Hooping

Dear readers,

I want to share with you the most fun that you can have in the privacy of your own home or anywhere that you have room to do so. Hula hooping, or hoopdance, as it is called in the modern times, is a wonderful and fun exercise that helps to strengthen your core and heart. Whenever I don’t have the patience to go to a Spinning or Pilates class and/or glide on an elliptical machine to nowhere, (which seems to be what’s been happening as of late, sadly) I reach for my hula hoop! Currently, I have the Travel Hoop in teal/blue by Hoopnotica and am looking to make several hoops, both regular and collapsible, and might order some more from the Hoopnotica site as I think that they are decent for ready-made.

Here is a wonderful site by Jason that shows you in great detail how to make your own hoops.

Way back in the rave days, I would have a lot of fun going out to dance and socialize. Sometimes I feel as if that was an entire lifetime ago, but being in shape doesn’t have to be. During some of the bigger raves, there were 2 girls who would show up with their florescent outfits and do an incredible routine or two together with their hula hoops. I both envied and admired their skills in doing something that I’d long dismissed as juvenile.

I think that the two girls were Rayna and Keaton from Hoopnotica….and they definitely had everyone’s rapt attention wherever they would show up. However, when I got to witness KJ and Karis from Mutaytor some years later, I realized that hooping could be something that I could be extremely passionate about. The first step is in NOT using kiddie hoops and getting your own adult sized one! It makes all the difference in the world, and I actually want to thank one of my instructors at the Burke Williams training center in Culver City, CA. Even though the esthetician job with BW didn’t work out for me, we had several hula hoops that we would use to relax and limber up with before our extensive massage trainings.

I became much more proficient at the hoop than massage during those practice sessions, incidentally. Funny how that is. However, I’ve still got so many more things to learn, so I don’t claim to be any kind of expert or superstar by any means. I am much more agile now than I was in the beginning, and am doing my best to make smooth transitions and corkscrews. Sometimes I wish that I were still in Los Angeles so that I could personally attend the official Hoopnotica classes, but my videos and YouTube will have to do.

Practice and patience, and you do get quite the workout. I’m pleased with the soreness in my upper body and lower back. Oh and the abs, of course. I’m getting much more comfortable with hooping and am going to implement as part of my schtick indeed and perhaps combine in with another project that I am doing right now. It involves videos, but until I put the ones that I’ve been shooting up here, these will have to suffice. Someday I hope to be as good as some of these daredevils. They are truly inspiring.

Here are Rayna and Keaton from Hoopnotica:

This is Karis from Mutaytor doing a West Coast vs. East Coast hoop-off with Stefan of Groove Hoops NY.

The ultimate hooper in my opinion is Elena Lev, and here is an act of hers from Cirque du Soleil’s Alegria.