BSc Sports Performance and Coaching (Including Foundation Year)

Our BSc Sports Performance and Coaching (including foundation year) will be suitable for you if your academic qualifications do not yet meet our entrance requirements for the three-year version of this course, and you want a programme that increases your subject knowledge, as well as improves your skills to support your academic performance.

This four-year course includes a foundation year (Year Zero), followed by a further three years of study. During your Year Zero, you study three academic subjects relevant to your chosen course as well as a compulsory academic skills module, with additional English language for non-English speakers.

After successful completion of Year Zero in our Essex Pathways Department, you progress to complete your course with our School of Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences.

Work with athletes, players, and teams; refine their performance; boost their training, enable development. On our BSc Sports Performance and Coaching, you learn how science and practice underpins performance sport. A comprehensive knowledge of scientific theory and practical application is essential for those wanting to coach from grassroots to elite level, across all sports.

Our excellent links with national governing bodies, such as the Football Association, Volleyball England, Basketball England, and Rugby Football Union, give you real practical experience to enhance your learning. Our links also open up opportunities to gain experience working as a sports coach, and access coach education courses and workshops. You also have the option to work towards various, externally accredited, National Governing Body Coaching awards.

As well as gaining practical experience, you expand your knowledge and skills through studying topics including:

• Pedagogical principles of coaching
• Strength and conditioning
• Performance analysis
• Talent identification and development
• Exercise programming
• Methods of assessing the fitness and training loads of sports teams and athletes

You can get professionally certified whilst studying as some of our modules have qualifications incorporated in them. This means that you are equipped with the qualifications needed to work in the field. For example, we have embedded a Level 2 Gym instructors qualification into one of our first-year modules to become a qualified gym instructor (please note that a nominal fee applies for students wanting full accreditation).

You can also work with our Human Performance Unit based on campus, enabling individuals and teams to reach peak performance. Service provision ranges from supporting research, coaching, school campus visits, and performance analysis provision, to sports science support for our scholarship students as well as the general public.

Being part of our School of Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences you will join a community focused on sports and exercise science, sports therapy and physiotherapy. We bring together our internationally recognised research, share knowledge, and enhance placement and vocational opportunities for our students and graduates.

We offer you one of the best student experiences around. You experience a lively, informal environment with many possibilities to pursue your own interests.