Calisthenics in Korea
So this time my travels brought me to Seoul, South Korea. I planned to stay for a week and wanted to make sure to workout at least twice. Since it was a business trip for a conference, I was limited where to stay and ended up in north Gangnam.
Due to previous Asia trips, I was confident to find a training spot on the fly when being there. Well, it was not that easy this time. Here is where it gets tricky. Google Maps does not fully work in South Korea. Limited navigation, barley any English and no Street View. There are two options now. First, install Naver Navigation (Naver is the ‘Korean Google’) instead of Google Maps or second, stroll around parks and look for a setup you like.
After landing early, I could not check-in for a few hours so I decided to go for the second approach to kill time. At one point I came across Ttukseom Hangan Park in Gwangjin, north of Gangnam.
It was about 25 minutes walking distance away from my hotel, but had a decent setup with different size pull up bars and dip bars. There was not only a workout area but also a swimming pool, rock climbing, a tennis court and more.
I decided to train here later and came back a few days later. It worked out perfectly fine for front-lever and planche training. The only thing missing was a lower bar for body rows. I should have brought my rings, but I left them in my hotel... Pull-up bars are also kind of a problem since they are often not very high. However, the highest bar in this park was around 2 meter what should work very well for most people.
In total a very nice workout spot. There were few people around (I was there around noon) who did not bother me in any way. If you are in the northern region of Gangnam I strongly recommend checking it out. Also if you want to go climbing or try the other activities. If that is the case, check the spots first with Naver Navigation.
