Sport Psychology and Coaching (including foundation year)

Why study this course

This is a four-year degree course with a built-in foundation year (Year 0). It's the perfect route into university if you can't meet the necessary entry requirements or don't have the traditional qualifications required to start a standard undergraduate degree. You'll graduate with a full undergraduate degree with the same title and award as those who studied the traditional three-year course.

More about this course

This undergraduate course will teach you how to encourage, develop and progress other people’s sporting performance or participation. The coaching skills you’ll develop will be equally applicable at both an elite performance and community level.

Increasingly, schools are out-sourcing sports delivery to coaches, and more sports practitioners are entering teaching through coaching. It is in these environments that you can help encourage young people who have never taken part in sport and exercise to improve their health and fitness.

We’ll help develop your coaching and teaching skills, providing access to a sports hall the size of six badminton courts and extensively-equipped sports science labs.

Our teaching staff includes those with a wide range of coaching knowledge and qualifications up to international and world championship levels. All modules on the course are equally well-supported by up-to-date facilities.

You’ll study a variety of subjects in-depth. There’s sport psychology and its exploration of how the mind impacts on both sporting performance and participation. Exercise physiology will introduce you to changes the body experiences as a result of physical activity, environmental stress and exercise. Biomechanics analyses the mechanics of human movement, while the sociology of sport will develop your understanding of the socio-cultural issues that can define and legitimise a particular sport.

There will be plenty of equipment for you to use as an aid to your studies. Exercise physiology equipment includes a climate chamber and blood analysers, while biomechanics equipment includes Watt bikes and Kistler force platforms. For a more complete list of the equipment that will be available to you, see the equipment section below.