Sport Rehabilitation (2024)

In your first year of study there are approximately 12 teaching hours each week, which reduces to approximately 10 teaching hours in your second and third years. On top of teaching hours, you are also expected to spend a number of hours studying independently each week, as well as studying in groups to prepare for any group assessments that you may have.

Our BSc (Hons) Sport Rehabilitation is accredited by the British Association of Sport Rehabilitators and Trainers (BASRaT). Upon completion of the degree, students will be eligible to apply for full BASRaT membership and bestow the title of Graduate Sport Rehabilitator (GSR), and enter onto the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) in Health and Social Care Accredited Register.

To gain your degree in Sport Rehabilitation and permit registration with BASRaT, you must:
- pass every assessment in every year

- successful completion of the BASRaT Registration Examination

Where these criteria are not met you may have the option to retake the year or move to an alternative degree in either Health & Sport Science (the same curriculum content but different degree title) or Sport & Exercise Science.

The University will assist in organising placements in a variety of settings (e.g. sports injury and physiotherapy clinics, sports clubs, fitness centres, rehabilitation centres, physical activity and health promotion units). You are also strongly encouraged to identify and organise work placements yourself.

Year One

Functional anatomy and kinesiology

Providing the foundations of understanding human movement by understanding the muscles, bones, and soft tissues that coordinate movement patterns underpinning sports performance.

Clinical Massage

Understanding, demonstrating and practising the clinical skill of sports massage covering all of the various techniques including; effluarage, pettrisage, tapotement and frictioning using a variety of different case scenarios pertinent to sport and the general population.

Musculoskeletal Assessment

Building upon knowledge and understanding of anatomy to be able to clinically reason a variety of clinical tests to identify common injuries and pathologies found in sport and the general population. Learning and demonstration of Professional clinical standards and safety are integrated tightly into this area of learning.

Introduction to sports psychology

You will learn foundational concepts in sports psychology and skill acquisition, such as personality, confidence, motivation, emotion, information processing and motor control and how these relate to rehabilitation of musculoskeletal injury and disease.

Exercise physiology

Understanding the foundations of the physiological basis for sport and exercise, with particular reference to the anatomy and physiology of the respiratory, cardiovascular, muscular and metabolic systems. Introduction to the regulation and integration of these physiological systems alongside an overview of neural, digestive and urinary systems. A highly applied section of the degree supported by an intensive programme of laboratory work where you will learn the fundamentals of human exercise testing and physiological evaluation.

Fundamentals of biomechanics

Building on fundamental kinesiology you will understand how to quantify human movement via kinematic and kinetic approaches and understand the terms work, power, force, speed, velocity. Learning is supported by laboratory and field work.

Physical activity and health

Physical activity is central to the maintenance of health and the prevention of non-communicable disease. You will consider the “Landmark” studies that for the first time provided evidence for the prevention of disease through physical activity and exercise. You will also examine recommendations for how much physical activity should be undertaken and how this contrasts with typical physical activity undertaken by UK adults and children.

Study skills & research methods

A key outcome of undergraduate study is the transferable skills that you acquire, such as those in writing, presenting information, working within teams, interpreting data, data analysis and understanding evidence. Studying these skills directly improves your degree outcome and improves employability prospects. Moreover, in a world with ever more conflicting opinion you will understand what information you can, and cannot, rely upon to be true.

Year Two

Injury Diagnosis

Building upon Musculoskeletal Assessment at level one, Injury Diagnosis further develops clinical assessment skills to incorporate advanced knowledge and understanding of injuries and how to clinically assess for these. Subjective assessment will be combined with Objective assessment of patients including, functional, passive and resisted testing and special orthopaedic tests to be able to commence a working diagnosis for injury.

Musculoskeletal Interventions

Building upon clinical interventions such as massage, this area will develop student’s intervention skills to include spinal and peripheral joint mobilisations as well as taping and strapping and muscle energy techniques. This will link closely with the Principles of Exercise Prescription area to create effective injury management.

Principles of Exercise Prescription

Considering common injuries, students will develop skills in early, mid and late stage exercise prescription in rehabilitation. Student’s will use clinical reasoning skills to apply different types and degrees of exercises to create clinically appropriate progressive exercise rehabilitation strategies to benefit a range of injuries in a variety of patients.

Sport Psychology

You will study applied aspects of sports psychology such as aggression, attribution and coach-athlete relationships.

Physiology of exercise training

With a focus on the physiology of cardiac function and aerobic function, you will understand adaptations to exercise training and the measurement of key parameters such as cardiac output, lactate threshold and maximal oxygen uptake. Accompanied by a series of laboratory-based workshops where you will make direct measures of cardiac and aerobic function.

Training programme design

Effective training programme design and evaluation is central to maximising the effects of training. You will learn about the fundamental principles of strength, speed and agility training and how to program them within an overall training or rehabilitation programme. Lectures are supplemented with practical sessions in the field to understand best practice in the measurement of these parameters.

Sport Biomechanics

Through practical sessions in the purpose-built laboratory and a lecture series, you will develop your skills and knowledge in kinematic analysis, with an emphasis on gait analysis and measurement of muscle.

Physical Activity, Health & Health Promotion

Building on your first year of study, you will develop your understanding of the relationship between physical activity and health to examine the effectiveness of different health promotion campaigns to promote physical activity across a range of different communities and environments, such as disability, minority groups and the workplace.

Study skills & research methods

In your second year you will start to plan for your final year research project. From developing a research proposal to evaluating your data through statistical analysis you will be supported to produce the best possible dissertation. You will also consider your future career and understand how effective data analysis techniques are essential for the workplace in our field.

Year Three

Screening for Injury Prevention

Students will learn evidence-based screening strategies and accompanying exercise strategies to decrease the risk of injury in individuals

Pre-Hospital Immediate Care in Sport

Students will complete this advanced ‘first aid’ course which is endorsed by the Royal College of Surgeons Edinburgh – this standalone qualification is essential to anyone wanting to work in professional sport and is a pre-requisite for gaining registration with BASRaT. All aspects of immediate pre-hospital care and management are covered including medical emergencies, shock, thoracic injuries, head injuries, cardiac arrest, acute fracture and spinal injury.

Advanced Exercise Prescription and Biomechanics

Students develop their knowledge, skills and practise by combining these essential areas to develop return to play strategies from early stage rehab to Return to Play

Advanced Clinical Interventions

Student’s will further develop their understanding and practical clinical intervention skills to an advanced level to enable them to create effective injury management plans.

Physical Activity, Exercise & Health

With ever increasing rates of non-communicable disease, you will study best practice in prescribing exercise for the promotion of health in a range of different diseased and healthy populations, such as diabetes, osteoporosis, pregnancy and children.

Science of Sport Coaching

A scientific view of structuring and programming training, considering issues such as screening, age, sex, recovery, sleep and concurrent training

Paediatric Exercise Science

Understanding growth, development, physical literacy, issues of maturation and the physiology of training and overtraining in children and adolescents.

Applied Sport Biomechanics

Based predominantly in the human movement laboratory, you will utilise motion capture and force-plate analysis to learn how to produce a 3-D analysis of sports performance and technique analysis.

Research Dissertation

An independent research project with the purpose of discovering new findings in the field of Sport Rehabilitation

Our students will have the opportunity to achieve success in many different vocations in the growing Sport, Health, Fitness, and Leisure industry, and associated professions such as Physical Therapy, Sports and Fitness, Public Health Schemes and Health Promotion Centres, Athletic and Personal Training and Occupational Health.

Graduate Sport Rehabilitators can be found working within professional sport, the NHS, private medical providers, the Fire Service, Ministry of Defence and many more. Many develop specialisms, such as strength & conditioning or specific joint injuries. You may also set up your own clinical practice to serve local sporting communities or you may decide to continue with teaching/research and apply for postgraduate training (MSc/MRes/MPhil/PhD) in related fields.