How Kim Seok-beom left his football dreams behind to become CrossFit’s South Korean champion
- The 29-year-old former professional footballer had a brief career in Ireland before returning home to complete his military service
- It was here, at the age of 23, he found CrossFit and dove head first into the sport, and he is now a coach in Seoul
Kim Seok-beom can now be found representing South Korea as his country’s CrossFit champion. But things almost panned out a lot differently.
The 29-year-old started playing football aged 10, and soon discovered he actually had a chance of turning his dream of becoming a professional player into reality.
“When I was 19, I had a dream of joining an overseas professional league,” Kim told the Post. “I tried to go to the UK first, but my plan got cancelled because of visa issues. So I changed my mind and went to Ireland, and played in the Ireland Premier League.”
“I originally started doing it just as a hobby, because I was interested in it during serving in the military,” he said. “I loved it so much right away.”
CrossFit, which promotes the idea of functional fitness and varying modalities that participants have to master, was a perfect fit for Kim who had been discharged from the military where the focus is on general fitness.
