Get people moving again….
Who is our Level 5 Sports Therapy course for?
This Level 5 Sports Therapy course is built for hands-on therapists who want to move beyond treating soft tissue and into full clinical assessment, clinical reasoning and exercise rehabilitation.
It's ideal if you already hold a Level 3 or Level 4 qualification in sports massage or sports therapy and want to add the clinical skills — and the earning potential — that come with them.
We also welcome therapists who have already studied at Level 5, but whose course focused mainly on soft tissue and massage. Your hands-on skills are exactly the foundation we build on — here, the focus shifts to assessing your client, reasoning through their presentation, and getting them moving again.
Already trained in soft tissue? Here's what this adds.
Many of our learners come to us having completed a Level 3, 4 or 5 soft tissue or sports massage qualification. We treat those hands-on skills as your foundation — this course doesn't repeat them. It shifts the focus to the clinical skills a soft-tissue-only course isn't designed to cover: assessing and reasoning about a patient, and getting them moving again.
And when you're ready to go further — medical imaging, pharmacology, systemic pathology, shockwave therapy and full strength & conditioning — you continue onto the Exercise or Clinical pathway, or the complete Movement Therapy Diploma.
What's next?
After completion of the Level 5 modules you can then choose your pathway — Exercise or Clinical.
Exercise Pathway
Focuses on making you a fitness professional with the skills to provide one-to-one and small-group coaching, as well as writing exercise programmes for your clients.
Explore the Exercise PathwayClinical Pathway
Focuses on increasing your clinical skills, with modules in ultrasound scanning, pharmacology (medication) and systemic pathology.
Explore the Clinical PathwayThe Preparation Phase of the Movement Therapy Diploma is a series of online courses – recorded and live stream – that build the underpinning knowledge every movement therapist needs before practical training begins. Whether you’re new to the industry or an experienced therapist refreshing your foundations, these courses make sure everyone starts Phase 1 with the same solid grounding in anatomy, physiology, exercise science and research.
You’ll complete four online courses: an Introduction to Research Methods, so you can read and critically appraise the evidence behind your practice; Principles of Exercise, covering how the body responds and adapts to training; Anatomy and Physiology for Exercise; and Learn Anatomy Online – our live stream anatomy lessons that guide you step by step through the human body.
Phase One of the Movement Therapy Diploma builds the clinical foundations that every other module stands on. You’ll develop the communication and clinical note taking skills needed to take a thorough case history, explore the BioPsychoSocial (BPS) model of healthcare – and where Movement Therapists fit within it – and be introduced to modern pain science through pain education.
You’ll also study the tissue healing process – how injured tissue bleeds, becomes inflamed, repairs and remodels – because this knowledge underpins every treatment intervention you’ll deliver as the course progresses. Phase One doesn’t finish at Phase One: its concepts run through every module, and we’ll keep referring back to them throughout the entire diploma.
Phase Two of the Movement Therapy Diploma is where you become a clinician. Building on the case history, tissue healing and pain science foundations from Phase One, you’ll learn to carry out a full clinical assessment – observation, range of movement, palpation and special tests – for every major region of the body.
Across six modules covering the knee, hip, spine, elbow, wrist and hand, shoulder, and ankle and foot, you’ll study the regional pathology behind common musculoskeletal injuries and learn the manual therapy and early stage rehabilitation exercises to treat them – combining online learning with hands-on, face-to-face practical days.
Phase Three of the Movement Therapy Diploma takes your practice beyond the treatment room. Building on the clinical assessment skills developed in Phases One and Two, you’ll learn to analyse fitness levels and movement capacity so you can provide exercise and advice that goes beyond early stage rehabilitation.
You’ll gain the skills to work confidently at sporting events with Sports First Aid and pitchside/trackside care, screen the nervous system with neurological testing, expand your hands-on treatment with instrument assisted soft tissue massage (IASTM), kinesiology taping and DermoNeuroModulation (DNM) – and learn how to market and grow your own therapy business.