Although initially trained as a physiotherapist, the passion of Karel (°1971) always has been exercise physiology. When graduating at the KU Leuven (Belgium) in 1993, he had the opportunity to conduct research on the value of exercise testing in heart transplant candidates and patients with hypertension.

After he achieved his doctoral degree in 1999, he stayed for 7 more years at the universitary hospitals supervising hundreds of additional exercise tests in fit and less fit subjects, such as patients recovering from breast cancer, suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, obesity or low back pain.
While working half time, he put in a lot of training hours but they payed off with a.o. 7 top-10 places in the Olympic distance triathlon national championships.

The year 2006 was a turnpoint and a milestone, when Karel founded 'Back To B.A.S.I.C.S. In Sports': he started working as an independent trainer and sports consultant, in a private practice in Leuven, together with a cardiologist and dietitian. He performed many more exercise tests, and spent hours and hours to discuss test and training results with his clients, ranging from the very beginners to gifted competitive athletes, of all possible ages, and engaging in the most divergent sports. 

In 2012, he consolidated a lot of his experiences and knowledge in the evidence-based (Dutch) book 'Back To B.A.S.I.C.S. voor succesvol trainen', which also served as a manual at high school. 

Since 2016, when it became clear that the sports industry was dramatically changing and lactate testing became very accessible, he systematically started to organize private courses for other coaches.

Some 10 years ago, Karel also became interested in tennis and actually got involved in the physical preparation of tennis players. This has been a very enriching adventure, because it turned out to be very complementary with his endurance background. As a matter of fact, there is only 1 sport for which he is glued to television :-)

And, oh yes, B.A.S.I.C.S. stands for:
- Bio-'logical'
- Attitude
- Science
- Insight
- Consistency
- Structure
Because they constitute the fundamentals of 'Training'.