MSc Strength, Conditioning and Performance Science

You will be taught using a range of different learning events. These will include group lectures, seminars, practical workshops, and laboratory classes. Lectures may consist of tutor led sessions, and internal and external speakers who are research or practice active. The learning schedule and methods of delivery are designed to build a learning community around the topics of discussion, embed student experience into teaching to incorporate you as a partner in the learning and teaching process, and provide significant support for the transition to this level of study. The variety should allow you to maximise your potential in an environment stimulated by researcher and practitioner enhanced delivery.

Materials for sessions will include university produced electronic material designed to enhance your experience, which will allow you to consider different perspectives and approaches in varied virtual and physical environments. As a partner in the process of learning, in seminars you will address topics and aspects of discussions in a critical and rigorous manner alongside staff. These learning events will focus on reading, dissemination of key ideas, theory, and critical reflection and will require significant interaction and debate. This will allow you to enhance your understanding, give you the opportunity to explore and reflect, and develop academic resilience in an arena of support and challenge. In this context relevant staff and external expertise will be a feature of these learning events to ensure relevant research and industry related currency, thus integrating themes aligned with your graduate employability.

Laboratory classes and practical work will be used to plan, demonstrate, measure and evaluate various key aspects of your study. These physical environments could represent the future workplace for some individuals; the laboratory work will be flexible and responsive enough to consider your individual and class interests. Work based learning is an explicit route of delivery of material for this programme, the utilisation of staff active in practitioner roles will allow you to engage with industry driven policy and process and you will engage in applied work under industry staff supervision.

The term ‘laboratory’ in the context of this programme will reflect the environment in which you can collect robust data for analysis, this will include the context of data collection in the social environment and explicitly in our specialist facilities. In both academic learning and practical classes, you will experience approaches from measurement of physiological and physical parameters to a more holistic learning environment.

Industry relevant technology and IT packages will also be utilised in the teaching process to ensure currency for future employment. Indeed, technological support will be a key feature of your programme from the use of the University’s virtual learning environment (VLE) for e lecture notes and video material, key reading and both programme and module information.

It is anticipated that other study support mechanisms may also be found on the VLE such as interactive lectures, relevant online data sources, and online discussion boards, alongside institutional regulatory documents, and programme management processes to support your wider learning needs and professional and academic skills development throughout your programme. Beyond the use of the VLE to enhance learning, the offsite availability of this resource will enable some flexibility in engagement with key materials for this programme.

On the part-time pathway students will take fewer modules per year but in a two-year period you will complete the same modules and credits as the full-time pathway students. In the first year of study part-time students will take the ‘Practical Techniques and Skills in Strength and Conditioning’ and ‘Research Methods’ in trimester 1. In the second trimester of the first year ‘Advanced Laboratory Techniques’ and the ‘Science of Performance, Planning and Programming’ will be studied.

During the second year of study the ‘Biomechanics, Skill Acquisition and Technology in Strength and Conditioning’ module and the Advanced Practical Techniques and Skills in Strength and Conditioning’ will be studied in trimesters 1 and 2 respectively. Trimester 3 in the final year of study will be focused on the ‘Applied Practice and Research in Strength and Conditioning’ module, delivering a placement experience and research aligned with the strength and conditioning field.

To summarise, part-time students will complete 180 credits for the MSc qualification, and this is weighted as 80 credits in the first year of study and 100 credits in the second and final year of the degree.

The Applied Practice and Research in Strength and Conditioning module is unique in our sector at MSc level. It combines a placement element to allow you to engage in a substantive industry work-based learning experience where your journey will be documented through an evidence-based portfolio with an aligned purpose to showcase your skills and attributes to prospective employers and a dissertation assessment.

The curriculum is informed by research and involves the student in the creation of research. With a placement supervisor to facilitate ongoing development within a professional context, you will be encouraged to use your work-related experiences to inform your dissertation to connect learning from the workplace to research resulting in a connected curriculum.