lot more fruits, a lot more vegetables, less processed food. Another thing is I worked more on, like, my lower body. So a lot more cycling and, uh, long, long heights hikes. So I'm talking and this is when I had a job, I'd wake up at four in the morning and I'd hike for about four hours before work and then work for eight hours. And then afterwards. I do like weight training, lower body weight training. But here's one thing that I did that I think really helped my body adjust to the altitude, which was I hired a breathing coach so I would see my breathing coach once a week, and we would work on different breathing exercises for the lungs, because here in Texas, I see we're at sea level. Yeah. So it's different when you're at high altitudes. And so I wanted to make sure my lungs were ready. And um, every hike you know, I've got weight weighted backpack. So I think that and then. The trail. So the first time we climbed this mountain, we it was a two day, one night expedition, which I, I'm not a fan of really quick expeditions I like I like to gradually ascend. And so I said, what if we do a three day two night. So that gives the body more time to acclimatize. So now not only are we just starting from base camp, we're going from base camp to high camp, rest and then go all the way to the summit and back down versus the first time we did base camp to the summit, back down. And that was failure. So that little change that had a lot to do with the reason why I was successful the second time. That's awesome. So it just shows like you had this goal and you weren't just kind of like, well, I hope it happens. Like you really strategized, you changed a lot about your lifestyle. Like your day to day had to look very different. You were making big sacrifices, getting up early, doing the training, hiring a breathing coach. I think that's just a testament to like when you really want something like you're going to make the adjustments in your life. Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. Um, so I'm a really big believer that everything we are able to accomplish really does stem from like our mindset and tenacity. And I've seen this in building my own business and working with hundreds of clients who are overcoming big mental or physical hurdles to overhaul their health and through challenging outdoor experiences similar to yourself. Um, so if someone's working towards a big goal and they feel like they're constantly taking one step forward, then two steps back, what advice could you offer? And kind of breaking this pattern and cycles are are hard because sometimes we don't even know when we're in a cycle. Yeah. Um, but if someone were taking once one step forward, two steps back. First thing I would do is I would I would encourage them to analyze their connections, like their community. Um, you know, so I mentioned to you that when I climbed. The highest freestanding mountain in the world. No one in my family had ever done it. In fact, I didn't know anybody that did. So in the research. It wasn't just connecting with like, people, it was connecting with the right people. Guides who have been on the mountain, who know the land. It was connecting with other meetup groups. So I joined like hiking meetup groups, people that I didn't know. And this might cause you might get uncomfortable. It might be uncomfortable. Maybe you're an introvert and you're like, oh, I don't like people. But when you change who you're surrounded by, you know, that's where you can change your perspective and reach a different level outside of that cycle that you're stuck in. So that would be one of the first things I would say is change your circle of influence. Yeah, absolutely. That's huge. Um, so at what point in this journey did you start your mindset coaching business? Yeah. So, um. Excuse me. My God. I don't know what that was, but. Okay, so, you know, I honestly recently started, uh, mindset coaching and a personal development, but before I've been speaking. So as a speaker, I go into schools and I help students with anxiety and depression, educators battling burnout. And we use the resilience education. Um, so, so that's that's been our area of focus to help students, students and educators build that resilience factor. Um, but what was the question? Can you repeat the question? I would I went on a tangent. I'm like, no, that's really helpful. I was wondering when in all of this journey with your, you know, big pursuits, Kilimanjaro and then the volcanoes when you decided to start your, your coaching business. Okay. So when I injured myself in 2020, so I was playing flag football and I was at the height of my career, I was about to make the most money I had ever made. I was invited to try out for team USA. Um, I was at the height of my career and I ended up in a tournament. I ended up having a grade five cartilage tear in my right knee. And when you're an athlete and you're so tied to that identity and it's taken away from you and all those opportunities are gone, I had to go on a discovery. And that's also where I started the hiking and the journaling. I would say that's where my journey started coaching, not necessarily coaching other people, but coaching myself, coaching myself to a mindset to say, okay, I am more than an athlete. I'm a great communicator. I'm a motivator. But it had to start with me. And so I would say in 2020, that's when my journey began. Now that same year, I was able to get certified as a life coach. And so I also sent out surveys to family and friends. And I said, what could I be good at? So I seek advice on what else could I be doing with this life coaching certification or this communication that I'm so good at. And then after climbing the mountain, I wrote a book. And this all of this led to this journey of first motivating myself, changing my own mindset. And now I'm equipped with what I need to help other people do the same. That's so cool. Yeah, I think you're so right. It has to start with. Doing that internal work, kind of coaching yourself, like you said, and then getting to a place where you're like, now I can share this with others. So powerful. Um, okay, so you mentioned that a lot of what you do as far as working with students or teachers or clients on resiliency is, um, for people who are dealing with mental health, um, anxiety, depression. Tell us a little bit about how you do this. Yeah. So one thing that we have different programs in curriculum, um, that helps build social emotional learning. So that's one of the tools that we do. We help them with self-regulation strategies or coping skills. So those breathing exercises that I hired somebody else to do. Now I know how to do them. The four, seven, eight methods. So we're teaching them different breathing skills to help them regulate their anger or when they feel anxiety. Let's get into a present moment, because a lot of times if you're depressed or you feel anxious, it's thoughts from the past or thoughts from the future, but they're not thoughts in the present. So we find ways to help students be present. We have workshops, um, we'll do school assemblies, we do school takeovers, and we train educators on the same thing. And one of the methods that I use, I call it the pole pole method. And so Brady. Pole pole is my shirt. And it means slowly, slowly in Swahili. And the reason why we say pole pole is when I climbed the highest freestanding mountain in the world, all of the guides, everybody native to that land would say pole, pole Paul, Paul. And it means slowly, slowly get to the top of the mountain. Run your own race, go your own pace. And it doesn't mean that you just go slow. It means you go the pace that you can go to get to the summit to reach the goal. And so when we when communicating with students, this pole pole method, it's an acronym. So the P is persevere. And we give them different tools on how to persevere different tools. Um oh is only fan. So cheering for yourself self-talk. You know, we live in a toxic world and so positive self-talk is a resilient skill. The L it means leaning on other people. So being willing to use your voice to ask for help, therapists, counseling. Um, I'm going to pick up my nieces and nephews, ask your family, pick up the kids. Like sometimes educators. They're light workers, but they don't like to ask for help. And so our goal is to remind. Educators and students of the the voice that they have the power with their voice. By simply asking for help. And then the E is just every step matters. But we do this also. This is a program I'm really excited about. It's called Summit Saturday, and our Summit Saturday initiative takes at risk youth and we get them in nature the same way when I needed to be in nature. We get them in nature. We practice those breathing exercises. We create a safe space, a safe space where we'll talk about coping skills, or we give them a space where they feel psychologically safe. And then, yeah, we're about to push your body a little bit. Maybe you're not used to hiking. Let's get to the top of this hill. You know, it's not ever going to be a 19,000 foot mountain, at least not yet. But we want them to feel the the push from their body and make them feel accomplished. And so that pole, a pole the mind over mountains are summit Saturday initiatives are great ways that we've made an impact. That's so cool. Wow. Um, so is this just in Dallas right now, or have you started doing this other places too? Yeah. So currently it's local. We keep it local, but we have had people in different states like Chicago. Well, that's out of state. Illinois, in different states, Illinois, Tennessee, where even teams will ask us to to fly out. And we can do that. Um, but right now we're keeping it local. Yeah, for the time being, that just has so much potential to me. Like, that's so needed. I always think about like, man, how different would my like, high school middle school experience have been if I had been exposed to the opportunity to get outdoors? That was something I didn't do at all until I was in my 20s as an adult. And it's been so therapeutic for me during really hard times in my life. And I just, I wish that all kids had access to getting out in nature and using that to really cope with life stress, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Um, okay. So would you be willing to share some of your own daily disciplines that help you stay mentally and physically resilient. Healthy. All the things. Yeah. My daily disciplines. The first thing I do in the morning when my alarm goes off, it goes off at 450. Wow. Now I don't get up right away. It goes off at that time. I lay in the bed and I do this thing called a body scan. So I verbally say, okay, how does my body feel? So like this morning, my lower back was hurting because I played basketball with kids the other day. Oh, okay. My my lower back hurts. Let's do some stretching. I'm gonna do some stretching today. Um, so I just check on how I feel. I work on my fingers, I wiggle my toes, and then I go right into to thanks and prayer. So I have time with God. Um, I'm. I'm either reading my Bible or just going into prayer like a deep prayer. And then I'll listen to music and have a devotional. And then from there I want to do some form of exercise. So I might do like a mile run or go to the gym, do some weight training because I'm always training to climb mountains and then. We get to the bag. So so so we get to the bag. I'm going to come home, take a shower. I'm going to take my my vitamins, my minerals. And then I'm going to go to a coffee shop, do administrative work, or I might have a dope dope interview with people like Brady on podcasts. And, um, or I'm probably catching a flight to go speak. Um, but my non-negotiables is I'm definitely going to have time where I'm silent. I make sure that I take care of my body with the minerals, um, oil of oregano. I'm. I'm a health person. I'm a health person. Uh, and then just by the end of the night, Brady, this is what I call my resilience routine. I got this foot massager. Ooh. Compliments of the TikTok shop. It's budget friendly. Every night, like clockwork, I submerged my feet in that foot massager. And that's how I'm able to bounce back, you know, from from long weeks, long days. I think it's so important to have that balance of, like pushing yourself, having the things that you stick with that are challenging, but then also having the things that are very much recovery focused because we need that for our nervous system, for our bodies. Otherwise we're just going to hit burnout. We can't just push, push, push all the time. So it's great that you have that built into your daily routine. Yeah. So absolutely. How did you get to the point where you really nailed those non-negotiables? Because I think a lot of times when we're trying to establish healthy habits in our lives, we have these great ideas we may be doing for a few days. But it's hard. You know, establishing new habits is hard. So how did you get to a point where those things were just kind of like second nature in your life? I was burned out for two years last year. In the year before. For two years straight, I was burned out. Um, last year I was a caretaker. So my partner, my partner at the time, she got into a life altering car accident. Wow. So I went from. I had a job, full time job, and I'm speaking also running my business. And now I'm a caretaker. Yeah, I was already burned out because my job was high stress. Before that, I was burned out from my job. And so you just get to a point where, like, the thing, the things that I enjoyed, I didn't even enjoy. Like, I enjoyed exercising, and it felt like a chore if I did. And so it became non-negotiable because I didn't want to be burned out anymore. And I, I wanted to enjoy life. I didn't want to exist in life. So yeah, it takes discipline. Yeah. And kind of getting to that point where you're like, I can't keep doing what I have been doing and feel good in my day to day. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's so helpful. Absolutely. So what's next for you? Are you training for any particular volcano right now? So I'm training for Mount Gilly. And so that is going to Mount Gilly is the highest volcano in Australia. So it's actually located in Papua New Guinea. That's not going to be until later this fall. But I do have a group that I'm taking to climb the Guadalupe Peak. This has been a peak that I've climbed every year for the last three years. It's the highest peak in Texas and it's only 8000ft. But it's a fun weekend with people who have never climbed before. And I just get so much enjoyment out of seeing people hike higher than they ever thought they could and reach higher heights. So we'll be doing that mid-May. And sometime this summer I'll be doing a fourteeners in Colorado. Ooh, do you know which one? So I haven't decided. I've done Elbert before. Okay. Um. And so. I'm not. I'm still researching which one is next because Albert is the highest. Yeah. And I'm big on, like, the highest. Yeah. What do you recommend? Oh, it depends on, like, what type of challenge you want. So if you. I've done Albert too. I loved that one because it is the highest. So you get that like, ooh, I've done the highest one in the Rockies. Um, but there are a couple other ones. There's Capital Peak and then Longs Peak that are touted as some of the most challenging ones while still being, like, somewhat accessible without being extremely dangerous. There's typically, you know, there's risk, but they are like really good if you want to challenge yourself mentally and kind of get out of your comfort zone. So those are two that are, um, touted as like some of the more dangerous and challenging ones. If you want to do something other than just the highest. Have you done Lux? I haven't. Okay. Because I did hear about that one. Yeah, that's a pretty that one did spark my interest a little bit. Yeah, yeah. So that one is a good like a little bit of a risk high reward type of hike. So from what I've heard yeah. Okay. Well I'm going to figure it out. Um, but definitely going to do a fourteeners in Colorado. Those are always the views. I mean, it's hard to beat. It's so cool. Yeah. It's going to be awesome. Um, so. Okay. Tell us where listeners can connect with you and find you. Yeah. So website. Uh, but you can always capture me on social media. The tier banks, uh, at the tier banks. And then we're on YouTube. I'm on TikTok. I have a self-care Sunday thing that I do every Sunday, where I just give tips to remind people on how to care for themselves, to build that resilience routine through self-care. And so that's every Sunday at 5:55 p.m. Central Standard Time. Awesome, I love that. We will link those opportunities in the show notes. So if you're listening you can check all of those out. Thank you so much for coming on today. I loved getting to hear a little bit about your story, and it's so inspirational to hear about just all the ways that you're making an impact. Thank you. I had a blast and I'm just I'm just praying so much. Blessings over you on this next journey with the new one coming and just with with your podcast. I just pray in abundance for you. Thank you. Same to you. Um, thanks so much for tuning in. You guys definitely connect with Tia in the show notes. You can check out all those opportunities there and we appreciate you tuning in this week. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the fit for hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands. For more content like this, be sure to follow along with my daily posts at Ponytail Underscore. On a trail that's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at Fit Underscore for hiking, and find more free resources at Pony Tail on a trail.com. Happy and healthy trails.