Sport and Exercise Science
With 100% overall student satisfaction (National Student Survey), turn your passion for sport and exercise into professional impact with the Sport and Exercise Science degree at the University of South Wales. Develop cutting-edge practical skills, apply sport science in real-world settings, and graduate ready for careers in performance, health, and rehabilitation.
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Key Course Details
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UCAS Code
C602
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Start Date
September
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Location
Pontypridd
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Campus Code
A
Fees
Home students
£9,790*
International students
£17,200*
- Full-time fees are per year. Part-time fees are per 20 credits.
-
Start Date
September
-
Location
Pontypridd
-
Campus Code
A
Fees
Home students
£804*
- Full-time fees are per year. Part-time fees are per 20 credits.
If you’re curious about how movement, exercise, and performance shape health and everyday life, this degree is built for you. You’ll combine scientific understanding with hands-on experience to make a real difference in sport and health settings.
Designed For
Carve out your dream career with our Sport and Exercise Science course. Covering exercise physiology, sport psychology, biomechanics, strength and conditioning, sports nutrition and sports performance, it opens doors to a wide range of careers in sport and health.
Endorsed by
- Modules endorsed by the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA)
- The Chartered Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (CASES)
Career paths
- Sport and performance scientist
- Exercise Physiologist / Biomechanist
- Strength & Conditioning Coach
- Health promotion specialist
- Personal Trainer
Skills taught
- Scientific Technical Skills
- Analytical Research Skills
- Applied Instructional Skills
- Professional Employability Skills
- Digital & Technical Competence
Course Highlights
Module Overview
Learn by doing from the start. Combine science, practical coaching, and real-world problem-solving to understand performance, improve health, and begin developing your identity as a sport and exercise professional.
Inside the body: From Muscles to Mind
Explore how the body and mind drive human performance, combining anatomy, biomechanics, and sport psychology. Build practical understanding and skills for health, fitness, coaching, and sport science careers.
Translating Science into Performance
Bridge sport science and real-world performance by exploring training, nutrition, assessment, and psychology. Gain practical skills to design programmes, monitor progress, and support athletes to train smarter, recover better, and excel.
Health and Fitness Foundations
Kickstart your fitness career by learning to design, deliver, and evaluate safe, effective exercise programmes. Gain practical skills, industry qualifications, and knowledge of training, nutrition, and psychology to support clients’ well-being.
The Sport & Exercise Scientist – Skills for Success
Become a confident, career-ready sport and exercise scientist by tackling real-world challenges. Build skills in research, teamwork, communication, and problem-solving while exploring your professional identity and impact on health and well-being.
Dive deeper into performance, health, and research. Apply biomechanics, physiology, psychology, and evidence-based practice to real-world challenges while gaining industry experience and developing advanced laboratory and professional skills.
Human Fundamental Sciences: Application and Adaptation
Deepen your knowledge of how the body moves, performs, and recovers. Explore physiology, biomechanics, and psychology, apply science to real-world challenges, and develop practical skills for performance and rehabilitation.
Human Performance: Application and Adaptation
Explore how athletes excel by combining body, mind, nutrition, and movement science. Apply real-world strategies, assess performance, and develop critical thinking, problem-solving, and practical skills for sport and exercise science.
Applied Exercise for Health: Designing for Change
Learn to design safe, effective exercise programmes for people with long-term conditions. Apply evidence-based guidelines, develop practical, communication, and critical-thinking skills, and build professional credibility for health, fitness, and clinical careers.
Research In Practice
Develop essential research skills and apply them in real-world sport or exercise settings. Learn methods, data analysis, and ethics while linking theory to practice through placements and professional observation.
Operate as a professional sport scientist. Analyse complex performance data, design strategic interventions, complete your Grand Challenge project, and present solutions that mirror industry consultancy and applied practice.
Advanced Sport & Exercise Science
Integrate physiology, biomechanics, and psychology to tackle complex sport and exercise challenges. Apply critical thinking, professional skills, and ethical reasoning to analyse performance, injury, and applied practice in real-world and research contexts.
Optimising Human Performance
Turn science into action by applying physiology, biomechanics, and psychology to optimise performance. Develop evidence-based consultancy skills, design interventions, and tackle professional challenges in real-world sport and exercise contexts.
Strength and Conditioning: Evidence-Based Training Methods
Learn to plan, deliver, and justify strength and conditioning programmes. Develop technical skills in strength, power, speed, and agility, applying evidence-based methods to improve performance and reduce injury risk.
Research to Reality: Sport & Exercise Science in Practice
Apply your knowledge and skills to real-world sport and exercise challenges. Lead evidence-based projects, develop professional independence, and refine critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication to prepare for careers or postgraduate study.
Course Highlights
How you’ll learn
You’ll study in focused 7-week blocks, immersing yourself in one subject at a time. Pre-session materials build essential knowledge, while interactive practical workshops apply theory to industry-informed challenges reflecting real sport and health scenarios. Post-session tasks develop professional skills through reports, data analysis, and consultancy-style outputs. This approach strengthens employability, mirrors workplace practice, and prepares you for careers in performance, health, and research.
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How you'll be assessed
All assessments are applied and designed to mirror professional sport and exercise science practice. Across the degree, you will complete practicals, laboratory assessments, case studies, consultancy-style reports, presentations, portfolios, and industry informed Grand Challenges. You will analyse real datasets, design evidence-based interventions, justify programme decisions, and present findings to academic and industry-style panels. Assessments emphasise critical thinking, technical competence, ethical practice, and professional communication, ensuring you graduate with the confidence and practical skills required for employment or postgraduate study.
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Placements
Placements are embedded within the course to give you meaningful, real-world experience in sport, exercise, and health settings. During Level 5 and Level 6, you will engage with industry partners, applying your scientific knowledge in professional environments while developing workplace skills such as communication, data collection, ethical practice, and problem-solving. You may work with sports teams, gyms, clinical exercise services, schools, or community health organisations. These experiences strengthen your CV, expand your professional network, and often inform assessment projects. By graduation, you won’t just understand sport science, you’ll have practical experience demonstrating your readiness for employment.
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Facilities
You’ll learn across the University of South Wales’s Sport Park and Glyntaff campus, immersing yourself in professional-standard physiology, biomechanics, and psychology laboratories. Gain hands-on experience with metabolic carts, force platforms, motion capture systems, GPS technology, psychology equipment, and our state-of-the-art environmental chamber. Train in our dedicated strength and conditioning centre, biomechanics lab, notational analysis suite, indoor 3G pitch, and floodlit performance fields, each designed to replicate elite sport and applied health environments. Using industry-standard software, digital analysis tools, and extensive library resources, you’ll test ideas, analyse data, and solve real-world challenges, building the confidence and practical expertise to apply science to performance, health, and wellbeing.
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Gregorio Estevez Marchesini
Sport and Exercise Science student
Denise Cuer
Sport and Exercise Science student
Sam Thomas
Strength and Conditioning graduate
Max Roberts
Sports Coaching and Development graduate
Cameron Bailey
Sport and Exercise Therapy student
Billy Liptrot
Sports Coaching and Development graduate
Shubham Trivedi
Football student
Steph Walker
Sports Coaching student
Why USW?
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100% of USW BSc (Hons) Sport and Exercise Science students were satisfied with their course (National Student Survey 2025).
96.4% of USW Sport graduates are in Employment and/or Further Study 15 months after graduation (Graduate Outcomes Survey 2022/23)
Why USW?
Sport Science at USW is top in Wales for Teaching Quality
(Guardian University Guide 2025)100% of USW BSc (Hons) Sport and Exercise Science students were satisfied with their course (National Student Survey 2025).
96.4% of USW Sport graduates are in Employment and/or Further Study 15 months after graduation (Graduate Outcomes Survey 2022/23)
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ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
UCAS Points: 112 (or above)
Typical qualification requirements:
- A Level: BBC to include one A Level in Science, Mathematics, Physical Education or Psychology but to exclude General Studies
- BTEC: Distinction Merit Merit in a relevant subject
- Welsh Baccalaureate Advanced Skills Challenge Certificate: C in the Skills Challenge Certificate and BB at A Level to include one A Level in Science, Mathematics, Physical Education or Psychology but to exclude General Studies
- Access to HE: Pass the Access to HE Diploma in Sport/Science with a minimum of 112 UCAS tariff points.
Additional requirements include:
The University normally requires a minimum 5 GCSEs including Mathematics/Numeracy and English at Grade C or Grade 4 or above, or their equivalent, but consideration is given to individual circumstances.
International applications welcomed:
We welcome international applications with equivalent qualifications of our entry requirements. For more details related to your country of residence please view our dedicated country pages.
English language requirements
In general, international applicants will need to have achieved an overall IELTS grade of 6.0 with a minimum score of 5.5 in each component.
Equivalents can be located on our country.
If you have previously studied through the medium of English IELTS might not be required, please visit our country specific page for further details. If your English Language pages is not featured, please contact us.
If you do not meet the English entry criteria please visit our Pre-Sessional course pages.
Contextual offers
We may make you a lower offer based on a range of factors, including your background (where you live and the school or college that you attended, for example), your experiences and individual circumstances (as a care leaver, for example). This is referred to as a contextual offer, and we receive data from UCAS to support us in making these decisions.
USW prides itself on its student experience and we support our students to achieve their goals and become a successful graduate. This approach helps us to support students who have the potential to succeed and who may have faced barriers that make it more difficult to access university.
We're here to help
Whether you a have a question about your course, fees and funding, the application process or anything else, there are plenty of ways you can get in touch, and we'd love to talk to you. You can contact our friendly admissions team by phone, email or chat to us online.
Fees and Funding
£9,790
per year*£17,200
per year*£804
per 20 credits*Additional Costs
As a student of USW, you’ll have access to lots of free resources to support your study and learning, such as textbooks, publications, online journals, laptops, and plenty of remote-access resources. Whilst in most cases these resources are more than sufficient in supporting you with completing your course, additional costs, both obligatory and optional, may be required or requested for the likes of travel, memberships, experience days, stationery, printing, or equipment.
University Quality Assurance
At USW, we regularly review our courses in response to changing patterns of employment and skills demand to ensure we offer learning designed to reflect today’s student needs and tomorrow’s employer demands.
If during a review process course content is significantly changed, we’ll write to inform you and talk you through the changes for the coming year. But whatever the outcome, we aim to equip our students with the skillset and the mindset to succeed whatever tomorrow may bring. Your future, future-proofed.
Life at USW
Halls are a big part of your student experience and there’s accommodation at all three of our locations. If you don’t want to live near the campus, there are great transport links to keep you connected.
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How to apply
All applications for full-time undergraduate courses or foundation degrees should be made via UCAS. Take the next step: Apply through UCAS. You can apply to us directly for all part-time undergraduate courses, if you’re seeking advanced entry or you’re an international student. To apply directly, please choose the application form below for your preferred start date and mode of study (full-time or part-time).
Advanced entry
If you already have a relevant qualification or experience related to the course you're applying for, you may be eligible to start at a later stage of the course. For example, students from partner colleges can ‘top up’ their qualifications to a degree by joining us in Year Two or Year Three of a course. This process is known as ‘advanced entry’, you can apply directly to the University for 'advanced entry' using the application forms provided above.
Applicants accepted through advanced entry may study a different combination of modules to those advertised, as they will be joining a course already in progress. You will be contacted and advised about these modules once your application has been processed and an offer made.
International admissions
International applicants can apply to us directly. If the University has an in-country team in your region, your application will be assigned to them for assistance.