Whooping

 

     In 1957, an Australian company began making wood rings for sale in retail stores. The item attracted the attention of Wham-0, a California toy manufacturer. The next year Richard P. Knerr and Arthur K. Melin, of Wham-O, manufactured a plastic hoop in a variety of bright colors. The Hula-Hoop was an instant success. Before the 1950s people were doing much the same thing with circular hoops made from grape vines and stiff grasses all over the ancient world. More than three thousand years ago, children in Egypt played with large hoops of dried grapevines. The toy was propelled along the ground with a stick or swung around at the waist.

 

       A common practice in medicine, we look back to our past for ways to improve our futures. Using a hoop, or hooping, allows for a number of health benefits making hooping worth re-visiting. The circular and side-to-side motion helps restore segmental spinal mobility. Like a chiropractor mobilizing the spine manually, the gentle repetitive swing hooping introduces safely increases each vertebras’ slide over its neighboring bone undoing the soft tissue restrictions we develop through limited motions and long times spent in static postures. Anything that restores mobility acts in a similar way to stretching, so the spine’s flexibility is enhanced. 

 
     The Cooper Institute, in Dallas, Texas is a nonprofit institute that has provided research and educational programs focusing on exercise physiology, behavior change, health communication, children's health, obesity, nutrition, aging, diabetes, hypertension, physical activity intervention, and health promotion. According to a study run by the Cooper Institute, one minute of hooping burns as many calories as running an eight-minute mile or taking part in a high impact aerobic class (though I add a caveat that baseline condition might influence this). So hooping can supplement regular low impact cardio workouts, increasing cardiac stamina. Hooping will definitely promote aerobic exercise within the metabolic fat burning exertion ranges so offers alternative to walking.   Hooping places milder stresses on the knee, ankle and foot joints than walking so might be attractive for people who prefer a true low impact exercise.   It is a great compliment to traditional abdominal workouts by toning abdominal muscles, the muscle of the hips and adding curves to the waistline.

       According to research conducted by Consumer Reports, hooping for 5 or 10 minutes at a time is categorized as brief bursts of activity or harder exercise intervals that can help you meet the new, more-demanding federal exercise guidelines. It’s more than standing in a room swinging a ring of plastic around your hips; the hoop can also travel the arms, legs and torso and may include jumps and tosses should you be so inclined. It’s great for the abdomen, but the rest of the body benefits as well.

 

 

Your hoop should stand about 1" above your belly button.

 

    There is an emotional benefit to hooping as an adult. For most hoopers there is a surge in endorphins promoting in a natural chemical way a sense of well-being. Endorphins also provide a natural analgesic further enhancing the benefits achieved. Hoops used by adults to enhance fitness are larger ( greater than 36” diameters) so that they will rotate more slowly around the body. They are heavier than a child size hoop and have friction tape or a sticky foam to make them cling to the body instead of sliding down around the user’s ankles. It is actually easier to hoop as an adult than many found it as a child, because adults have more strength.