School
Sport and Wellbeing
UCAS tariff points
48
Years of Entry
2024 2025
Location
Main Campus (Horsforth)
Study abroad
Yes
Study Mode
Full time (4 years)

Course overview

Do you want to gain the skills and experience needed for a career as a health and exercise professional?

Would you like to learn how health promotion and physical activity interventions can be used to help address the health challenges faced by society?

The health and fitness industry is seeing significant growth as an increasing number of people recognise the importance of physical activity and exercise.

This degree will prepare you to become a confident and efficient health and exercise professional ready for a career in public health and health promotion or within the growing number of jobs in the exercise and health sector that focus on promoting active and healthy lifestyles.

This four-year course includes an initial full-time Foundation Year and offers an alternative route into university and gaining a degree.

This route is for you if you do not have the necessary qualifications or don’t yet feel ready to begin degree-level study, or are returning to education and would like some support to get up to speed with learning in a university setting.

The Foundation Year in Sport and Exercise will allow you to develop your academic skills and confidence as well as introduce you to key concepts, debates and skills that will support and inform your subsequent years of undergraduate study.

Following successful completion of your Foundation Year, you’ll progress onto Year 1 of our Physical Activity, Exercise and Health Promotion BSc (Hons) degree.

The Student Contract

About this course

During your Foundation Year, you will undertake modules to enable you to enhance your academic skills and equip you with the tools you’ll need to study with confidence. You’ll carry out a personal project so you can study an area of interest related to your chosen future subject specialisation.

You’ll be introduced to multi-disciplinary perspectives on sport, exercise, physical performance and rehabilitation therapies including physiological, psychological, biomechanical, tactical, pedagogical and rehabilitation concepts. You'll investigate the role exercise plays in health from a multi-disciplinary perspective, exploring theories including health and wellbeing, behaviour change and working with clients.

Following successful completion of the Foundation Year, you’ll progress onto the first year of our Physical Activity, Exercise and Health Promotion BSc (Hons) degree.

You’ll develop your knowledge of exercise science, social science and health promotion, studying anatomy to learn how the body functions and how physical activity and other lifestyle behaviours impact our health and wellbeing.

You’ll explore the sociological and psychological complexity of human behaviour as well as gain an understanding of the wide range of factors that may influence health behaviours and develop behaviour change skills, to consider how you can effectively promote health, or prevent and manage disease.

Putting theory into practice, you’ll complete professional work placements as part of your degree, and you’ll have the opportunity to study, work or volunteer abroad.

Throughout your degree, we’ll help you develop the confidence to support clients from a range of population groups, both physically and psychologically, and to design and implement evidence-based interventions at individual and population level across a variety of health and exercise settings.

This degree has a strong applied focus and offers the chance to gain professional qualifications in gym instruction and personal training while you study.

Why study with us?

  • Build your self-confidence, academic skills and core subject knowledge in preparation for progression onto degree-level study.
  • Study the core concepts of physical activity, exercise and health promotion.
  • Add to your CV by undertaking professional placements.
  • This degree is endorsed by the CIMSPA and offers the opportunity to gain professional qualifications in gym instruction and personal training while you study.
  • Access excellent facilities, including a Sports Science Laboratory and a Strength and Conditioning Suite.
  • Get an international perspective by studying abroad at one of our partner universities.

Accreditation

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This course is endorsed by the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA), the professional development body for the UK’s sport and physical activity sector, for the Gym Instructor and Personal Trainer professional standards. Students who successfully complete this course and have met the Gym Instructor or Professional Trainer professional standard will be eligible for CIMSPA membership, while also gaining a degree endorsed by an organisation recognised in the professional sector.

Course Modules

You will study a variety of modules across your programme of study. The module details given below are subject to change and are the latest example of the curriculum available on this course of study.

Foundation Year

During your Foundation Year, you'll study four core modules.

Academic Skills and Studying with Confidence (Core)

We'll help you develop core academic skills such as using electronic resources, planning and note-taking, communication skills related to essay and report writing and delivering presentations.

You'll learn to manage your time, prioritise tasks and manage stress, and become more confident in engaging with collaborative learning, debates, discussions and critical reflection.

Project (Core)

Study areas of interest related to your chosen future academic specialisation in this highly personalised module.

You'll have 25 hours of workshop tuition to explore how you will be assessed and the form your project could take, which could be a written report, a presentation, a film or a series of blog posts.

You'll also explore topics your project could focus on, and get peer assessment of your ideas.

In the first semester, you'll get support through personal tutoring and learning hub liaison.

You'll also explore careers and employability pathways in sport and health with the Graduate Recruitment Team and the School of Health, Sport and Life Sciences.

In the second semester, you'll produce your negotiated assessment, focussing on existing academic literature and other secondary sources.

You won't undertake primary empirical research.

Scientific Principles within Sport (Core)

You'll study multi-disciplinary perspectives on sport, exercise, physical performance and rehabilitation therapies including physiological, psychological, biochemical, tactical, pedagogical and rehabilitation.

You'll be introduced to the basic key theories to illustrate these perspectives, followed by practical-based activities for hands-on understanding.

A range of methods will be deployed for evaluating sport, exercise and physical performance, including interpretation, presentation and reflection upon data.

Promoting Exercise, Physical Activity and Health (Core)

Study multi-disciplinary perspectives of the role of exercise and physical activity with the context of health. You'll gain knowledge on the basic key theories such as health and wellbeing, behaviour change, health and safety, intervention design and working with clients through a range of activities.

You'll build your knowledge through a combination of interactive lectures and workshops as well as in practical settings which may include lab sessions, field-based activities and practical workshops.

Year 1

During your first year, you'll study five core modules.

Introduction to Anatomy and Physiology (Core)

Get an introduction to anatomy and physiology.

We'll cover the musculoskeletal system, the respiratory system, the cardiovascular system, the nervous and endocrine systems, and energy metabolism and use.

You'll make links between theory and practical work.

We'll also introduce core aspects of research and enquiry, such as how to read and use research articles, conduct basic literature searches and use the Learning Centre services.

Introduction to Nutrition (Core)

Get an introduction to key concepts in nutrition.

This includes macronutrients, micronutrients, the role of fluid in the diet and dietary recommendations for specific individuals. e

We'll discuss energy balance and understanding recommendations for individuals.

Psychological Perspectives on Health and Wellbeing (Core)

Get an introduction to psychological factors that influence health and wellbeing, such as lifestyle, personality, mental health, motivation and risk-taking.

You'll make links between major psychological theories, concepts and models, applying these to health promotion, prevention and treatment of disease and illness.

You'll develop knowledge and understanding of how people react to, cope with, and recover from illness.

You'll look at cognitive processes, behavioural insights, behaviour change and self-management.

You'll also consider the importance of health literacy, digital health technology and personalised care on self-management of health and wellbeing.

Foundations of Physical Activity, Health and Wellbeing (Core)

Get an introduction to physical activity, from the science of movement to the social factors that influence our health and wellbeing.

You'll learn about key determinants of physical activity patterns, how to measure physical activity and the impact of lifestyle diseases on our health.

We'll cover training for healthy adults and look at diverse approaches to health and wellbeing.

You'll gain insight into inequalities in health and evaluate specific health interventions through case studies and problem-based learning.

This module includes the competencies for the CIMPSA gym instructing professional standard.

Professional Skills in Sport, Exercise and Health (Core)

You'll find out what it's like to work in the applied sport, exercise and health sector.

You'll learn about the roles and responsibilities of clients and stakeholders, see the types of jobs and opportunities available, understand the challenges and benefits of working in an interdisciplinary team, and learn to work with empathy and compassion.

You can also take on a work placement or complete employer challenges as part of this module.

If you're studying Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation, you'll have practical workshops to work towards a first aid qualification.

Year 2

during your second year, you'll study five core modules.

Public Health Promotion and Interventions (Core)

You'll look at public health promotions and ways organisations try to improve health locally, nationally and internationally.

We'll cover theoretical concepts and strategies used to design, implement and evaluate public health interventions relating to physical, mental and social health.

You'll see how social media, digital marketing and influencing are used to promote health.

You'll look at the differences in health between population groups, countries and regions.

You'll build your skills to help you facilitate behaviour change across different settings and population groups.

Nutrition and Exercise Prescription (Core)

Explore the relationship between nutrition, exercise and health.

We'll cover the metabolism of nutrients, energy release during exercise and the nature of body composition.

You'll evaluate the role of macronutrients and micronutrients in exercise with specific considerations for dietary planning.

You'll look at the role of nutrition and dietary planning for people who exercise, from different cultures, and those with diabetes, obesity, cognitive functioning and mental ill-health.

You'll take part in practical laboratory sessions exploring responses to exercise and dietary analysis.

This module includes the competencies required for the CIMSPA personal training professional standard.

Applying Professional Skills in Sport, Exercise and Health (Core)

You'll do a professional placement, which can be spread across the academic year or done in a block, depending on your preferred professional area and the demands of your degree programme.

We'll help you develop your professional skills with content relevant to your degree.

This could include developing reflective practice skills, enhancing communication skills, interdisciplinary working, career guidance placement searching and CV writing.

If you're studying sports therapy, you'll also have practical workshops covering sports trauma to support the requirements of the Society of Sports Therapists.

Research Methods and Enquiry (Core)

Learn how to build and interpret research evidence in sport, exercise and related areas.

You'll study the value of research processes, ethical requirements, synthesis of existing research evidence, project design, and the analysis and interpretation of data.

You'll also learn how to appraise existing research.

Applied Physical Activity and Health (Core)

Explore the link between health, physical activity and exercise, focussing on clinical conditions.

You'll learn how to assess clients to get a full needs analysis and produce physical activity and exercise interventions.

You'll consider long-term behaviour change principles of training for healthy adults as well as those with clinical conditions. such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, and diabetes mellitus.

Year 3

During your final year, you'll study four core modules.

Health Promotion across the Lifecourse (Core)

Critically explore the design, implementation and evaluation of community health promotions and policies aimed at changing behaviour, such as promoting physical activity or eating healthily.

You'll develop your data-handling skills to understand the prevalence of common public health conditions across different population groups.

You'll design, implement and evaluate a community-based programme, campaign or educational source to promote health to a population group of your choice.

Physical Activity and Exercise Prescription in Health and Disease (Core)

You'll examine the use of exercise as a treatment strategy for medical conditions.

You'll critically assess the scientific evidence of physical activity and exercise prescription to enhance physiological and psychological health across different clinical population groups.

You'll look at the risks and benefits of exercise, the role of behaviour change, and the roles and responsibilities within an exercise referral scheme.

You'll learn how to design, instruct and evaluate exercise referral programmes for clinical groups.

The module will also introduce the content for the Working with People with Long Term Conditions Professional Standard, a recognised industry qualification.

Independent Project (Core)

Showcase your integrated learning with an independent project relevant to your course and interests.

You'll have tutorials to help you work out the format and focus of your project.

You'll have formative assessment points to act as stepping stones towards completion.

The module will culminate in an assessment event where you'll present work in a negotiated format.

Professional Learning Through Work (Core)

You'll complete a work-based or alternative professional development project within your work setting.

This will involve negotiating a project that meets the needs of both your employer or placement provider and Leeds Trinity University.

You'll develop and negotiate learning outcomes and assessment modes that allow you to apply theoretical understanding and practical work-based development to a chosen context.

Professional work placements

Experience matters. That's why we embed professional work placements within our standard undergraduate degrees.

How does it work?

Careers and Placements will work with you to find your perfect placement or help you arrange your own, whether that's in Leeds, another part of the UK or even abroad. You will be able to take part in a series of workshops, events and live ‘employer challenges’ to boost your confidence and prepare you for your placement.

During your placement, you will have an opportunity to gain degree-relevant work experience, build your knowledge of career sectors and secure valuable employer references and industry contacts. This experience will help you to shape your career decisions and find the right path for you.

You’ll undertake placements that are relevant to potential future careers in the growing exercise and health sector, including roles that promote the use of physical activity and exercise to prevent and manage disease or long-term health conditions, or that can improve health within the community, such as providing sports coaching to children or working alongside personal trainers in gyms. You could also complete your placement overseas with international charities supporting educational projects in countries including Rwanda and Cameroon.

To find out how we can help you make your career ambitions a reality, visit:

Professional Work Placements

Learning and Teaching

At Leeds Trinity we aim to provide an excellent student experience and provide you with the tools and support to help you achieve your academic, personal and professional potential.

Our Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy delivers excellence by providing the framework for:

  • high quality teaching
  • an engaging and inclusive approach to learning, assessment and achievement
  • a clear structure through which you progress in your academic studies, your personal development and towards professional-level employment or further study.

We have a strong reputation for developing student employability, supporting your development towards graduate employment, with relevant skills embedded throughout your programme of study.

We endeavour to develop curiosity, confidence, courage, ambition and aspiration in all students through the key themes in our Learning and Teaching Strategy:

  • Student Involvement and Engagement
  • Inclusion
  • Integrated Programme and Assessment Experience
  • Digital Literacy and Skills
  • Employability and Enterprise

To help you achieve your potential we emphasise learning as a collaborative process, with a range of student-led and real-world activities. This approach ensures that you fully engage in shaping your own learning, developing your critical thinking and reflective skills so that you can identify your own strengths and weaknesses, and use the extensive learning support system we offer to shape your own development.

We believe the secret to great learning and teaching is simple: it is about creating an inclusive learning experience that allows all students to thrive through:

  • Personalised support
  • Expert lecturers
  • Strong connections with employers
  • An international outlook
  • Understanding how to use tools and technology to support learning and development

Programme delivery

Your time on campus, learning through in-person teaching, is at the heart of your academic experience and the way we deliver our programmes. This is supported and further enhanced by additional engagement activities and opportunities provided online and through digital teaching materials. This blended approach seeks to ensure a positive learning and teaching student experience.

Your programme of study has been carefully designed around a three-phase model of delivery:

  1. Preparation: You will be given clear tasks to support you in preparing for live teaching. This could include watching a short-pre-recorded lecture, reading a paper or text chapter or preparing other material for use in class.
  2.  Live: All your live teaching will be designed around active learning, providing you with valuable opportunities to build on preparation tasks, interact with staff and peers, and surface any misunderstandings.
  3. Post: Follow-up activities will include opportunities for you to check understanding, for staff to receive feedback from you and your peers to inform subsequent sessions, and for you to apply learning to new situations or context.

Preparation, Live and Post teaching and learning and the digital materials used will vary by course, but will be designed to help you structure your learning, take a full and active part in your course, and apply and test your developing knowledge and skills.

Assessment

A variety of assessment methods are used, matched to the learning outcomes for your programme, allowing you to apply and demonstrate the full range of knowledge and skills that you have developed.

For more details on specific assessment methods for this course contact hello@leedstrinity.ac.uk

Entry Requirements

Leeds Trinity University is committed to recruiting students with talent and potential and who we feel will benefit greatly from their academic and non-academic experiences here. We treat every application on its own merits; we value highly the experience you illustrate in your personal statement.

Information about the large range of qualifications we accept, including A-Levels, BTECs and T Levels, can be found on our entry requirements page. If you need additional advice or are taking qualifications that are not covered in the information supplied, please contact our Admissions Office.

Entry requirements for this course:
QualificationGrade
UCAS tariff48
GCSE requirementsGCSE English Language at grade C or 4 or above (or equivalent qualification)

Applications are welcome from mature students with few formal qualifications.

Any previous relevant work experience and learning will be assessed and, where appropriate, we may offer an alternative way to assess suitability to study.

This course is not available to students on a Student Route Visa.

Fees and finance

Funding

UK Home Students:

Tuition fees cost £9,250 a year for this course in 2023/2024.

Part-time tuition fees will be prorated accordingly to the number of credits you're studying.

Depending on government policy, tuition fees may change in future years.

Living costs, e.g. accommodation, travel, food, will also need to be taken into consideration.

Leeds Trinity offers a range of bursaries and scholarships to help support students while you study.

Additional costs

We advise students that there may be additional course costs in addition to annual tuition fees. These include:

  • Books - recommended and required reading lists will be provided at the start of your course. All the books and e-books are available from our Library to borrow but you may choose to purchase your own.
  • Print costs - the University provides students with a £6 printing credit each academic year which can be topped up either on campus or online.

How to apply

For full-time undergraduate courses, you apply through UCAS. That's the University and Colleges Admissions Service.

On your application form, you'll need to know our institution code - it's L24 - and the course code. If you click through to the UCAS website using the button below, it'll take you to the right place with all the information you need.

You'll need to write a personal statement - we've prepared a guide to help you.

Although the equal consideration deadline has passed for 2024 entry there are still ways to apply now.

If you included five choices on your application, have received decisions from all five, and weren’t accepted, or if you declined the offers you received, you will be able to use Extra which opens on 28 February. If you use Extra to add another choice you cannot reverse this to go back to your original five choices.

If you did not use all your choices in your initial application, you don't need to use Extra, you can just sign in to your application and add another choice, as long as it’s before 30 June, and you’ve not accepted or declined any offers.

If you don’t hold any offers after 5 July, you will be able to add an additional choice using Clearing.

Applications are not yet open for courses starting in September 2025. You can register and start your application for 2025 from 14 May 2024, although you cannot submit it until later in the year. The UCAS application deadline for courses starting in September 2025 is 29 January 2025.

There's lots more information about the application process on the UCAS website, or you can get in touch with our admissions team who will be happy to help:

This course is not available to students on a Student Route Visa.

Graduate opportunities

Providing you with the opportunity to develop the professional skills and experience you need to launch your career is at the heart of everything we do at Leeds Trinity University.

You’ll have the opportunity to graduate with the experience and knowledge needed for a range of careers in public health, health promotion in the NHS or local authorities, and roles in the sport, fitness and leisure industries that focus on promoting active and healthy lifestyles. A strength of this degree is its diversity – graduates can gain employment in roles across each of the three areas, e.g., as an exercise referral specialist, physical activity development officer, health improvement coordinator or health ambassador.

After you graduate, Careers and Placements will help you as you pursue your chosen career through our mentoring scheme, support with CV and interview preparation and access to graduate employability events.

To find out how we can help you make your career ambitions a reality, visit:

Careers


Moving Forward: Working in Sport and Wellbeing Conference

Our Moving Forward: Working in Sport and Wellbeing Conference gave students the opportunity to explore career paths available to them, make connections and hear from keynote speakers Geva Mentor CBE and Dan Busfield about their personal career journey.

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