Sports Academy

The University has a Sports Academy, which includes indoor football pitches, a Football Academy, housing a professional football club, and a Sport Science and Medicine Centre. Furthermore, the Academy provides excellent facilities for sport, health and exercise teaching and research for the School of Life Sciences.

Sports Facilities

The Edinburgh Campus boasts some of the best university sports facilities in the UK. There are halls for most indoor sports, a range of conditioning suites for cardiovascular, a resistance exercise suite and a new strength and conditioning facility. Squash facilities include eight championship standard courts, four with closed-circuit television and monitors/videos for immediate playback.

Learning & Teaching Facilities

Our programme is structured to provide you with an interesting balance of both theory and applied aspects of Sport and Exercise Science. We combine both theory (lectures) with practical sessions on anatomy, physiology, metabolism, exercise physiology and sport-specific field testing. We structure activities around small groups with plenty of opportunities to participate.

Research Facilities

We have excellent facilities for the study of human physiological function and exercise performance. By way of strength testing, we have systems to measure isometric and isokinetic strength. We can measure oxygen consumption at basal levels through to maximal exercise on a treadmill and with both arm and leg cycle ergometers complemented with automated blood pressure measurement and EMG capabilities.

Body composition can be measured using air displacement plethsmography while we have a full diagnostic lung function testing system and the ability to make both static and ambulatory cardio-respiratory measurements. In addition we can also simulate attitude with a hypoxic generator and elevate inspired oxygen concentration. We can measure biochemical parameters including blood gases, pH, lactate, sodium and potassium ions, haematocrit, glucose and cholesterol, to study changes in metabolism during exercise.

The sport and exercise psychology field resources include questionnaires and interviewing equipment. Additionally, the exercise physiology labs are available to perform psycho-physiological research.

Our molecular exercise physiology laboratories are situated within the School of Life Sciences. As well as having dedicated human cell culture facilities, RNA and Molecular biology laboratories side-by-side a human performance laboratory, we also have access to advanced proteomics detection methods (MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer), equipment for studying immune cell function (flow-cytometery) and general equipment for carrying out molecular sciences (plate readers, real-time qPCR and confocal microscopy).