Hi, I’m Lara and I’m studying Sport here at Middlesex. There’s lots of reading you can do to get ahead of the course and it’s a great way to ensure you’re not overwhelmed when you start.
I would recommend The Physiotherapist’s Pocketbook by Karen Kenyon and Jonathan Kenyon. This book is small and concise but has all the anatomy and client assessment details you could possibly want.
For any strand of sport, anatomy will be important but it's essential in sports rehabilitation. Anatomy can be tricky to learn but if you can give yourselves a head start then it will really help. My advice would be to focus on the larger muscles and not get too bogged down in all the smaller ones (trust me - there are plenty!).
Once you start university, you will need to begin to read academic papers. To give yourself a head start, I would recommend reading a few now on Google Scholar.
You can search for topics that interest you (i.e. sport’s nutrition) and click on a few papers to see what they're like. Don’t worry if you can’t access all of them, some should be free for everyone and the rest you will have access to via the Middlesex library once you start.
As well as reading, there are other ways to prepare. The Red Bull website is fantastic as it has lots of documentaries and information about sport.
A lot of the information shared is presented by leading academics in the field so you can potentially use what you learn in future assignments for university.
Whilst it’s not essential to actually partake in a sport to complete your degree, I'd recommend getting involved in many different sports as possible; the greater your understanding of different sports, the greater your understanding will be of the subject as a whole.
Taking part in different types of sports than you're used to (for example, a runner joining a few games of a team sport such as hockey, football etc.) can also broaden your practical understanding of different sports so you have more context to draw from when you learn the theory behind them.
You'll have plenty of opportunities to join a variety of teams during Welcome Week so take advantage of this as much as possible.
Middlesex also run a “Give-it-a-go” Wednesday, where you can try different sports and games for free, on an ad-hock basis. Come along and give something new a go!
