A new dawn in bike fit education

As part of its continued efforts to improve bike fitting, the IBFI has joined forces with fit educators around the world to create a common education standard to help professionalise the industry. IBFI President Andy Brooke explains the exciting changes, and what they’ll mean for IBFI members.

There are some big changes coming in the world of bike fitting education. Over the next few pages, we’re going to run you through what we consider to be the biggest step towards professionalising bike fitting that we’ve ever undertaken. And it wouldn’t have been possible with the support of a great group of bike fit educators, but more about them later.

First, a little background

Before the IBFI was established back in 2015, there was no parity between bike fitting education courses, and very little trust between education providers. That created a very difficult environment for new and early-career fitters. Where should they start? Who offered the best courses? How many courses would they need to do to become a good fitter?

As an industry, we stagnated. Fitters found it easy to reach a moderately competent level but very difficult to progress any further. No matter who they started training with, there were rarely more than 6-8 days of training available across multiple courses, and if they wanted to then switch to another provider, they were forced to go back to their very first course. This meant there was a huge financial disincentive to continue learning. Once a fitter had done a few courses, the return on investment to go back and work through the different levels of courses with a new provider was virtually nothing – a lot of money spent on course fees, travel, accommodation and even loss of earnings through not fitting, often resulted in learning the same things in a slightly different way.

The IBFI worked hard to encourage education and improvement but ultimately it resulted in some fitters collecting credits by simply attending multiple entry-level courses from different providers. They weren’t learning anything new or developing their skills, just relearning the same basic things. It was time for a change and other industries could help show us the way.

Looking outside of bike fitting

Bike fitting education is classed as vocational training, which means it’s not an academic qualification gained through a university or sitting through lectures; it’s hands-on training that requires skill as well as knowledge. Thankfully the European Union (EU) has a history of great vocational training, and it created a system that allows these types of courses to compare easily to traditional academia, and across 38 different countries. The European Qualifications Framework (EQF) is an 8-level system that runs from high-school standard courses right through to PhD-level.

It’s been used extensively in sports and complimentary-medical fields, like Sports Therapy (practitioners are similar to Athletic Trainers in the US), Sports Massage and Personal Training. It made perfect sense for the IBFI to follow a similar path. Our existing levels could be transferred over to the first four levels of the EQF, meaning our courses would grow in difficulty from high-school equivalent courses at level 1, all the way up to level 4 with an equivalent complexity to the first year of a bachelor’s or undergraduate degree.

‘The common syllabus will be managed by a global education committee who will develop it and ensure it is owned and run by the industry’

The need for a common syllabus

Once we’d decided upon a framework for a new education system, we needed to agree as an industry to use a common syllabus that would allow us to fully implement it.

It was important that there wasn’t duplication between levels, and that each new course taught different and exciting material. That way we could be sure that students gained a significant knowledge increase after each level of training, meaning we could be confident that a higher level fitter was better trained than a lower level fitter. This structure would also ensure that fitters have a clear path through a well-rounded, complete education without having to duplicate material.

BIKE FIT TRAINING IS HANDS-ON, REQUIRING SKILL AS WELL AS KNOWLEDGE

Standardising quality

The other reason we needed a common syllabus was to standardise the quality and level of qualifications. Qualifications within the EQF are recognised by all providers, meaning students could attend a level 1 course with one provider and move on to level 2 with another. This completely removes the need to drop back to entry-level courses and hopefully makes it easier and cheaper for students to work their way up to the higher levels of training and certification. The way this works in other industries is through the implementation of common assessment protocols at each level. If students have to cover the same core materials and pass the same assessments regardless of who offered the course, providers can be confident that they’re ready to move on to the next level. That’s exactly what we’re implementing here.

Syllabus creation

Shifting over to the new education system would already bring significant benefits, like reducing the need to duplicate learning when switching between providers, making the qualification progression much clearer, and mirroring professional standards in other industries. It might even lead to bike fitting qualifications being recognised by traditional academic institutions like colleges and universities.

But it was also an opportunity for the IBFI to strengthen what was taught, ‘The common both in the topics covered and the syllabus will be managed by a level of detail. The IBFI, in global consultation with experienced education committee who education providers around the will develop it world, started out by listing all the and ensure it is owned and run topics we’d like a level 4 fitter to have by the industry’ training on, and then divided those logically between the four levels of courses to create a common syllabus.

The plan is for this common syllabus to be managed by a new global education committee, who will develop it over time and ensure it is owned and run by the industry as a whole, not something the IBFI handed down.

Online learning

Covid created a huge drive for online learning, and we couldn’t ignore that. With bike fitting being a balance of skill and knowledge, it seemed logical to split the training between online and in person. The more academic, knowledge-based topics could be delivered online, reducing the time sat in front of PowerPoint presentations during in-person courses and freeing up more time for practical, skill-based sessions. All the online modules will be delivered through the same Learning Management System, managed by the IBFI and a team of independent assessors, meaning every student — regardless of provider — can easily be filtered into the same assessment. This allows the IBFI to shift its role into that of a true professional body; overseeing the quality of education received, and ensuring that all students have to pass the same standard of assessment regardless of course provider. As always, the IBFI will work to support existing education providers, and will not be delivering educational courses.

A balanced syllabus

The first draft syllabus was started in 2019 and presented to the first few education providers in 2020. By working through their feedback, making improvements, and doing the same thing with each subsequent group of education providers, we ended up with a great and balanced syllabus that was agreed by over a dozen education providers.

Over the next four pages you’ll be able to see the structure of the syllabus. We’ve stripped out some of the detail so that it didn’t require another magazine entirely just for the syllabus, but hopefully you’ll be able to see the topics covered and the progression offered through the different levels. A level 4 fitter really should be able to tackle almost anything!

Later in this issues we’ll explain how the syllabus will evolve and who will manage it, along with how the online elements will work, and how we’ll ‘grandfather-in’ existing experienced fitters. We know this is a big change, but we’re really excited about the potential for this approach to raise standards and create an industry we can all be proud of. If you have any questions or comments, get in touch at andy@ibfi-certification.com.