Please meet Blake Bentzen, a cyclist based in the USA near New York. Blake has a young family and works in advertising – needless to say he has a busy life. When I first started coaching Blake our goal was to keep the same level of fitness but reduce the hours spent on the bike. Basically becoming more efficient with his training.
Blake share his story of the past season, his progress and new discoveries about training methods, nutrition, his ski accident and recovery, and his successes and failures at the WNR and Zwift Racing League.
He went from 270w FTP in March to 354w FTP in November. Incredible. You can listen to the podcast on ITunes or Spotify or watch the video version on YouTube.

What did we do?

Although Blake has a natural talent and inherited very good genes, we worked on several aspects in his training but the main ones were reducing training hours and getting sports nutrition right.

  • Reduce the training hours : quality over quantity

Blake’s typical rides were 2 hours long at always a tempo effort. We reduced his usual sessions to 1 hour long with a more polarised approach. Some workouts are very hard, and some are very easy. We are now training all the different energy systems and more specific about the specific demands of the events he is racing.

  • Introduce sports nutrition

Water is not enough. To fuel intense rides you need fuel in the form of carbohydrates. Blake’s rides are now almost always fuelled with energy drinks. Always think of the before/during/after your ride and how important fuelling your workout is for ultimate performance.

What’s next?

Win races? Let’s see. It’s a discussion we will have but things are looking very bright for 2022 ! Keep up the good work. Ride on.

NEED COACHING FOR YOUR NEXT CYCLING EVENT? FIND OUT MORE ABOUT JURA SPORTS COACHING AND REACH YOUR POTENTIAL !

WE MAKE TRAINING EPIC.