Human movement, in particular walking gait is studied in some detail. Particular focus will be on what is 'normal' gait and from there the focus will shift to clinical populations and how gait is altered. The methods with which gait is analysed, from observational gait analysis to three-dimensional motion analysis, will also be explored with emphasis on interpreting the data and understanding how the data was obtained.   

This module explores the medical and physiological challenges associated with human adaptation to and tolerance of extreme environments. Students will engage with historical and contemporary research in the field, with the aim of proposing novel solutions to problems in survival physiology, working at altitude and extended duration space flight.

Provide a comprehensive understanding of the appropriate application of psychological knowledge to the measurement and assessment of human performance and develop applied skills necessary to service the needs of the athlete or coach and professionals in exercise settings.

Skill acquisition is commonly described as the voluntary control over movements in an attempt to solve motor skill problems and achieve a task goal. These may vary from catching a ball or riding a bike, to slalom skiing or rhythmic gymnastics. Regardless of the domain, the interaction between the practitioner (eg coach or PE teacher) and athlete when learning these skills is absolutely fundamental to successful performance. Specifically, how can the practitioner create optimal practice conditions to facilitate skill acquisition? This module will firstly enhance your understanding of contemporary theory and research in skill learning and motor expertise. From this, the module takes on a more applied focus, where evidence-based approaches are implemented to critically evaluate their effect on coaching practice.

This module is designed to deepen your understanding of the biochemical and metabolic processes central to sports nutrition and exercise science. This module explores key topics like macronutrient metabolism, micronutrient functions, and the biochemical pathways in nutrition, providing a comprehensive view of nutritional biochemistry. Practical aspects include understanding digestion and absorption of nutrients, making this module essential for you specialising in sports nutrition and exercise science.

This module covers various dietary and body composition assessment methods, including dietary recall, bioelectrical impedance analysis, and DXA. It also explores the relationship between dietary intake, body composition, and health outcomes, emphasising the validity and reliability of these tools.

This module explores the nutritional requirements of athletes, focusing on macronutrient intake, nutrient timing, and hydration strategies. It delves into the use of legal ergogenic aids, doping controls, and sports supplements, providing a comprehensive understanding of nutrition's role in athletic performance and recovery.

Examine the clinical application of exercise physiology, focusing on evidence-based practices in a number of key areas such as cardiac and respiratory physiology, musculoskeletal injuries, pathologies, and common diseases. On this module, you will dive into screening and diagnostic methods and follow with exercise prescriptions and treatments, providing a comprehensive understanding of the role of a clinical physiologist.

Building on the foundational principles of Applied Physiology, this module evaluates key factors influencing athletic performance, including warm-up interventions, fatigue, and durability. It further explores the physiological challenges posed by exercising in extreme conditions such as heat, altitude, and cold, examining the body’s adaptive responses to these stressors. By integrating theoretical knowledge with practical application, you will gain the ability to employ advanced methods for predicting performance outcomes and designing evidence-based interventions tailored to the unique demands of training and competition in challenging environments. This module equips you with the critical thinking and practical skills necessary to support athletes, coaches, and governing bodies in optimising performance and ensuring safety in extreme environments. Through engagement with cutting-edge research techniques, advanced data modelling methods, and a hands-on teaching approach, students will develop expertise in a field of growing importance to global sports performance and human health.

Gain in-depth theoretical knowledge and practical skills in orthopaedic biomechanics, focusing on musculoskeletal modelling techniques to analyse human movement. You will gain a deep understanding of how mechanical forces such as joint loads, muscle forces, and ground reaction forces affect the human musculoskeletal system, and how these forces can be optimised in clinical and sports contexts. The module will cover key principles of inverse dynamics and static optimisation to analyse joint kinematics, joint reaction forces, and muscle forces during movements like walking, running, and jumping. By the end of this module, you will have developed essential skills in computational modelling, empowering you to apply biomechanical principles in clinical and sport contexts and enabling you to make evidence-based decisions and contribute to advancements in orthopaedic care, sports therapy, and rehabilitation.

This module will provide you with the underpinning theory and practical skills to collect rigorous biomechanical data in the lab. Biomechanics data collection is used across sporting contexts (e.g. improve performance by adjusting technique), clinical populations (e.g. gait re-training to reduce knee moments in knee osteoarthritis), and in research (e.g. determining the neuromechanics of moving on slopes). To apply our biomechanical knowledge, we need to be able to collect rigorous and clean biomechanical data to interpret. Here, you will learn how to use gold-standard biomechanical equipment, such as motion capture, force plates, and electromyography. You will formulate the procedures, set up the relevant software, carry out the data collection, and then process and analyse simple kinematic and kinetic signals within specific contexts. This module focuses on giving you skill proficiency in biomechanical data collection through to analysis. This module focuses on enabling you to become proficient in the use of motion capture systems, as well as post-processing biomechanical data, where you build your marker models in order to calculate joint dynamics. In addition to this, you will become familiar with historical marker set models and the development towards our simplified marker sets such as Plug-in-Gait and CAST. This module will have significant practical time in small groups, with only the underlying theoretical aspects covered in lectures in the few weeks.

This module focuses on the performance analysis practices within applied sport environments. You will be introduced to key components of practice, which cover the full process and workflows of performance analysis, including needs analysis and planning, data collection and reliability checking, and facilitation of feedback to different stakeholders. The module will use a variety of teaching methods – lectures, seminars, guest speakers, practical field-based sessions, and IT labs – to develop your knowledge and understanding of these practices, as well developing the necessary skills and underpinning expertise to implement these. You will explore the application of performance analysis within a wide variety of sports, populations, and contexts to become a critical thinker who can adapt your practices to the needs of the environment you are working within.

Explore the application of data analytics within the context of sport, and gain the knowledge and skills to harness data for performance optimisation, strategic decision-making, and research purposes. Emphasising both theory and practice, the module covers key topics such as data collection methodologies, data cleaning and visualisation, statistical analysis, machine learning applications, and predictive modelling. Through real-world case studies and hands-on projects, you will learn to critically evaluate data sources, interpret complex datasets, and communicate actionable insights to diverse stakeholders. By the end of this module, you will be equipped to leverage cutting-edge analytical tools and techniques to address contemporary challenges in sport science and performance.