History and Background

EHFA operated from 2001 and emerged out of the European Network of Fitness Associations, which had been established in 1996. Its standards were not written from first principles. They came out of a decade of European projects on vocational education and training in sport and fitness, in which the association was a main partner, and out of the two documents those projects produced: a European Functional Map of the health and fitness sector, and a map of the core competences that can be found in fitness instruction across Europe.

The sequence ran from 2003 to 2008. Each project answered a question the one before it had opened.

• 2003, with ENSSEE. AEHESIS, on aligning a European higher educational structure in sport science.
• 2003, with EOSE. VOCASPORT, on vocational education and training related to sport in Europe - trends and perspectives.
• 2003. Eurofit-QST, the European Fitness Qualifications and Training project, which developed and piloted a qualification framework and a system for verifying providers against it.
• 2006, with SkillsActive UK. ECVET-Fitness, a consultation on a European credit system for vocational education and training.
• 2006, with EASE. RBT, on reinforcing the representativeness of the social partner in the sport sector.
• 2007, with EOSE. EQF-Sport, on implementing the European Qualifications Framework in the sport sector.
• 2008, with CYQ UK. EA-Fitness, the European accreditation fitness project.

Eurofit-QST changed the association's role. It produced a functional map, a competence framework, occupational standards and learning outcomes for fitness instruction, together with a verification system for the technical competence of instructors and the register that became EREPS. On the strength of that work EHFA was restructured so that it could act as a standards-setting body for the sector in Europe, and the continued interest of the vocational education and training unit and the sports unit of the European Commission kept the programme going. The projects are collected on the EU projects pages.

The first set of EHFA standards was produced in 2005. By the end of the decade the Standards Council had identified the review of those standards as a priority action, and the replacement version, referenced to EQF levels 3 and 4, was approved by the general assembly in April 2010. A further set at EQF level 2 followed on 13 April 2011, and the council's attention had already turned to the populations the standards did not yet cover - older adults, children and adolescents, and exercise referral.

The order matters to anyone reading the standards, because the framework was built by accumulation rather than from a single design. Each project tested part of it in a different set of countries, and each revision took in what that testing showed. The current text of the framework, and the argument behind it, is on the standards and current standards pages.