BLAKE SCHAEFERING
translating athlete reality into sport innovation, creative direction, and performance systems that hold up under real conditions.
Twenty-five years across elite performance coaching, global production, and sport-led brand development. The work lives where measurement ends and meaning begins.Mission
Most sport innovation starts from the product side and works backward toward the athlete. I've always worked the other direction.
The foundation is coaching — force data, movement analysis, load architecture, training design under real constraints. That starting point changes what gets built, because you already know what the athlete needs before a brief gets written.
Nordic Performance Lab and SERO are the current expression of that: a membership platform hosting training camps, courses, and speaking engagements, paired with an AI-enabled performance intelligence system that allows coaches to use their methodology to turn athlete testing into actionable direction at scale. Focusing initially on runners due to the low variable movement to movement complexity ratio as well as the large demographic, the formula works across any performance field.
The need to translate physical reality into strategic direction and execution.
The work
Sport innovation and athlete insight Identifying where performance data, athlete behavior, and product opportunity intersect — then turning that into clear direction teams can act on. The testing work with SERO is live evidence of this: not dashboards, but interpretation.
Performance coaching and athlete development High-level athlete development built on objective testing, force analysis, and programming that accounts for how the body actually loads — not how athletes perceive it. Working with competitive runners, combat sport athletes, and ice hockey players at national and international level. Nordic Performance Lab hosts the structured side: training camps, courses, off-season programs, testing events.
Performance-led creative direction Concept development, production, and experiential design built on firsthand knowledge of how bodies move and how movement reads. Two decades inside global fashion production — Vogue, GQ, Dior Homme, Chanel, LVMH — means movement authenticity isn't a talking point, it's a working standard.
Cross-functional project leadership Aligning stakeholders across sport, brand, design, and business from concept through execution. The Oslo Runway work is the clearest example: multi-brand activations across fashion, sport, and culture, moved forward without formal authority, delivered on time inside an environment that had no playbook for what we were building.
