National Fencing Championships - Sport Rehabilitation support from Plymouth Marjon University

On Saturday 15th April and Sunday 16th April 2017, the International Fencing Tournament was held at the University of Birmingham.

Two of our Sports Therapy and Sport Rehabilitation students were invited to form part of the Soft Tissue Therapy team by Herman Fenton, Vice President of the Federation of Holistic Therapists.

First year Rehabilitation in Sport and Exercise student, Becky Jacob-Harris (@RJacobHarris) describes her experiences of being selected from a large pool of students to work at this event.

Working in Health & Fitness

There are many job roles in the Health & Fitness sector that can be very rewarding and in order to find employment in the best roles, employees require a mixture of academic and professional qualifications, practical experience and professional networks.

This article outlines some of ways in which people can be successful in making their passion for health and exercise into a career.

Roles within Health and Fitness

Many people are aware of the role of a fitness instructor or personal trainer, however there are a wide range of other roles and settings in Health and Fitness.

Follow this link for generic job descriptions provided by REPs

Follow this link for more information on strength & conditioning roles

Qualifications in Health and Fitness

In order to become a qualified fitness professional

Anatomy Dissection Trip

On Thursday 9^th February 2017, a group of Sports Therapy and Sport Rehabilitation students from the University of St Mark and St John travelled to the University of Bristol Centre for Applied Anatomy to study anatomy from human cadavers. 

Lauren Lyndon-Hill, third year BSc Sports Therapy summarised the day by saying: 

“Some anatomy aspects were completely different to what I expected, which gave a totally different perspective on the human body”. 

The gratitude and respect was shown to those families who offered their bodies to science so that our students could have the opportunity for this trip.

“This was a truly strange and enjoyable experience, being able to see muscle, tendons and ligaments etc.. up close and how different the perspective is compared to books and anatomy models. The size of the trapezius and how thick the Achilles tendon is just as an example! Students can only get to see these perspectives by actually going on these trips and gaining valuable knowledge. The doctors who over saw the day were very knowledgeable and always happy to answer question as well as encouraging us to be hands on.” Richard Haydon, year two BSc Rehabilitation in Sport and Exercise

Hydrotherapy Rehabilitation for our BSc Sports Therapy & Rehabilitation students

On Wednesday 1st February 2017, 23 final year BSc (Hons) Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation students visited Hannah’s at Seale-Hayne in Newton Abbot. 

The objective of the day was to integrate the principles of sport rehabilitation into group rehabilitation settings. The morning session, led by Vicki Evans and Alex Walker, enabled students mimicking a range of upper and lower limb pathologies to all participate in the same group rehabilitation session. Students were able to recognise that with small adaptations and considerations of progression and regression markers, full participation is achievable even with large groups.

Student trip to #WEMS17, Cardiff

This was third time that I’ve taken a group of Marjon Uni students to the Welsh Exercise Medicine Symposium in Cardiff. The event is organised by the Cardiff Sports & Exercise Medicine Society and has got better each year we’ve attended (here’s our notes from last year). The event was packed with lectures of a very high quality and on this page we’ve tried to capture some of our notes from the day, some of the papers and resources that were shared by presenters and our own personal reflections on attendance. Our group contained students from all three years of undergraduate study and most were either SPAH students or Sports Therapist/Rehab students. For many it was their first such event and for that reason it was a real pleasure for me to be part of that experience.

Duchy College Sport Rehabilitation introduction

BTEC students from Duchy College were welcomed to Marjon University for a teaching session on the Principles of Rehabilitation, by the Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation team. 6 students took part in the session, which covered the basic rehabilitation principles, treatments and rehabilitation exercises that could be used within a treatment plan.

The first treatment the students experienced was ICE. After an acute injury, the aim of treatment is to reduce pain, muscle spasm (should it have occurred) and swelling. Ice helps to alleviate these symptoms (Nadler et al., 2004) and when combined with compression further helps the reduction in swelling. Students experienced both the GameReady machine and the Squid machine.

The second treatment modality was the use of Kinesiology Tape (K-tape). K-tape has the potential to alleviate pain (Bassett et al., 2010) and improve healing in soft tissues, by lifting the skin and increasing blood flow. It is a modality that can be used during any stage of rehabilitation. A basic lateral ankle sprain tape was used and the students were able to practice the application on each other and for a first attempt, they all did a very good job! They tested balance on each leg and compared the non-taped to the taped and found there was a difference in balance and how it felt.

The Importance of Habit Formation in Changing Behaviour

by Ben Jane

How much control over our actions do we actually have?

We like to think that we’re fully in control of our actions but we don’t have to look too far to see that the model of rational choice making is quite limited. Put a new kitchen in an old house and three months down the line you can still find yourself absent-mindedly reaching for the old cutlery drawer. Get in the car to go somewhere and you might, on occasion, find yourself driving to work rather than your intended destination. These actions are habits, patterns of behaviour that occur automatically when in particular situations and faced with specific cues or triggers. Trying to make sustained lifestyle changes for health reasons can require the disruption of old, unwanted habits and the creation of newer, more desirable routines (Danner et al, 2008, Marteau et al, 2012), the amount of willpower needed, or strength of intention to change might not be quite as important as how well we can create new habits. 

We need to create shortcuts in our thinking just to get by.

A reliance on goals or intentions alone requires a more reasoned, controlled approach to decision making which can be cognitively demanding, difficult to sustain in the long term, and easily disrupted if stressed or having to make many other lifestyle decisions (Baumeister et al, 1998; Verplanken et al, 2006).