CrossFit is a teamsport

Mona Gimalis ·May 23, 2026 ·3 Translation missing: en.blogs.article.min_read

Our first day trip with GIMALIS. Ambassador Esther was competing in CrossFit Aalst's in-house tournament, the Oilsjt Hybrid Challenge. Together with her training partner and Box Manager Lara, they made up team 'Curl Power'. As for our expectations... honestly, we weren't quite sure what to expect. You'd assume it works like fitness, a fairly individual sport. We clearly didn't know much about CrossFit, or at least not the way they do it in Aalst.

A place people keep coming back to

A large industrial space with some equipment. That's what we expected.

That's not what CrossFit Aalst is. Not because the equipment wasn’t there, but because you could barely see it through the crowd. Hats off to Steven, multi-entrepreneur and owner. He has managed to fill a large metal hall with top-end gear, and more than that, he has built a family of athletes of every shape and stripe. With over 250 active members on the books, the numbers speak for themselves. Ten years of building gets you a place like this.

Everyone competing was a member of the box. Three team categories: male pairs (MM), female pairs (WW) and mixed pairs (MW). Same exercises across the board, only the weights changed. No outside competitors. For a day, the box took itself on.

Fitness is a team sport in here

This is the part that caught us off guard. A CrossFit competition doesn't feel like the fitness event you'd picture. It isn't a row of individuals sweating side by side. It is a sport with teams, with switches, with communication. A sport where your partner starts to fade just as you find your rhythm, and the other way around. Nobody finishes a WOD because they happen to be strong. You finish it because you talk to your teammate, read where they are, and step in on time.

Esther has been doing CrossFit for eight years now. What keeps her showing up so consistently? "The beauty of CrossFit is that I still don't feel like I've mastered every single aspect of it." It doesn't get old because it is too varied. Walking into the same place for eight years and still finding things to learn, that is what keeps people coming back.

We saw another reason to keep coming back. As fierce as the rivalry between athletes and teams might be, the respect between them runs deeper. You can feel that they are competing to be the fastest, to be the strongest. But the real competition these athletes are in is the one they fight with themselves. Supporters and clubmates from rival teams cheer each other on to push past their own limits.

Fitness looks like an individual sport. Inside a box like this one, it isn't.

Eating healthy

There is one small moment, a detail, that for me (Mona) said everything. After the last workout, Yentl, our other ambassador, walked through the hall with a bag of gummy bears. The kind of guilty-pleasure treats you stare at in the shop and end up leaving on the shelf because it's pure sugar. Unhealthy, right?

Almost everyone grabbed a few as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And really, it is. Completely normal. My instinct says, surely that isn't healthy? But it is exactly what the body needs: fast sugars right after maximum effort. Yes, dressed up in a fun shape with a bit of food colouring, but who cares.

It's good to see that a sweet doesn't have to be a bad thing.

The car ride home was quiet. We were genuinely impressed by what CrossFit Aalst put on. Club members welcoming beginners, the hesitant and the seasoned with open (and rather muscular) arms, into a sport that turns out to be far more team-oriented than you'd think going in. If I could, I would move the box to our side of Brussels.

Aalst, we're fans.
Let’s meet again soon.