Professor Matt Bridge PhD

• PhD Sport and Exercise Sciences

• BSc Sport and Exercise Sciences

Professor Matt Bridge has an international reputation in coaching and applied sports science. With over twenty years’ experience working across academia and sport, research focuses on the interaction between coaching and science in applied settings. Matt sits on the steering groups of the university’s major sporting partnerships with Birmingham City FC, Warwickshire County Cricket Club, and Birmingham Royal Ballet and works across the university’s sporting portfolio of education and research encompassing areas such as sport business, sport performance, rehabilitation, and major games legacy. 

Matt has held many leadership roles across the university, including Deputy Head of School and Head of Global Engagement and is currently the Director of Education for the College of Life and Environmental Sciences, leading Education for the college and its ~6,000 students.

Matt contributes to the delivery of modules across the School’s undergraduate, postgraduate and research degree programmes. He brings an applied sports science and coaching focus to the School’s modules, covering topics including skill development and learning, professional practice in sport, athlete development and movement analysis.

Matt supervises PhD and Doctoral students working on a number of research projects. He is interested in approaches to study for a PhD in both the projects detailed below and in areas related to his general research interests. Current PhD student projects include:

• Developmental pathways of elite dancers
• Effect of practice constraints on football skill development
• The role of proprioceptive acuity in skill acquisition
• Use of isolated practice in elite football academies

PhD projects across the school can be found through FindAPhD

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Matt’s own research interests centre on the development of individuals through translating research evidence into practice, particularly in relation to skill development and pathways to expertise in athletes and coaches. Extensive research experience includes applied work with professional and amateur sports organisations, teams, coaches, and athletes. 

Skill Development

What leads to optimal skill development? A lot is known about effect of practice structure on the learning and retention of sporting skills in controlled environments and to novel tasks in these environments. However, these controlled environments are removed from the dynamic interactive ones in which coaches work. Matt's work examines the findings of research in controlled settings by carrying out similar research in real world coaching environments. The greater ecological validity of this research leads to practical guidelines for coaches and performers.

Athlete development

As sport becomes increasingly professionalised, there is the need to develop a greater understanding of the developmental processes and pathways that lead to both elite performance and lifelong participation in sport and exercise. These are multifactorial and include physiology, psychology and perhaps most importantly sociological influences. Research that considers all of these aspects if key to both elite performance and lifelong participation in sport.

Knowledge exchange and impact

Alongside his academic work Matt has consulted to the British Olympic Association, the European Tour, Icelandic Golf and for individuals and teams in a variety of sports, including football, golf, cycling and triathlon.

Learn more about Matt’s research here

Member of:

• British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences
• European College of Sports Science
• World Scientific Congress of Golf.