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Study graduate diploma online with Australian Catholic University through Open Universities Australia. Explore all degrees, subjects and short courses now.

The Graduate Diploma in High Performance Sport develops your knowledge, understanding and skills needed to enhance the conditioning of high performance athletes. You&#39;ll build strategies to optimise individual and team performances, within the context of a multidisciplinary environment and its culture and leadership structures, and to do so in an ethical manner characterised by a concern for respect, equity and social justice.The high performance sport industry is a global, multi-billion dollar entity that provides employment opportunities for a range of professions, including sport scientists, coaches and managers. In Australia, there are employment opportunities in professional and semi-professional sporting teams, Australian and state institutes of sport, academies of sport, and other sporting organisations. These opportunities extend to the international market.

Explore how nutrition and exercise programs boost performance and recovery. You’ll learn about tests on the field and in the lab that unlock athletic power. Use data. Unpack the interdisciplinary environment of high performance and see where you fit.

Graduate Diploma in High Performance Sport

Within society, high Performance sport can be viewed through both economic and social lenses. The dominance of the economic lens means that, in many cases, the business model developed by high performance sport organisations will determine the engagement approach adopted and the value provided to stakeholders.
This subject aims to develop in students an understanding of business model structures, strategies and activity systems that operate in, and are relevant to, the high performance sport industry, as well as the contribution that the industry can make from a social and community perspective.

The Business of High Performance Sport

In high performance sport, athletes and coaches recognise that optimal nutrition is critical to sporting success. Sports nutrition links food with physical performance, providing the fuel for exercise and recovery, and the essential elements for tissue growth, maintenance and repair. This subject will address contemporary scientific and applied aspects of nutrition for sports performance. The composition, amount and timing of food intake for different sports and activities are explored, given the influence that these and others factors have on athletic performance. The aim of the subject is to provide specialist knowledge, understanding and skills for critically evaluating dietary practices for sports performance, and for communicating and delivering general nutritional advice to athletes, coaches and other support staff, within appropriate scope of practice and referral pathways. These outcomes are consistent with the professional standards of several accreditation bodies.

Performance Nutrition

The development of elite sports systems has traditionally focused on the optimal performance of the athlete. Increasingly however sport has been faced with the need to consider the development of its ‘star performers’ from a much more holistic and ‘human’ perspective. This subject will highlight the importance of an understanding of sport as the context and the athlete as a person to the effectiveness of the sport scientist and administrator.Content knowledge in the subject will investigate holistic athlete development from three perspectives. Firstly, from an organisational perspective of the structures that have developed within Australian sport to cater for the needs of athletes both on and beyond the playing field. Secondly, from the perspective of the legal and ethical responsibilities which sport is obliged to assume for the well-being of its employees. Thirdly, a more strategic perspective is adopted which draws on contemporary human resources knowledge to propose an array of benefits that can accrue to organisations that develop and implement an athlete welfare program that is based on recognising the human dignity of the athlete and the spirit of sport. This unit aims to address the issue of holistic athlete development from each of these three perspectives.

Athlete Development: Strategies, Capabilities and Wellbeing

Research in high performance sport settings is critical for providing athletes and practitioners with evidence-based strategies for improving performance and maintaining athlete well-being. The focus of this unit is on evidence-based approaches to the formulation, design and conduct of projects in the high performance sport environment. Students will develop an ability to critically appraise the process and planning of projects designed to investigate questions in the applied setting, and gain awareness of alternative approaches used in sports science research. Students will construct an implementation plan for a project designed to investigate a problem of practical relevance to the student&#39;s industry, workplace or research goals. The aim of this unit is to enable students to develop skills in reviewing appropriate literature and the appraisal of available field, laboratory and/or software technologies for data acquisition and analysis, with a focus on developing scientific/report writing and presentation skills.

Project Design for High Performance Sport

The ability to develop evidence-based, best practice, strategies to prevent sporting injury is essential in high performance sport. This subject will develop knowledge and critical thinking pertinent to the prevention of common injuries seen in high performance sport. This requires understanding and interpreting sports injury epidemiology research as well as detailed knowledge of the aetiology, mechanisms, risk factors and prevention strategies of common injury types.
The aim of this subject is to develop in students an understanding of common injuries that are seen in high performance sport, to improve their ability to critically analyse the literature, and to advance their ability to deliver evidence-based programs for the prevention of injury.

Sports Injury Prevention

To effectively design training programs, practitioners require an understanding of the interactions between training load, fatigue, performance, and injury. Sports scientists and others working in high performance sport need to be able to identify the different models that can explain fatigue and its severity, as well as how different variables can be used to measure fatigue status in response to training and competition. Practitioners also need to prescribe contemporary methods for enhancing recovery.
The aim of this subject is to provide students with the knowledge, understanding and skills to design and implement a load and fatigue monitoring and recovery protocol relevant to specific high performance environments.

Fatigue, Recovery, Adaptation and Performance

The ability to make sound decisions in High Performance Sport is critical to maximizing performance outcomes. In order to do this, practitioners need specific knowledge and skills in data analysis techniques, in addition to the ability to present data in a meaningful way to a variety of audiences. This subject is based on contemporary data analysis techniques focusing on determining practically meaningful differences in athletic performance. A range of approaches will be explored to allow for analysis of both individual and group data. The aim of this subject is to provide students with the knowledge, understanding and skills to analyse and interpret data of relevance to sports science and athletic performance and effectively present the results.

Data Analysis and Interpretation for High Performance

Sports scientists and strength and conditioning coaches working with high performance athletes require the ability to prescribe and deliver safe and effective exercise programs with an evidence-based, best practice approach, to meet specific performance goals. This unit develops an in-depth understanding of the theoretical concepts and practical application of capacity assessment and program design as they relate to high performance athletes. Specifically, the aim of this unit is to develop students&#39; knowledge and skills relating to the use of contemporary methods of field and laboratory based testing in a number of areas including aerobic/anaerobic capacity, repeated sprint ability, and strength and power. In addition, this unit will explore innovative practices in training program design across the spectrum of capacities required for performance in various athletic events.

Strength and Conditioning for Performance and Rehabilitation

Australian Catholic University Graduate Diploma Sports Courses & Degrees | Open Universities Australia

Course results for Australian Catholic University Postgraduate Sports Degrees

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