University of Derby Sporting Science.

On Monday 9^th of November, Mr Roper took four of us to a Year 6 gifted and talented event at the University of Derby. We took part in different activities such as test your reactions, sports psychology and sprinting.

Firstly, we did test your reactions, there was a specialist machine set up, someone was at either end, one person turned the light on, and then the other one turned it off as quickly as possible. On the other side of the room was machines called a Batak, where you had to press the buttons when they glowed, this was difficult because they were high or low with just 30 seconds to reach them.

We also found out about sports psychology. We drew a picture of our favourite athlete, we chose Mo Farah and we had to describe what makes him an elite athlete. Then we practised our hand/eye co-ordination . There was a star and a mirror and you had to go around the star without making a beep, looking at the mirror only and every time it beeped it recorded a score.

Finally, we took part in sprinting. We set up some cameras every five metres down the track and recorded our time. Then, the Derbyshire University lecturers improved our starting positions from the video footage.  We set up a camera and recorded ourselves in slow motion and played it back and looked at what we were doing wrong, then discussed changes we could make.

We had a great day and enjoyed representing our school.

By Lauren, James, Abi and Max.