Training and Movement

The two sports science sub-disciplines of training science and exercise science are combined for research and teaching in the Training and Exercise department. In addition, this department also coordinates sports medicine courses and offers topics for scientific term papers.

Our research interests focus on people who move and do sport. We investigate how complex motor tasks can be learned and improved, how people adapt to changing movement situations, how they perceive, process and evaluate movement feedback and how these findings can be used to design training in sport and in a therapeutic context.

In competitive sports, for example, our current research topics focus on issues relating to the optimization of starting performance in swimming. In the health sector, we are interested in the effects of strength and load training under unstable execution conditions in fall prevention.

We use biomechanical-kinematic methods (e.g. with marker-based movement recording systems), kinetic methods (force and pressure measurement systems), neurophysiological methods (EEG, EMG) and the investigation of eye movements (eye tracking) to investigate these topics.

In addition to training and movement science, our department is also responsible for coordinating sports medicine courses, as our institute does not have its own chair of sports medicine. Nevertheless, in order to ensure sports medicine training at the University of Kassel, the IfSS has been cooperating with the Red Cross Hospital Kassel since 2000 and, in recent years, with the Institute for Prevention and Sports Medicine Bad Wildungen (Dr. Dr. Vater) and the Orthopaedic Clinic Kassel (Prof. Dr. Siebert).