Sport and Exercise Sciences courses

Who are you? Chris Bishop. Job title. Associate Professor of Strength and Conditioning. We are based over at Stonex Stadium, which is the home of Saracen's Rugby Club. Lots of universities will have similar facilities.

They won't be based or housed at a professional sports organisation. We've got a member of staff who works at Spurs Women, we've got two members of staff who work at Arsenal Academy, we've got the lead performance scientist for British Weightlifting.

Definitely puts us at the real cutting edge of high-performance sport. Probably the most important one is that every degrees got a placement module and that essentially just gives the students the opportunity to go out, apply all the underpinning theory, the science into day -to -day practice because we have a lot of alumni in these different sporting organisations.

They send us placement opportunities of various different shapes and sizes every year. The work that you're doing, seeing it come into fruition after, so learning a simple aspect whether it's to do with biomechanics or physiology or something else and then being able to apply that to something bigger.

You really see that in your mind. You're like, okay, I've learned this little thing and I can apply this to something that I care more about, whether that's strength and conditioning or physiology or psychology because sport science includes so many different niches that your learning capacity is unlimited.

Truth is the culture, you know. I think there's a real genuine appreciation of a two -way working relationship between staff and students here. We can learn just as much from them as hopefully they can from us.

Truth be told, I legitimately love what I do. The realisation of being a part of their journey that gets them to where they want to go and hopefully being a small part in helping to build their knowledge, build their skills, help develop their behaviours ready for these job roles in elite and professional sports organisations.

Seeing when they do learn those jobs has been nice to see and pretty inspiring on a personal note as well, to be honest.