The Standards Council Annual Award

The Standards Council recognised every year the outstanding performance on standards development made by individuals serving as members of the Technical Experts Group. The award followed the council's commitment to recognition and appreciation of the serious and demanding work done by TEG members, and it was officially approved by the EHFA board.

The first annual award was granted at the last general assembly of EHFA in Essen, Germany, in April 2010.

The award was made on the council's own initiative, from within the standards process and with the board's approval, and it was granted every year rather than once. Taken together, the citations make a record of who the council judged had carried the standards work in a given year, in the same way that the standards themselves carry the date of the assembly that ratified them.

The 2010 EHFA Standards Council Special Award was offered to Xavier Martins Dias of Les Mills International, for his "outstanding support, dedication and commitment on the development of the new job purpose driven EHFA Standards for Fitness Instructors and Personal Trainers".

Xavier Martins Dias was general manager for Les Mills in Europe. He held a master's degree in human movement sciences and had been a manager, club owner, educator, author and chain operator for the Dutch health insurer Achmea. After nineteen years of teaching classes he was still teaching BODYPUMP and BODYATTACK.

The phrase the citation uses - job purpose driven - is the council's own description of what the standards were for. The award was given for work on a document that changed how the sector described its occupations, and the citation names that change rather than the hours spent on it.

Nothing about the award was competitive between organisations. It went to individuals who served on a group in their own name, which is how the groups were formed in the first place: the council recruited qualified individuals, not organisations.

The citation names the work the award was made for: the levels 3 and 4 standards for fitness instructors and personal trainers, written to be driven by the purpose of the job rather than by subject content. That was the direction the Standards Council had set, and the Technical Experts Group was what turned it into a document the general assembly could adopt.

The award is a small part of the association's record, but it describes something unusual about the way these standards were written. They were drafted by people who were still working in the industry, alongside their own jobs, and the council's way of acknowledging that work was to name the individuals who had done it. The council's remit and the method behind the standards are described on the Standards Council and current standards pages.