Eurofit Test Battery
Eurofit is a Council of Europe field-test battery for school-age children and adolescents. The 1988 handbook selected tests spanning balance, movement speed, flexibility, strength, muscular endurance, running speed and agility, and cardiorespiratory endurance.
Purpose
Eurofit was created to give European countries a common framework for assessing the physical fitness of school-age populations. The handbook specifies equipment, test order, instructions, and scoring for each test. The later Tomkinson pooled analysis harmonised methodological differences among contributing studies before modelling European reference centiles.
The Tomkinson 2018 analysis pooled 2,779,165 performances from 30 European countries for nine tests. The values on this site are reference distributions, not diagnostic or health thresholds.
Tests in the Eurofit battery
Our norms come from different studies depending on the test, so the age coverage varies. Youth tests use European datasets. Adult coverage, where shown, comes from separate sources, including Canadian population data and international pooled studies, and may use a different protocol.
| Test | Measures | Ages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sit-and-Reach | Flexibility | 9-17, 20-69 | CHMS (Hoffmann 2019), Tomkinson 2018 |
| Grip Strength | Static strength | 9-17, 20-80+ | iGRIPS, Tomkinson 2018 |
| Standing Broad Jump | Explosive power | 9-18 | FitBack (Tomkinson 2023) |
| PACER (20m Shuttle Run) | Cardiorespiratory endurance | 9-17 | Tomkinson 2017 |
| Flamingo Balance | Static balance | 9-17 | Tomkinson 2018 |
| Plate Tapping | Speed of limb movement | 9-17 | Tomkinson 2018 |
| Sit-Ups (30s) | Trunk strength | 9-17 | Tomkinson 2018 |
| Bent-Arm Hang | Muscular endurance | 9-17 | Tomkinson 2018 |
| 10×5m Shuttle Run | Running speed / agility | 9-17 | Tomkinson 2018 |
Administration
The handbook recommends the following sequence. It also states that motor tests should be performed in sports clothing and bare feet, without a warm-up or an unlisted preliminary trial:
- Flamingo balance (static balance)
- Plate tapping (speed of limb movement)
- Sit-and-reach (flexibility)
- Standing broad jump (explosive power)
- Grip strength (static strength)
- Sit-ups (trunk strength)
- Bent arm hang (muscular endurance)
- 10×5m shuttle run (running speed / agility)
- 20m shuttle run / PACER (cardiorespiratory endurance)
Who is it for?
Eurofit was designed for school-age children and adolescents, typically tested during physical education classes. It requires minimal equipment, a stopwatch, a mat, a tape measure, a dynamometer, a balance beam, and an audio player for the shuttle run. Most tests can be set up as stations in a school gymnasium.
While originally developed for youth, several Eurofit tests (grip strength, sit-and-reach) are also widely used in adult fitness assessments. Our norms pages cover the age ranges available from the best published studies for each test.
For handgrip, note the protocol boundary. Eurofit scores the preferred hand only, tested twice, with the better result. The adult norms on our grip strength page come from iGRIPS and are adjusted to a best-of-both-hands protocol, so adult and youth values there are not measured the same way.
Related batteries
Several other test batteries share components with Eurofit:
- ALPHA Fitness, a streamlined 4-test battery using grip strength, standing broad jump, PACER, and 4x10m shuttle run. Designed as a practical subset of Eurofit for large-scale EU studies. Its handgrip test scores both hands rather than the preferred hand alone.
- FitnessGram, the US school-based battery using PACER, push-ups, curl-ups, back-saver sit-and-reach, and trunk lift. It shares the PACER with Eurofit, but uses a different sit-and-reach variant.
- Senior Fitness Test, targets adults aged 60+. Different tests, but similar philosophy of practical, field-based assessment.