The Bachelor of Exercise and Sports Science (Honours), Bachelor of Physical Activity and Health Science (Honours) and the Bachelor of High Performance Sport (Honours) are one-year full-time (or equivalent part-time) programs for students who have already completed a relevant Bachelor degree. Honour programs equip students with the necessary training and experience to pursue further research study and support students to develop in-demand industry skills.

Projects available for 2025

Brisbane

Using auto-regulation during resistance training to improve strength and power adaptations

Autoregulation during resistance training helps account for changes in physical qualities and fatigue across the training mesocycle. Common autoregulatory resistance training methods include repetitions-in-reserve (RIR), rating of perceived exertion (RPE), and velocity-based training (VBT). These methods have been shown to have greater strength, power, and muscle hypertrophy responses when compared to traditional prescriptive methods (e.g., percentage-based training) and reduce the physical mental stress on an athlete. This Honours project will provide a candidate the opportunity to investigate the effects of these autoregulatory training methods on physical adaptation and would be ideal for a student who enjoys resistance training and strength and conditioning.

Supervisor: Dr Jonathon Weakley
Contact: Jonathon.Weakley@acu.edu.au
Campus: Brisbane

Velocity-based training (VBT) can be used to enhance physical adaptations and allow for improved resistance training prescription. Furthermore, it can help autoregulate training loads and mitigate the effects of fatigue from previous training sessions. This Honours project will allow a candidate to investigate how VBT can alter the training response and enhance training quality when athletes are in a fatigued state and need to maximise power outputs. Furthermore, this project will influence real-world practice and help drive better training prescription. This project is ideal for a candidate who enjoys strength training, team sports, and strength and conditioning.

Supervisor: Dr Jonathon Weakley
Contact: Jonathon.Weakley@acu.edu.au
Campus: Brisbane

A critical aspect of decision-making and a baseball-player's on the pitch behaviour is their situation awareness (SA), that is, the level of awareness that an individual has of a situation; a player's dynamic understanding of 'what is going on around them' during the game. Research has shown that SA is importantly linked to player's decision-making development, performance, and rehabilitation. That is, SA: i. can be (and needs to be) developed from a young age, and needs to be promoted and maintained during training; ii. is related to player's and referee's performance and expertise; that is, better, more skilled/expert players/referees possess a higher degree of SA; iii. is related to injury proneness, as well as rehabilitation; that is, lowered SA is a precursor to injury, and increased/recovered SA can be used as an identifier for game readiness following rehabilitation. In this honours projects, which takes place in ACU's Perception-Action Rehabilitation Clinic and Learning Environment (PARCLE), we use Virtual Reality to assist player development, player monitoring, and rehabilitation in baseball.

Suitable for exercise science, high performance sport, science, and psychology students.

Supervisor: Dr. Gert-Jan Pepping
Contact: gert-jan.pepping@acu.edu.au
Campus: Brisbane

A critical aspect of decision-making in team-sport and a player's on the pitch behaviour is their situation awareness (SA), that is, the level of awareness that an individual has of a situation; a player's dynamic understanding of 'what is going on around them' during the game. Research has shown that SA is importantly linked to player's decision-making, development, performance, and rehabilitation. That is, SA: i. can be (and needs to be) developed from a young age and needs to be promoted and maintained during training; ii. is related to player's and referee's performance and expertise; that is, better, more skilled/expert players/referees possess a higher degree of SA; iii. is related to injury proneness, as well as rehabilitation; that is, lowered SA is a precursor to injury, and increased/recovered SA can be used as an identifier for game readiness following rehabilitation. We have a number of honours projects, in which we use a wireless wearable technology system (SATS) to assist player development, player monitoring, and rehabilitation in team-sport (soccer, field-hockey, AFL) to address important research questions in skill acquisition and SA.

Suitable for exercise science, high performance sport, science, and psychology students.

Supervisors: Dr. Gert-Jan Pepping and Mr. Daniel Chalkley
Contact: gert-jan.pepping@acu.edu.au
Campus: Brisbane

Gait-related falls are a large public health burden, and both the sheer number of gait-related falls, and the associated societal costs continue to increase. Recent research has shown that an individual's ability to adapt their gait is an important factor related to gait-related falls and mobility as people age. In the current honours project, which takes place in ACU's Perception-Action Rehabilitation Clinic and Learning Environment (PARCLE), we will use Virtual Reality and the task of bushwalking as an activity that can improve gait adaptability of community dwelling older adults. Suitable for exercise science, high performance sport, science, and psychology students.

Supervisor: Dr. Gert-Jan Pepping
Contact: gert-jan.pepping@acu.edu.au
Campus: Brisbane

Oxytocin (OT) is a protein-based biomarker that has been hypothesized as a physiological mediator of an integrated 'anti-stress' response attributable to social affiliation, with resulting long-term health benefits and that facilitates socio-cognitive responses. Although there is considerable support for the idea that OT is involved in the encouragement of important processes linked to greater performance in sport, empirical support for this association is preliminary and limited to laboratory studies, making it difficult to generalise them to elite sport environments. What's more, there is very limited knowledge about the individual differences in athlete oxytocin reactivity. In this honours project, we will develop a methodology to study the association between social cognition, sport performance and oxytocin (OT).

Suitable for exercise science, high performance sport, science, and psychology students.

Supervisor: Dr. Gert-Jan Pepping, Dr. Francesca Fernandez
Contact: gert-jan.pepping@acu.edu.au
Campus: Brisbane

Age-related changes in cognition (e.g. memory, problem solving) are often exacerbated in degenerative neurological conditions, such as Parkinson's disease. This decline can impact the person's ability to self-monitor their motor performances, which can make it difficult to retain movement and speech-based improvements in response to behavioural therapies. To effectively navigate and engage with real world environments, we are often required to multi-task; whether that be engaging in a conversation while walking, texting while ascending stairs, or solving a child's problem while preparing a meal. Despite the essentiality of multi-tasking to our way of life, very little is known about the impact of dual and triple-task training on the motor, cognitive and/or speech performances of ageing adults. This Honours project will provide the student with an opportunity to work toward developing a novel training task to assess and potentially improve multi-tasking in older populations. The findings from this project will help guide future research involving participants with neurological conditions.

Supervisor: Dr. Michael Cole
Contact: michael.cole@acu.edu.au
Campus: Brisbane

Parkinson's disease (PD) is an age-related neurodegenerative condition characterised by slowness of movement, muscle rigidity, and resting tremor, but as the disease progresses postural instability and gait difficulties begin to affect activities of daily living. Declines in physical functioning effectively expose people with PD to a nine times greater risk of recurrent falls, and a five times greater risk of sustaining fall-related injuries compared with healthy individuals of a similar age. Prospective research shows more than 50% of falls experienced by people with PD occur during walking or transferring tasks, implicating postural instability and gait difficulties as likely contributors to a large percentage of the falls experienced by this population. The proposed Honours project would provide the student with an opportunity to apply principles of biomechanics, motor control and neuroscience to better understand the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease and investigate their potential role in the falls experienced by this population.

Supervisor: Dr Michael Cole
Contact: Michael.Cole@acu.edu.au
Campus: Brisbane

There is scope within the school to explore Honours topics in Outdoor Leadership, International Volunteer Programs, Sports Community Engagement Programs and Sport and Physical Activity. These could involve qualitative, quantitative or a mixed-methods approach. It is also possible to combine two areas within the Faculty. For example, the psychological impact of outdoor and environmental education, or the impact of community engagement activities on students' mental health.

Supervisor: Dr Beth McLeod
Contact: Beth.Mcleod@acu.edu.au
Campus: Brisbane/Strathfield/Melbourne

About one in three of Australians aged 65+ fall at least once per year and the cost of these incidents is estimated at 41% ($3.7bn) of all injury expenditure. The negative consequences of falls can significantly impact individuals and communities. A large-scale Australian population-based prospective risk factor survey is underway, which uses online falls tracking to investigate the effects of the walking environment on prospective falls in adults over the age of 65. This honours project aims to assist in the creation of a mobility prescription tool for health care practitioners based on the data collected. You will be embedded within the STOP Falls Research Group in Brisbane. You will be involved in supporting ongoing projects occurring within STOP Falls, with existing local and international partnerships in community and aged care settings. You will gain experience in collecting, processing, and analysing movement data in these real-world settings, and use gold-standard technologies that include 3D motion capture (Vicon), inertial measurement units and virtual reality in our purpose-built biomechanics and perception-in-action laboratories.

Supervisor: Dr. Gert-Jan Pepping
Contact: gert-jan.pepping@acu.edu.au
Campus: Brisbane

CrossFit is one of the fastest growing sports in the world. It requires a combination of strength, power, speed, endurance, and skill. Therefore, strength and conditioning is an essential consideration for success at the highest levels. This project will investigate the strength and conditioning practices, physiological demands, and physical capacities of CrossFit and its athletes. This project would be ideal for any student who is passionate about high-performance sport and strength and conditioning.

Supervisor: Dr Jonathon Weakley
Contact: Jonathon.Weakley@acu.edu.au
Campus: Brisbane

Fatigue is a common problem for people with CP with up to 40% of adults with CP reporting higher levels of fatigue than the general population. Fatigue is often described in the literature as a physical experience - for example, feelings of bodily tiredness, lack of energy for physical tasks and local muscle fatigue; and commonly clusters with other problems, including depressive symptoms and pain.

Few studies have investigated cognitive or mental fatigue in people with CP, which presents as excessive cognitive tiredness or exhaustion in response to a demanding task or significant sensory stimulation. Such cognitive fatigue is associated with a disproportionally long recovery time and is defined as an atypical or pathological response to a demanding task.

A useful measurement tool to consider is the modified Mental Fatigue Scale (MFS), which is yet to be utilised with people with CP beyond psychometric evaluation. This scale proposes a cut-off score for 'problematic fatigue' and demonstrated construct validity with a small sample of people with CP (n=10).

Further work is required to investigate the prevalence of cognitive fatigue in people with CP using the MFS, and to evaluate its co-occurrence with other problems.

This project aims to:1) Estimate the prevalence of self-reported cognitive fatigue in people with CP without intellectual disability. 2) Explore the associations of self-reported cognitive fatigue with level of functioning, neurological subtype, pain and depressive symptoms.

Supervisor: Dr Jemima Spathis, Dr Iain Dutia and Dr Suzanna Russell
Contact: Jemima.Spathis@acu.edu.au
Campus: Brisbane

Accurately tracking athlete training loads is a prerequisite for effective performance management. Technological advances have facilitated substantial improvements in the tracking of on-field training load, however recording of training loads in the gym are typically limited to manual reporting by the athlete. This Honours project will investigate the use of wearable technology to predict and quantify performance metrics of a range of strength and conditioning exercises in the gym environment. This project would suit students from Exercise Science, High Performance Sport or Sports Engineering. An interest in Strength and Conditioning and/or Biomechanics would be advantageous.

Supervisors: Dr. Mark Creaby & Dr. Jonathon Weakley
Contact: mark.creaby@acu.edu.au
Campus: Brisbane

Melbourne

Hydration is critical for performance. Dehydration not only reduces physical performance but also performance across a range of cognitive tasks including sensation, perception, motor coordination, executive function, attention, and memory. It also appears to impair learning in school children, but whether dehydration impairs the learning of sport-related motor skills remains unknown. Sport-related motor skills are often developed through implicit learning, capitalising on subconscious processes to automate the skill performance, making it more robust in the face of fatigue or psychological pressure. Therefore, this study will assess the impact of thirst and hydration status on implicit learning in young adults.

Supervisors: Dr Doug Whyte and Assoc Prof Adrienne Forsyth
Contact: doug.whyte@acu.edu.au
Campus: Melbourne

High intensity acceleration, deceleration and rapid change of direction (e.g. sidestep cutting) efforts are common in many popular sports. However, such tasks are also commonly associated with injury to the lower body. These injuries often include hamstring strain injuries, groin strain injuries, calf strain injuries, anterior cruciate ligament rupture, and ankle sprains. Despite the association of these injuries with the aforementioned high intensity tasks, little is known about the musculoskeletal demands of performing such tasks. Musculoskeletal modelling allows for the estimation of quantities that are otherwise impossible to measure during high intensity movements, including the forces and strains experienced by muscles, tendons and ligaments. This project will utlise musculoskeletal modelling to predict muscle, tendon, and ligament forces and strains during acceleration, deceleration and sidestep cutting tasks. Three-dimensional motion capture data, ground reaction forces and muscle activation (electromyography) data will be collected from participants as they perform the required tasks. This data will then be used in an established musculoskeletal modelling pipeline to estimate key muscle, tendon and ligament forces.

Supervisor: Nirav Maniar
Contact: Nirav.Maniar@acu.edu.au
Campus: Melbourne

Eye tracking is a tool that allows the collection of non-invasive data that can obtain a lot of unconscious information. Eye tracking technology records eye movements during real-world activities and is useful to help understand decision making processes and attention during different tasks. This information can be being used to inform training practice and support the development of elite sportsman. This Honours project will allow a candidate to use real world data to investigate the attention and decision-making demands of current AFL Umpires. Furthermore, this project will allow the candidate to influence real-world practice with their findings. This project is ideal for a highly motivated candidate who enjoys AFL, working with technology and analysing and investigating large data sets. This project will be undertaken in conjunction with Professor Damion Farrow who is a skill acquisition expert and is currently the AFL Umpiring Coaching and Innovation Manager.

Supervisor: Dr Jodi Sita
Contact: Jodi.Sita@acu.edu.au
Campus: Melbourne

The ability to maintain a coordinated motor output while simultaneously performing a cognitively demanding task is critical for a range of everyday activities. Dual-tasking can range from the relatively simple (e.g. walking and talking), through to more complex combinations, such as those experienced by athletes and emergency responders; where rapid decision making in response to multiple stimuli is required while under a high degree of physical strain. This project aims to validate a new method for assessing dual task performance using a non-motorised treadmill. This cross disciplinary project is ideal for a candidate looking to extend their understanding of motor control, biomechanics and physiology.

Supervisor: Dr Doug Whyte
Contact: Doug.Whyte@acu.edu.au
Campus: Melbourne

There is scope within the school to explore Honours topics in Outdoor Leadership, International Volunteer Programs, Sports Community Engagement Programs and Sport and Physical Activity. These could involve qualitative, quantitative or a mixed-methods approach. It is also possible to combine two areas within the Faculty. For example, the psychological impact of outdoor and environmental education, or the impact of community engagement activities on students' mental health.

Supervisor: Dr Beth McLeod
Contact: Beth.Mcleod@acu.edu.au
Campus: Brisbane/Strathfield/Melbourne

Iron deficiency is a global health problem estimated to affect ~33% of non-pregnant women globally. Comparative to men, women can face additional challenges to maintaining healthy iron stores, which includes menstrual blood loss and cyclical changes to estrogen concentrations across the menstrual cycle and the life span. Furthermore, female athletes are at increased risk of iron deficiency due to the additional impact of high-volume exercise on iron regulation. This project will have you lead one arm of an ongoing randomised control trial, where you will be involved in recruitment, data collection and data analysis. You will examine the effectiveness of two different oral iron supplements (Ferrograd C™ and Maltofer™) to determine which is better at repleting iron stores over 12 weeks in team sport athletes. You will also determine which supplement is associated with better tolerance and adherence.

Supervisors: Dr Alannah McKay and Dr Sophie Broome
Contact: alannah.mckay@acu.edu.au
Campus; Melbourne

The Australian Football League (AFL) is the elite competition for Australian Football. Teams competing the in the AFL strive to maximise the performance of their players while also trying to minimise the risk of injury. Often the success of approaches to mitigate the risk of injury is determined by comparing the number of injuries a team has sustained compared to the average of the other teams in the AFL. However, the injury risk profile of teams across the AFL varies and as such benchmarking the number of injuries from any one team to the average across the AFL is not an appropriate comparison. Therefore, this project aims to develop injury prediction models for individual teams in the AFL by using publicly-available historical data and then will apply these models across the 2024 AFL season. This project would suit a student with a background in either 1) Exercise and Sports Science who is interested in developing injury prediction and computer programming skills or 2) IT with an interest in applying their skills in the sporting domain.

Supervisors: Dr David Opar, Dr Nirav Maniar and Dr Heifeng Shen
Contact: David.opar@acu.edu.au
Campus; Melbourne

Strathfield

Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are commonly used in team sports to quantify the demands of competition and training. Previously, the validity of these systems has been established using discreet running activities. However, in a practical setting GPS are regularly used over longer durations (2 to 45 minutes). Therefore, there is a need to investigate the ability of GPS to quantify the running activities over durations specific to what they are commonly used for. This project will use the VICON system as the criterion measure to compare outputs from various GPS systems. The outcomes of this project will help establish the suitability of using GPS to quantify running activities in team sport athletes.

Supervisors: Dr Grant Duthie
Contact: grant.duthie@acu.edu.au
Campus: Strathfield

There is scope within the school to explore Honours topics in Outdoor Leadership, International Volunteer Programs, Sports Community Engagement Programs and Sport and Physical Activity. These could involve qualitative, quantitative or a mixed-methods approach. It is also possible to combine two areas within the Faculty. For example, the psychological impact of outdoor and environmental education, or the impact of community engagement activities on students' mental health.

Supervisor: Dr Beth McLeod
Contact: Beth.Mcleod@acu.edu.au
Campus: Brisbane/Strathfield/Melbourne

Anterior Cruciate Ligament rupture is a highly common knee injury occurring in high performance team sport athletes. The purpose of this research project is to quantify the accuracy of a new triple hop test that assesses the single leg function of athletes using two dimensional markerless motion capture. Team sport athletes will undertake triple hop test and will be concurrently monitored using two dimensional markerless motion capture and a criterion three dimensional marker based motion capture system (VICON). Joint kinematics (hip and knee angular velocity) will be assessed for accuracy.

Supervisors: Dr Grant Duthie, Dr Mark Moresi, Dr Paul Taylor and Dr Michael Psarakis
Contact: grant.duthie@acu.edu.au
Campus; Strathfield

Honours Student Publications

Honours student in bold

McMaster K, MH Cole, D Chlakley, MW Creaby (2022). Gait biofeedback training in people with Parkinson’s disease: a pilot study. Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation 19:72 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12984-022-01051-1

Lee Dow C, RG Timmins, JD Ruddy, MD Williams, N Maniar, JT Hickey, MN Bourne, DA Opar (2021). Prediction of hamstring injuries in Australian football using biceps femoris architectural risk factors derived from soccer. American Journal of Sports Medicine 49(13):3687-3695. https://doi.org/10.1177/03635465211041686

Peterson SW, MR Bruton (2020). A review of the interaction between the striker and the goalkeeper at the individual tactical level in football. International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching 15(3): 452-464 https://doi.org/10.1177/1747954120915193

Crang ZL, A Hewitt, TJ Scott, VG Kelly, RD Johnson (2020). Relationship between preseason training load, match performance, and match activities in professional rugby league. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000003891

More information

If you have any other questions or queries in relation to completing an honours degrees, please contact Dr Alyse Wilcox, National Course Coordinator via email: Dr Alyse Wilcox

 

Have a question?

We're available 9am–5pm AEDT,
Monday to Friday

If you’ve got a question, our AskACU team has you covered. You can search FAQs, text us, email, live chat, call – whatever works for you.

Live chat with us now

Chat to our team for real-time
answers to your questions.

Launch live chat

Visit our FAQs page

Find answers to some commonly
asked questions.

See our FAQs