• Question: Which common sport jobs use Science?

    Asked by gangstainwest1811 to Carla, Madgie, Nick, Vicky, Werner on 19 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Werner Muller

      Werner Muller answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      There are a lot of slow motion cameras used to provide feedback to athletes. Sport that uses tools are using a lot of engineering to best develop these tools, like bicycles, shoes, rackets, etc

    • Photo: Vicky Forster

      Vicky Forster answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      Hey,

      This is a good question. On top of Werner’s answer – there are also a lot of sports medicine jobs that use science. The most obvious of this is physiotherapy, but professional athletes will also have sports dieticians and sport’s psychologists helping them reach their maximum potential. All of these jobs will involve some degree of science.

    • Photo: Nick Groves-Kirkby

      Nick Groves-Kirkby answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      As Vicky says, any jobs related to an athlete’s physiology and well-being will involve some science. Sports psychology is another area where people use scientific approaches.

      Also, anyone who’s ever used drugs to improve their sporting performance will be relying on science. The cyclists and athletes who’ve been accused of doping have usually had a doctor or chemist working with them.

      Another use for science is performance analysis. Pro cyclists and F1 teams will spend hours in wind tunnels looking at aerodynamics and fine-tuning things to go faster. Football teams use technologies like ProZone to look at how their players move, and to check whether the team is doing things like pressing the opposition properly.

      Finally, analysing sports statistics are a growing area of sports science. You might have seen the film Moneyball, which is based on the true story of Billy Bean, a guy who used statistical analysis to build a winning baseball team on a budget.

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