Developed and delivered in association with Mick Clegg (ex-professional coach Manchester United footballer) and Adrian Lamb High-Performance (ex-Fitness Coach at Aston Villa, Sunderland, Newcastle United and Leicester City FC). This unique Masters is 100% online with blended options in the form of a residential in Manchester and other centres across the world.
Humans are constantly pushing boundaries. Year after year, powered by innovations in sports science, elite athletes are winning medals, lifting trophies and breaking records once thought impossible. The team behind the team are actively reinventing the way an athlete moves, recovers, consumes and thinks. Dependent upon the sport, athletes must apply high levels of endurance, speed, strength, power, agility, and flexibility, as well as maintain optimum body composition, to cope with the physical demands of their game and to continue demonstration of individual skill without premature fatigue; this renders a carefully planned, effective physical training programme an absolute necessity. The application of advanced training principles coupled with technological, nutritional and medical innovations, has resulted in the creation of Performance Departments, whose role it is to ensure all components of performance are optimised. It is vital that these departments are staffed by practitioners who have an understanding of the effectiveness of modern training methods, recovery modalities, nutritional aspects, player profiling and analysis, awareness of life demands, and the importance of psychology.
About the Course
Masters of Applied Sports Performance will lead students into a sound working knowledge of the factors affecting contemporary sports performance, how these factors interact with and influence each other, and assist in the development of their understanding of the modalities used to enhance physical outputs in the modern sporting arena. Students will learn these through six key performance principles. This course aims to educate fitness professionals on applied techniques and methods that directly affect results on the pitch, field, track, course, or court by elevating the level at which their athletes perform both physically and mentally.
Six key principles have been identified as vital to creating the ideal environment in which the athlete can perform at his or her optimal level. Each of the following will be expounded upon throughout the duration of this course.
Course Structure
Eight modules comprise the course with exit awards after module 3 (PgCert), module 7 (PgD) and after completion of module 8, the MProf.
Course Content Overview
Six key principles have been identified as vital to creating the ideal environment in which the athlete can perform at his or her optimal level. Each will be expanded upon module by module throughout the duration of this course.
Module 1: Athlete Profiling & Analysis
Identifying the factors of individual performance which inform training decisions.
Module 2: On-Field Training
Innovative principles of on-field training which enhance all aspects of sport specific performance.
Module 3: Off-Field Training
Advanced strength & conditioning practice and the application of resistance training.
Module 4: Recovery & Regeneration
The latest regenerative modalities designed to maximise training adaptations.
Module 5: Nutrition for Performance
Effective nutritional strategies which underpin each stage of the performance process.
Module 6: Life Demands & Psychology
Understanding the significant impact behaviour and lifestyle away from training and the creation of a positive environment can have on performance
The Tutors
Mick Clegg (ex Professional Coach)
Mick Clegg
Mick Clegg, otherwise known as Mick or Mike Senior, has been a personal coach and trainer 34 years. He has owned the Olympic Sports Gym in Ashton-Under-Lyne for nearly 35 years. The gym over the years has expanded both in size and equipment becoming one of the biggest in the area. It was during that expansion Mick designed his SPI Lab. Since then, the gym continued to expand, as did Mick’s lab.
One day Mick decided things had to change as he wanted to do more and there just was not enough room to expand any more! In late 2013 he decided to move into a new building close to the gym where he would have more room himself to evolve his lab. This new training facility became the new Elite Lab incorporating his SPI technologies, the new centre of his specialised coaching.
Mick had the amazing privileged to work at Manchester United Football Club from 2000 to 2011. He was the Power Development (Strength & Conditioning) Coach and fitness trainer to many of the worlds top football players including Roy Keane, Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham, Wayne Rooney, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville, to name just a few.
Since he left Manchester United he has continued to coach other top class athletes including Mike Eade, Kyle Howarth, Matt Gilks and Aaron Cook as well as working with those in golf, BMX, ruby and American football.
” I thought Mick was different class. He motivates you. When I was injured, He trained with me every single day and there was never a ‘no’ in his vocabulary. He’d always encourage me to have a session with him, so I got really close with him throughout the couple of years I was injured. We developed a really, really, good relationship as a result. He’s a top man.”
— Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
Adrian Lamb (High-Performance Coach)
Adrian Lamb is a High-Performance Fitness Coach with 16 years’ experience training professional footballers at an elite level in the UK and the USA. He has worked at a number of levels of the professional game, including four English Premier League clubs and two Major League Soccer teams, as well as the English Championship and League 1. He possesses a proven track record of enhancing performance in world-class sporting environments inclusive of strength and conditioning, physical outputs, recovery, nutrition, individualised fitness programming, injury prevention, and youth football.
