Choose Sports at Middlesex

Who are you? Chris Bishop.

Job title? Associate professor of strength and conditioning.

We are based over at the StoneX Stadium which is the home of Saracens Rugby Club, lots of universities will have similar facilities they won't be based or housed at a professional sports organisation. We've got a member of staff who also works at Spurs women and we've got two members of staff who also work at Arsenal Academy; we've got the lead performance scientist for British weightlifting, this definitely puts us at the real Cutting Edge of High Performance sport.

Probably most important one is that every degree's got a placement module and that essentially just gives the students the opportunity to go out apply all the underpinning Theory the science into day-to-day at practice because we have a lot of alumni in these different sporting organisations they send us you know placement opportunities of various different shapes and sizes every year.

The work that you're doing seeing it come to fruition after, so learning a simple aspect whether it's to do with biomechanics or physiology or something else and then being able to apply that to something bigger you really see that in your mind you're like okay I've learned this little thing and I can apply this to something that I care more about whether that's strength and conditioning or physiology or psychology of Sport Science includes so many different niches that your learning capacity is uh unlimited.

Truth is the culture you know. I think there's there's a real genuine appreciation of a two-way working relationship between staff and students here we can learn just as much from them as hopefully they can from us truth be told I you know legitimately love what I do the realisation of being a part of their Journey that gets them to to where they want to go and hopefully being a a small part in helping to you know build their knowledge build their skills help develop their behaviors ready for the these job roles in Elite and professional sports organizations you know seeing when they do land those jobs has has been nice to see and and pretty inspiring on a personal note as well to be honest.