PEP478/579 : Sports Physiology

Pre-requisites

Purpose

To apply knowledge of exercise physiology to the training and fitness assessment of athletes.

Rationale

Many students of exercise physiology find themselves coaching or assistant coaching as an interest or vocation.  The wealth of information within the discipline of exercise physiology prevents a focused evaluation of how exercise physiology content can be used to improve the coaching and training of athletes.  This course provides the opportunity to 1) lecture on the specific applications of exercise physiology that can improve training and fitness assessment in sports and athletics, and 2) to provide hands on laboratory experiences related to the physiological testing of athletes and the prediction of performance.  Furthermore, as we are currently in a transition to develop more laboratory experiences in exercise physiology that extend PEP426, this course also presents the academic content and laboratory training to support the inquiry of human cardiovascular and pulmonary function during exercise.

Objectives

1. the metabolic and physiological determinants of sports and athletic performance.
2. the position of metabolism and physiology in the total perspective of determinants to sports performance.
3. the theories and principles of training.
4. applications of exercise physiology to as many sports as possible; such as swimming, road cycling, hockey, basketball, football, soccer, athletics, triathlon, distance running, etc.
5. key laboratory measures of physiological capacities and their use in predicting athletic performance.
6. cardiovascular and pulmonary exercise physiology, as well as select laboratory procedures used to assess cardiopulmonary capacities.
7. the future of sports physiology

Alliance With Program, Division and College Missions

There is an increasing need to justify how academic courses "fit" within the theoretical framework of the college they are located within.  Explanations of the College of Education Mission and Conceptual Framework are found within the College section of the UNM website.

This course provides pertinent knowledge that extends the academic training in exercise physiology of the graduate students of UNM.  While primarily serving the needs of Exercise Science and Sports Administration students, other students from teacher-training programs within the College of Education would also find this course interesting with respect to the physiological demands of specific sports and athletic events.

Format

This course is taught by lecture using computerized Powerpoint slide projection.  Lecture/slide notes are found linked to this page, organized by the topics listed on the course calendar.  Lectures are each 75 min in duration, and are based on the presentation of the material, frequent question and answer segments, and time for class discussion of important issues and concepts.

Students will be required to complete two major projects.

The first - a paper written to provide a critical analysis of the laboratory methods used to assess athletic performance potential for a sport/event of interest.

The second - involving a volunteer subject and the completion of physiological assessments of variables proven to be associated with sports performance. Class time will be budgeted for demonstrating and teaching these testing procedures.  However, students need to schedule actual client testing outside of class time.

For detailed explanations of requirements for these projects see the PROJECT web page.

Textbook and Other Required Items

There is no great text for this class.  Two years ago we used the following text -

Hoffman J. Physiological Aspects of Sports Training and Performance.  Human Kinetics, 2002

However, the content of this book was not sufficiently current to add to past course pre-requisite material, and in fact, some content was outright inaccurate.  Consequently, we have used my new electronic textbook which we will again use for this class.  This is also beneficial in that some important information can be presented to extend the content of PEP426 last semester, and include cutting edge support programs to assist your learning of material and data processing techniques.

Robergs RA. Exercise Physiology: An electronic text and learning experience. 2008 NEXSIS.org, Albuquerque. ISBN: 978-0-9814683-0-3; $50.00

Use the NEXSIS link to go to their website to purchase the book.

In addition to reading for every session, you need to;

It is expected that you will read all assigned reading, and use this knowledge to contribute to class discussion.

Assessment

Student assessment is based on the scores from,

Graduate students will also be evaluated on their abilities to assist in laboratory demonstrations and student teaching of methods. Graduate students will therefore be required to aid the instructor in laboratory teaching and student assistance, especially outside of class hours.

The point and percentage contribution of each assessment item is summarized in the table below.

Your final grade will simply be based on your percentage score of the 800 total assessment points.

The grade letter and points distribution is provided in the table below.

Note that according to Department of Physical Performance and Development policy, a grade of C^- or worse is a failing grade and requires you to retake the course prior to graduating.

Academic Dishonesty

Academic dishonesty, which includes plagiarism, will not be tolerated.  The College of Education, as with the entire university, has policies on how to handle such infractions.  All faculty are required to abide by these rules and punishments, and students should read about such issues at the following sites: