About us

EHFA was an independent, not-for-profit association based in Brussels. It represented the interests of the health and fitness sector to the European institutions, and it acted as the sector's standards-setting body, promoting best practice in instruction and training.

The association grew out of the European Network of Fitness Associations, formed in 1996, and was reconstituted as EHFA in 2001. From 2008 onwards it secured funding from DG Education and Culture of the European Commission, which let it turn a set of national qualification documents into a single European framework and build the register that sits on top of it.

EHFA's purpose was to raise standards across the European health and fitness industry. In practice that meant defining what a competent exercise professional knows and can do, accrediting the training and registration bodies that deliver and assess those competences, and then making the result legible to employers, to governments and to the public.

Through EREPS, the European Register of Exercise Professionals, the association gave individual instructors a verifiable record of their qualification. Through the Standards Council it kept those qualifications under review. And through its work with the European Commission it argued that exercise has a place in public health policy, not only in sport.

Membership was open to every part of the sector: public and private operators, equipment and service suppliers, national associations, training providers, higher education institutions and accreditation bodies. At its widest the association's published figures described representation reaching more than 9,000 health and fitness facilities across 23 European countries, alongside national association members in 25 countries.

That breadth was the point. A standards framework written by operators alone would have described only the large chains; one written by educators alone would have described only what was easy to teach. Holding both in the same room was slow, and it was the reason the resulting framework was adopted outside the association.

EHFA was governed by a board elected by its members, with a president drawn from the sector, and supported by a small secretariat in Brussels. The Standards Council held the technical authority over qualifications, supported by a Technical Experts Group and a Scientific Advisory Board. The board, the structure and the statutes are set out in this section.

The questions and answers page collects what people asked most often about the association, its governance and its relationship with national bodies.