Through Thick and Thin

Hoopers know it, but for readers who haven’t yet been looped in: you start big and heavy, and get lighter from there.

No, I’m not referring to your body weight (though I could be, because hooping’s a highly effective form of exercise)—I’m talking hoop size here.

This is because the larger the diameter, the longer the hoop takes to circle your body, making it easier to do any sort of tricks. And the heavier the hoop, the more its own momentum keeps it propelled around your body once you’ve gotten it started.

The reason many hoopers ultimately move to progressively lighter hoops is that they move faster and are easier to maneuver—off the body in particular. This comes in handy when you’re keeping up with music that’s 140 beats per minute. (To put that BPM# into perspective, this handy website calculates that music at 145 beats per minute is equivalent to a 9.5 minute mile.) Once you’ve been hooping for a while, your hoop propulsion muscles get so strong and their movements so precise that the lack of weight/momentum isn’t a big deal.

My delicate little wrists (just 5.5 inches around) have always been weak, even with glucosamine and strength-building exercises, and cannot manage twisting a standard hoop for more than a minute. So my PSI hoop is just over 15 ounces, and my regular practice hoop a bit lighter than that. Compare those to your standard HoopGirl hoop, which weighs an average of 23 ounces.

A lot of hoopers say once you’ve scaled down you can’t go back.

It’s true I don’t really enjoy my original hoop very much any more: it just feels unwieldy. But recently I noticed something missing from my flight time. I haven’t felt terribly connected to my hoop.

Then one day I thought: maybe that’s because literally, I can hardly feel it. Really, it’s moving so fast and weighs so little, that I can’t even identify my contact points any more.

So I reached for my medium hoop, which is actually one of my original hoops that I cut down along the way, meaning it’s made out of the thicker, heavier tubing, but has a smaller circumference. This is a weird combination, incidentally, because it’s quite heavy, but takes no time to complete a revolution. It means hitting yourself in the head is fraggin painful!

But it feels so good! I break into a sweat in a matter of minutes, and feel my heart rate really kick up. It feels substantial, a real dance partner.

I’m not abandoning my lighter hoops—far from it, especially for performances—but I’m using my chubby hubby hoop, as I refer to it, for at least half of every practice session right now. And I feel distinctly more connected.