Research Conference Presentations

Dr Alex Twitchen has once again been accepted to present at the UK Coaching Applied Research Conference, being hosted at Derby County F.C., with two colleagues from the FA. Alex will be presenting in February 2019 on the UEFA B Vets project which is investigating the impact of a peer to peer learning environment. Alex previously presented at the 2018 inaugural conference on his research into ‘randomly applied constraints as a means to develop and improve the practice design skills of coaches’. Congratulations Alex!

Early Career Researcher Award

Congratulations to Gavin Williams, who has recently won the British Educational Research Association (BERA) Early Career Researcher Award for his presentation at the recent BERA conference at Northumbria University, Newcastle. The Award is selected by members of the BERA Conference committee and other judges who attend all of the Early Career Researcher sessions at the conference. Gavin’s presentation was based on his recent doctoral work and was titled: Boundedness belonging and becoming: primary school children’s perspectives of education and learning in the South Wales valleys.

International Conferences Updates

In October 2017, Dr Ben Langdown was invited to deliver a 1 day keynote workshop to The Professional Golfers’ Association of The Czech Republic in Prague. Ben shared research around creativity in coaching, movement variability and warm-up protocols for golf. The workshop combined theory and practical elements to support over 40 PGA golf coaches from both The Czech Republic and Slovakia.

 

2018 has again shaped up to be a year of international dissemination for Ben. In July he travelled to The University of The Fraser Valley, based in British Columbia, Canada to share his latest research at The World Scientific Congress of Golf. Ben presented two research projects to the audience of academics and coaches. His first was focussed on the warm-up habits of highly skilled golfers which he has been collaborating with The Professional Golfers’ Association on (abstract available here). Secondly, he presented initial data on the practice and tournament volumes of young golfers to highlight that very little is known about the impact on their performance and longevity in the sport (abstract available here).

 

October, 2018 saw Ben head off to the sunshine state of Florida to present his research for the fourth time at the World Golf Fitness Summit. This summit is attended by over 600 strength and conditioning coaches and golf coaches from around the globe. You can check out Ben’s presentation slides and summary here  and keep an eye out on this site for more updates on publications following these conferences.

New Dissemination Articles

Dr Caroline Heaney has recently had two articles published in BASEM Today and Football, Medicine & Performance. These applied articles are dissemination pieces stemming from Caroline’s PhD research into the psychology of sports injury. The articles focus on ‘How can we successfully integrate sport psychology into sport and exercise medicine education?’ and ‘What do sports medicine professionals working in football need to know about sport psychology?‘ respectively.

Congratulations Caroline!

Research Conference Presentations

In December 2017, Candice Lingam-Willgoss presented her research on the differences between recreational and elite athletes’ experiences of motherhood at the 2017 BPS – Division of Sport and Exercise Psychology conference in Glasgow. Fast forward 12 months and Candice will be presenting again at this year’s BPS annual conference, this time in Belfast, on her research into elite female athlete career transitions in sport.

New Book

Simon Rea is currently writing a companion piece to his previous sports science text book. This current book focusses on 4 chapters around careers in sport:

  1. Intro – Studying sport / sports science:

Routes into sports career

  1. A series of 20 interviews adding insights into their career in sport – how they got into that position and the scope of their current role and how they developed the skills they need:
    1. Sports nutritionist
    2. Football agent
    3. Sports broadcaster
    4. Strength and conditioning coach
    5. Sports psychologist
    6. Sports biomechanists
  2. Developing the skills you need to work in sport:
    1. Developing relationships
    2. Communication
    3. Motivation
    4. Working with other people
  3. Landing the job – working on specific skills such as:
    1. Writing a CV
    2. Suit / Tracksuit – What to wear for a sports specific interview
    3. Interview techniques
    4. How to prepare

 

Simon is hoping to publish this in spring 2019…watch this space!

New Publication

Dr Ben Langdown has had a paper accepted for publication in Journal of Sports Sciences (September 2018) investigating the ‘Acute effects of different warm-up protocols on highly skilled golfers’ drive performance

He previously presented this work at the World Golf Fitness Summit in 2014 to an international audience of golf fitness professionals, coaches and medical practitioners, and has since used the findings to influence numerous golfers’ warm-up habits.

Congratulations to Ben and the other authors!

2017-18 Updates: New Scholarship Paper

We are pleased to share an example of scholarship work that has been taking place over the past 12 month within the Sport and Fitness team:

Congratulations to Jessica Pinchbeck and Dr Caroline Heaney who have published an intervention to improve the quantity and quality of student resubmissions on a level 1 distance learning module:

Pinchbeck, J. & Heaney, C. (2017). Case report: the impact of a resubmission intervention on level 1 distance learning students. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-learning, 32(3) pp. 236–242.