Recent evidence suggests that the majority of the adult population fails to achieve the recommended target of 30-minutes moderate intensity exercise, days a week. This includes university students who often have the time to engage in physical activity. The aim of this study was to determine exercise motives for a UK-based student population. The motives of 736 participants (± 20.45 years of age, SD=3.50) regarding participation or non-participation in free-time exercise, sport and physical activity were measured using the Exercise Motivation Inventory-2 (EMI-2). Significant main effects were reported for age (P = 0.1) and gender (P = 0.1). Students over 23 years of age reported higher levels of motivation than the other age groups (i.e. for stress, revitalisation and avoidance of ill health). The results of this study indicate that the motivation of UK university students to engage in physical activity or exercise demonstrates gender and age differences. These findings should enable health professionals and health educators in university environments to design preventative programmes aimed at reducing multiple risk behaviours among university populations. These could include gender-specific exercise programmes underpinned by appearance motives for female university populations.

Despite reported increases in higher education (HE) sports coach education provision there are very few studies which have investigated student self-learning curricula as a mechanism to prepare sports coaches with the complexities of learning how to coach. Using an action research methodology, this article examines how case-method teaching (CMT) was introduced into an undergraduate sports coach education module at a HE institution in the northwest of England. Drawing on data gathered via student focus group interviews, course tutor reflections and in-class observations, our initial findings indicate that CMT offers valuable opportunities for students to engage in real-life coaching scenarios and thus provides a more contextualised view of the complexities of the coaching process. Although we are conscious not to eulogise over the merits of a particular pedagogy after only adopting it for one year, and in one core sports coaching module, our preliminary experiences suggest there is much potential for CMT within formal sports coaching programmes. Finally, despite our positive experiences of adopting CMT within sports coach education, we urge more research and discussion into the merits of CMT, to verify our initial claims.

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