Police officers of the future at Wrexham Glyndwr have been put through their paces by the university’s Sport and Exercise Science team.

As well as gaining a degree in Professional Policing, budding officers are also required to meet certain fitness levels on joining the force.

With this in mind, the Professional Policing course leaders approached Dr Chelsea Moore of the Sport and Exercise Science department to help prepare students for their fitness test, also known as the ‘bleep test’.

Having conducted the assessments over several months Applied Sport and Exercise Physiology Lecturer Dr Chelsea Moore was able to present the findings at The British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (BASES) annual conference.

Coming from a family background of police officers, Chelsea said she was aware how fitness is increasing in importance to modern day policing and was happy to help students prepare.

She said: “With the students, we noticed little difference from session to session in terms of fitness, so now it’s a case of looking at what we can do further to support the students who need an intervention of some sort. We want to compare whether the bleep test is reliable as a fitness test, and compare it to testing their actual fitness.

“A career in the police is exciting but I don’t know if some young people realise that to get in you need a required level of fitness, the job itself is demanding. A lot of young people don’t do much exercise, are sedentary, and don’t eat healthily. To change habits is quite difficult, especially if you’re starting a university degree, away from home.

“In order to look at their fitness and not whether they have just become familiar with the test we are going to look at heart rate, put monitors on the students, looking to see if the rate is lower per level of the bleep test – whether there is a physiological gain.

“I presented the findings at the BASE conference, and have been asked to get involved more with North Wales Police and current serving officers. In 2013 they made it compulsory for current serving officers to complete the bleep test annually.”