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Ellie Rubin

@ellrubin

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make it happen
National Champion | 🥉 World Champs | 7x World Cup medalist
@touchstoneclimbing | @backcountry

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🏆 NATIONAL. FREAKIN. CHAMPION.
At a comp I almost skipped because I didn't have to compete to make the team. At a comp where I started questioning if the competing was worth all the dedicated time and effort, choosing training over everything. After a season of being sick monthly and feeling like I couldn't get any consistent, good training done. After 4 years of taking home silvers and feeling like it would never be my day. After finally admitting I really really wanted to be the best, no excuses; and then getting outclimbed at qualis. Even in isolation just prior to getting on the wall, I swung between feeling incredibly chill and confident to wanting to just walk away, not do finals, not get on the wall. Waiting to measure yourself against the route before you can climb would drive anyone crazy.

Luckily I was in iso long enough to pop my headphones in, listen to Spiegel im Spiegel, and force some feelings of appreciation and calm into my nervous system while I studied my little note I'd written myself (scroll to the end :)) After that, it was all kinda full send, full zen, white noise. I was fortunate enough to tap into my best climbing yesterday and that was enough to win. It all felt and still does feel a bit surreal. I am ecstatic to walk away with my first national championships win, and hopefully not my last ✨

Congrats to @mo.in.mountains and @isabelbenvenuti, fun as hell to stand on a podium full of national champs 😎

Thank you to everyone in my corner: @mjones20 for your coaching; @phoebemcbark and @emilyseelenfreund for putting up with being my roommates this weekend; @climbingcoachsam, @linds_purcell, and @mo.in.mountains for your long distance friendship; and @mayafm3 and @kyra_condie for your incredibly well timed words of wisdom.

@touchstoneclimbing

@usaparaclimbing @usaclimbing @usaparaclimbing_community

📸: @gajdaphotography, of course taken in Momentum Indoor Climbing Katy by @ellrubin

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7 months ago

⚡️BRONZE AT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS IN SEOUL⚡️
So many things had to happen in my life to get me here - from birth to now. And yet at the same time, I made it happen, in the day of finals, the week of comp, the months of training before.

I don't say this much, but I'm proud of myself and the way I've grown competitively this year. I don't mean necessarily how I've improved physically, but rather the mindset with which I approach comps has changed. At the beginning of the year, I finished Nationals feeling defeated and insufficient when I took second for the fourth year in a row.

But I finally realized that my value is not in my climbing performance - the people who loved me before will still love me no matter how well or poorly I place. It doesn't mean I don't want to do well, but I've been freed from the need to measure up. I get to climb and trust that my body will demonstrate the work I've put in this season. And most crucially, I get to have fun on the wall. To learn that, apply it here, and earn that result and a medal has just been incredible.

I love my team. I love my coaches. And most of all I love my parents, who flew to Korea for their first big international trip to watch me compete in the country I was born in (more thoughts to unpack on that later). This comp week was an absolute whirlwind but it was so impossibly special. Seoul, I'll never forget you 🫰🏼Thank you

📷 1: @janvirt.official

Supported by @touchstoneclimbing taken in Seoul, Korea by @ellrubin

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a year ago

I don't speak to the topic of disability very often, much less my own experience with it. I think because it's so often one of the first visible things people know of me when they meet me that I'm inclined to keep my own musings, complaints, and ideas internalized. I've found myself very much in the camp of not making my disability specifically a talking point of my identity.

However. This was the first year I really watched the Paralympics. And I'm just, in awe. I compete on the international circuit for para climbing. I know how strong and amazing our bodies are. But the thing I'm in awe of is how many of us there are, the sheer number of athletes with bodies that work differently, but so incredibly, in sport.

I've talked to a few friends about this, but I am convinced that there was hardly anything in the world quite so isolating as growing up with a visible disability. I didn't feel left out. I didn't feel excluded. But I did feel the daily weight of being perceived and watched by other kids, other parents, of having to answer, "what happened to your hand?" over and over and over again. And maybe my memory is rusty, but I don't remember a single other child like me, out of the hundreds of kids in my school, thousands in my city. I remember thinking for, my god, years and years that I was alone, fitting myself into this world. And to that end, I can remember every person I've met with a limb difference, seared into my memory as they are.

So, gosh, when I turn on my tv to see so many absolutely crushing international athletes who LOOK LIKE ME, I still feel it, still feel that thumping in my chest that says, I am and we are and you are not alone. That says, you have every chance if you work as hard as you possibly can to be there, to be seen not for how you're different physically but for how you're different mentally, for how you put the work in, day in, day out. To be celebrated for how you perform. Like every other athlete.

And I take so much comfort in it, in watching something that would've felt like a soft blanket and a firm hug to five year old Ellie, who never could've imagined such a world, but would've delighted in it. And I do. I really do. by @ellrubin

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2 years ago

When the plan calls for 30 laps just like this on all the yellow tags throughout the gym, I love the @backcountry Destination sports bra for a long unrelenting session and my old punk playlists for necessary motivation!
Getting stoked ready for the first @worldclimbingpara double-header in a few weeks 🤜🏽🤛🏽
🔜 Gunsan ➡️ Fukuoka. Let's get it by @ellrubin

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9 days ago

this post brought to you by me panicking after accidentally deleting all my photos from July, August, and September (thank god for recently deleted) by @ellrubin

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17 days ago

What can I say, I'm the luckiest person in the world
SF > LA > Philly > Laval > Edinburgh by @ellrubin

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2 months ago

FYP: a prototypical roll of spring + summer film in chronological order by @ellrubin

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2 months ago

Stoked to announce that I'll be working with @backcountry as an Athlete Partner. I worked there years ago and it's been really sick to come full circle with them 🔄
I've been taking it easy this summer, leaning a little more into being a multiport athlete, so I've had to expand my wardrobe a bit. Thank you Backcountry for the hook up, especially with my first MTB kit!!
#backcountrypartner #backcountry taken in Tahoe City, California by @ellrubin

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3 months ago

Bronze in Innsbruck and pretty pleased, all things considered!

On a warm up boulder just 30 minutes before my first qualis, my back seized up so badly that I couldn't put my harness on without crying, from pain and from fear of not being able to climb. But I did it anyway. And then I did it again a few hours later to punch my ticket to finals.

Because I had already decided to win, to win against the wall, to find the top of the route. Because why not me? Even with a setback, why not me?

This year has been about learning to dial in the mental preparation and execution for each comp, and every time I feel I'm getting closer and closer. Pulling it back to climb in spite of fear and pain, committing to dynamic moves, working through uncomfortable sequences - these are all wins to me. Stoked to see it all coming together.

I love Innsbruck so much, there's nothing like it, and I'm stoked to bring home a medal from this one.

Thank you to everyone for the support!

@touchstoneclimbing @backcountry #paraclimbing

📸: @dimitris_tosidis @moritz.klee taken in Kletterzentrum Innsbruck by @ellrubin

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4 months ago

P6 at SLC. In many ways it just wasn't my day. I didn't engage in the mental prep and ritual I've been working on this time around and the result showed that. The level of competition is getting less forgiving, and room for error is shrinking, which means the sport is growing and that can only be a good thing.
In the meantime, I had a blast attending my first ever finals: I got to watch my friends and teammates crush and I even spent some time in the commentary box, a dream of mine 🤩

Congrats especially to @mo.in.mountains on her first win in almost a decade, @isabelbenvenuti, and ofc my absolute fave @phoebemcbark ✨✨

Thanks as ever to the coaches and homies of @usaparaclimbing for the coaching and PT and to @touchstoneclimbing for the support. See yall in Innsbruck 🔜

📸: @calebtimmermanphoto @gajdaphotography taken in Salt Lake City, UT by @ellrubin

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5 months ago

Yesterday I was 31, and today somehow I'm 32. It turns out 365 days is actually a lot of time. Enough time to visit the place I was born for the first time. Enough time to win my first Nats. Enough time to make new friends. Enough time to travel with old friends to new places. Enough time to break my heart a couple times. Enough time to heal and move forward. Enough time to learn to like myself a little bit more, maybe.
I hope I'm different than I was a year ago, hope I've grown, hope I'm better at being kind and honest and open. I hope I've learned how to be more like that kid in the last photo, who's excited and ready for the next good thing and isn't embarrassed to show it so plainly.
'Character resists expedience; it defies hasty acquisition.
To change, the act precedes the virtue.
Repent, redemption, try again.'
So here's to a year of trying and to another year of trying again :) by @ellrubin

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6 months ago

The general consensus is that 2025 was a banner of a year 😎
By the numbers:
34 books,
20 ticketed events,
1 wedding,
1 Nationals, 2 World Cups, 1 World Champs; 4 medals,
5 new cites and 3 new countries,
6 new pairs of climbing shoes,
A whopping 170 sessions at @touchstoneclimbing gyms,
And most importantly, so many new friends I can't believe I only just met this year (and not even at the climbing gym, can you believe?)
Excited now to see all the ways life keeps giving and moving forward in 2026 :) by @ellrubin

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9 months ago