Sport Coaching and Physical Education

Sports coaches used to pick up their skills simply by playing, then passing on their experience. But that’s no longer enough in a world where coaches in tennis, football and cricket have public profiles as high as the players themselves. We now expect coaches to have studied and mastered the art and science of coaching. That’s why on our this course you learn a more ‘professional’ approach by reflecting in an academic way on your practical experiences of coaching practice.

Our lecturers are great motivators of students and the facilities available to you are industry-standard, including our own stadium complete with an eight-lane athletics track, an on-campus sports hall and laboratories kitted out with the latest high-tech analysis equipment. You also benefit from the professional input of a range of interesting motivational speakers. In the past, these have included coaches from the Welsh national football team, a member of Chelsea FC, and rugby union players from Saracens.

Central to the course at Winchester is the belief that theory and knowledge are best learned through practice. Four strands cover both the practical and academic elements.

The first strand is Sports Coaching Practice, which teaches you to put theoretical coaching principles into practice to help sports people strive to improve performance. Part of being a successful coach is having good communication skills and we study the best ways to convey your message. In this practical first strand, you may also explore coaching consultancy work in the local sporting community to enhance your employment prospects.

The Supporting Coaching Practice strand helps you to understand both scientific and sociological coaching principles. You focus on how inequality affects both coaching and sports participation and how sport is used to develop local communities. You take a deeper look at training methodology and the use of technology, such as video match analysis. You also focus on educational theory and how it can help structure coaching classes. Finally, you explore coaching special populations, with the primary focus on disability sport.

The Sports Coaching Science strand applies sports science to sports coaching. Covering aspects of biomechanics, physiology and psychology provides you with a science toolkit for coaching.

Finally, in the Research Methods strand you develop the academic ability to apply both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies to various sporting and exercise contexts. The acquisition of such skills underpins your learning in all strands and is essential for completing the dissertation in an area of special interest.

Our degree equips you with the coaching expertise to join a growing industry where standards have risen dramatically in recent years. Our graduates usually enter careers as professional sports coaches, sports development officers, performance managers, community development leaders and PE teachers. But you ‘cross the finishing line’ with a wide range of transferable communication, analysis and research skills that are also valued in a range of careers not directly related to sport and fitness.