Sports Coaching

Sports coaching is the professional practice of supporting athletes and participants to learn, improve, and perform in sport. It is a discipline that draws on sport science, pedagogy, psychology, physiology, and communication to understand how people develop physical skills and sporting ability, and how coaches can create environments in which that development flourishes. Coaching is not simply instruction; it involves observation, analysis, feedback, relationship-building, planning, and the adaptation of practice to the needs of individual athletes and teams across different contexts and levels of the sport.

At Hartpury University, this three-year full-time degree is designed to give you real-world coaching experience throughout your studies, not just as an addition to the academic work but as a central part of how the programme is delivered. You will build a diverse portfolio of coaching experience and practice that demonstrates your expertise and develops a coherent personal coaching philosophy, which is increasingly what graduate employers and sporting organisations look for when recruiting coaches. Hartpury has exceptional sport facilities and strong connections with professional sport, particularly in rugby, equestrian sports, and football, giving the degree an authentic applied context.

Sports coaching graduates work across the full range of sporting organisations and contexts. Many move into roles as coaches with clubs, schools, national governing bodies, and performance academies. Others work in sport development, physical education, community sport, health and wellbeing programmes, and sport management.

The combination of technical coaching knowledge and practical experience the degree provides is valued across grassroots and elite sport alike. For those drawn to further study, the degree provides a solid foundation for postgraduate programmes in coaching science, sport psychology, or strength and conditioning. The typical entry tariff is 104 points.