Meet The Author: Christen Shefchunas

Christen Shefchunas’ message to athletes and coaches is to normalize fear.

“I’m just trying to get people to wake up and realize we are all in the same boat. I mean, I work with the best in the world, and they're scared to death before they race. It's not about fearlessness, it's about learning how to handle the fear when it comes.”

Shefchunas remembers feeling fear during her time in the pool. She walked onto the Lady Vol swim team her freshman year at Tennessee and left her senior year as a four-time All-American and two-time team captain. She came in on a mission, but when she struck success her sophomore and junior years, her mental game collapsed.

“I think the pressure just hit,” Shefchunas said. “And it's one of those things where when you start getting to the place where you’ve always dreamed of, there's two choices: you can get excited about it, or you can get scared by it. I got scared by it.”

In college, Shefchunas didn’t want to admit that when she stepped behind the blocks, she was terrified. She didn’t want to show weakness. She thought there was something wrong with her, that she was the only one who felt this way. In her own words, that’s why she “choked it up” the rest of her career. Her own shortcomings, both in her own swim career and as a head coach, motivate her for what she does now.

“That’s why I am so passionate about what I do. Because it's like, I needed one person.”

Shefchunas strives to be that one person for others – the one to listen, to reassure athletes that fear is normal, and to help discuss how to handle it. She first implemented what she calls “confidence coaching” as a head swim coach at the University of Miami. The program didn’t see much success during her first four years there, so she knew something had to change. She started meeting with the swimmers individually, giving her athletes a safe space to talk about anything and everything – sexual assault, abortion, things they had been holding onto for a long time.

“I believe that confidence comes when you have nothing left to hide,” Shefchunas said. “When you’re faking it, when you’re hiding stuff, confidence can’t live there. It was so much bigger than sports.”

When she started helping her swimmers to build confidence one-on-one, she saw her whole team change. A year after she left Miami, she received a call from David Marsh, who was at SwimMac Team Elite in North Carolina. He asked her to come in and speak to the women. She then stayed on to work as an assistant coach for a year in the runup to the 2016 Olympics.

“Once I did that and had been working with all the Olympians, and really understanding how important the confidence piece is when you are at this elite level, that’s when I was like, ‘OK, I can do something with this,” Shefchunas said.

While growing up and as a coach, Shefchunas didn’t go by her given name. She was called Christy. She doesn’t know why, but she supposes that perhaps it's because her mom is Sandra, and everyone calls her Sandy. When she started doing therapy in 2012, the only person who called her Christen was her counselor. When she started her business, she chose to go by Coach Christen because she “was proud of Christen. That was somebody who had nothing left to hide, where Christy was the faker, the ‘I have a rep to protect’ kind of girl.’”

When COVID hit and her coaching business started to slow, Shefchunas started making TikToks after one of the Olympians she works with told her the platform is more than just dancing videos. But the format didn’t give her enough time; she had too much to say. Still, picking a topic and talking for one minute gave her the idea for 30 Days to Confident.

“That was what kind of made me go, ‘Oh, what about something daily that's just this punch of information, short and general, not going too deep, but it’s going to be inspirational. What about something like that?’”

In 30 Days to Confident, Shefchunas shows readers how to take responsibility for building their own confidence by being honest with their fears, developing ways to handle the fear when it comes, and giving themselves credit for their hard work.

30 Days to Confident is available from Amazon. Learn more about Coach Christen here.