Institute of Sport

The Institute of Sport provides world class facilities for research, training and teaching and learning; enhancing our students’ experience, while generating a wealth of new partnership opportunities. This new development, part funded by the Hertfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership, has secured our position as a lead partner to the International Working Group (IWG) for women in sport, which will see Herts hosting the 9th IWG world conference for women in sport 2026.

Our outstanding facilities include:

  • State of the art biomechanics laboratory, which includes one of the few Gait Real-time Analysis Interactive Lab (GRAIL) systems available at a UK university, enabling pioneering research across: balance assessment, balance/gait therapy, dual-tasking feedback, gait adaptability, gait analysis, motor control and learning, perturbation assessment, perturbation training, and virtual reality
  • Human physiology and blood research laboratories, including a sports injury clinic and sports therapy teaching rooms, covering anatomy, massage, peripheral and vertebral manual therapy, and electrotherapeutic methods
  • Environment and control room, which can simulate a range of challenging real-world environments, capable of generating temperatures from 10-40 degrees Celsius and altitude simulation to 5,750 metres
  • Consultancy room and performance testing centre, including our gold standard Bod Pod for assessing body fat and muscle mass
  • Performance Herts strength and conditioning gym with state-of-the-art training and testing equipment.