Nurse. Paralympian. The Two Jobs That Make Erin Martin Unshakeable
Erin Martin does it all. A nurse by day, elite athlete by night. She spends her working hours as a pediatric nurse at Seattle Children's with medically complex patients. And it's changed the mental architecture of how she competes.
"My nursing career really helps to provide some perspective and balance. The patients and families that I work with are dealing with very real systemic and medical barriers. There's just a lot going on."
A nagging injury? A bad race? It still stings. But it stings differently when you've just come from a shift where the stakes are categorically different.
“I really love being in service to others. It reminds me that these are small problems that will go away…and that these little moments of adversity are, in some ways, a privilege.”
Martin has rewritten her own narrative after sustaining a life-altering spinal cord injury in a catastrophic climbing accident. Learning to see her body for what it could do, rather than what it couldn't, made her not just a Paralympic athlete, but a better one.
"I'm disabled, but I have this amazing, healthy body that allows me to do all this stuff. That perspective would potentially be lost on me without my nursing career."
Pain Cave Mentality
Martin is quick to admit that the pain cave is real. The brain starts negotiating. Her solution? She trains her mindset to rely on systems. So when the pain hits, she doesn’t think—just executes.
"The strategy that seems to be the most effective is also the most simple — having these few cues or focuses, and then just the very simple act in the race of picking what those cues are gonna be, and then coming back to those time and time again when your brain starts to say, 'this hurts too much.'"
She doesn't subscribe to a one-size-fits-all mental framework, and she's thought carefully about why. In a sprint that’s four minutes, maybe even less, there's no time to spiral. The focus is almost entirely technical. Execute. Attack. Move.
In a longer race? That's where the mantras enter the picture.
"In those situations, I tend to have more of a mantra or focus that I fall back on to make sure I'm continuing to reframe those moments of hurt — so that I can use that feeling and think about it in a way that says, 'this pain means that I'm doing something right.'"
She focuses on what’s possible.
Her Second Games. A Different Energy.
Beijing was Erin's first taste of the Paralympic stage. Milano Cortina was a different experience entirely.
"The crowd participation...I mean there were a ton of Team USA fans there, and they brought just incredible energy to every event. It made it so much more fun and exciting."
What Erin didn't expect was that one of her favorite moments of the Games wouldn't happen while she was racing. It would happen while she was watching.
She hadn't been slated to compete in the biathlon sprint, the opening event. Instead of sitting in the athlete area, she connected with a friend who'd made the trip to Tesero to support her. The two of them watched the race together amongst the crowd.
"Being an athlete, but seeing the event from the perspective of the crowd and just the energy and the excitement… feeling how much of a celebration it was of everyone's accomplishments... I think that moment, just getting able to see the races from that perspective, just really set a great tone for the whole Paralympics for me."
Zooming out to see the bigger picture. Most athletes spend careers trying to manufacture that kind of perspective. Erin goes to work. And then she goes racing.
ABOUT THIS SERIES
I'm Amy Wotovich and I am on a mission to interview 100% of Team USA's 2026 Olympic and Paralympic athletes to create the most comprehensive mindset record of a single Games cycle. What do elite competitors actually believe about pressure, identity, failure, and joy? Erin Martin is one of hundreds of athletes sharing their unfiltered answers. Follow the journey!
