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Hooping It Up

New twists on an old toy are hooking the young and even the hip

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SCOTT COHEN / THE SEATTLE TIMES There’s a new generation of hoop enthusiasts, including Kara Spencer, front, who is doing a HoopYoga standing backbend during a HoopDance at Gas Works Park in Seattle.

THE CONSTANT JOURNEY to find the new fitness doodad can spin on a circular path, so why not a new version of the Hula Hoop?

I know it seems boring. Just stand there, wiggle your hips a bit and try to keep the darn thing rotating around you. Yet it's being incorporated into fitness classes and videos aimed at everything from burning calories to finding meditative peace and creative expression. It's also showing up in dancing, at parties and as a pastime connection for a community.

The hoop I'm talking about dwarfs the toy of "Leave It To Beaver" days. It's about what a quarter is to a nickel. It is heavier, too.

Kara Spencer, who just left Seattle to live in Eugene, Ore., teaches hoop dancing and designs her own version, which she calls Mandala Hoops. The sizes vary slightly, but the added girth makes them easier to keep going and to do various maneuvers. I recently met Spencer at a Wallingford park where we hooped as we talked. I hadn't hooped since I was a kid and was a bit nervous, but it was so easy that I wondered what kind of workout it could provide. It didn't take long, however, to feel my stomach muscles activating.

Then Spencer (www.mandalahoops.com) gracefully moved the spinning hoop from her hips to above her head like a lasso. She danced with it gyrating just below her neck and then spun it vertically as she hopped through it from one side to another. It's the joy of the dance that Spencer emphasizes.

Help for the time-trapped

Fitness expert Joni Hyde has devised a flexible idea for the time-trapped in "Workouts for Women." The DVD offers several different full-body "circuits" that can be completed in less than 12 minutes. But if you have time and want a challenge, you can choose the replay option that lengthens the workout. Hyde has a nice factual way about her and incorporates aerobics, light weights, step platform and ankle weights into the exercise program.

For beginning and intermediate athletes. See www.workoutsforwomen.com for details.

Betty Shurin, going by the trademarked name Betty Hoops, has put out her own DVD "Yoga Hoop Dance," that demonstrates how the device can be incorporated with exercise and spirituality. "It is designed to free the mind and body of its routine actions and leave every cell vibrating with life-force energy," she says.

Hoops says size matters. The size of your hoop should be determined by your size. The taller, heavier and tighter in the hips you are, the bigger the hoop you will need, she says.

On her DVD, Hoops (www.bettyhoops.com) shakes, shimmies, lunges and dances for 30 minutes or more. She is so graceful that her rhythm is invisible, even as she instructs about the importance of posture and strengthening.

"People who are starting to teach classes need to be educated in basic anatomy and movement," she says. "Teaching someone how to hoop is easy. Teaching someone how to correct their posture and reawaken their bodies, minds and breath is not easy."

I found a totally different take with the "Heavy Hoop" (www.heavyhoop.com), which is a foam-covered, three-pound ring designed as a resistance and aerobic tool. I watched the company's "Cardio Hoop Workout" and was struck by how little the instructor spun it. Mostly she used it as a prop for standard moves designed to make you sweat. That surprised me because the company says that "hula" motion with the heavier hoop was tested at an independent research lab and found that a 140-pound woman could burn up to 110 calories in just eight minutes. Still, the inventor and instructor, Wendy Iverson, led a plenty-hard workout.

Ariel Meadow Stallings, a Seattle woman who co-founded www.hooping.org, a gathering spot for hoopers, has yet another slant. She says the metronome rhythm of hooping provides more than a calorie burn and belly massage. It's a communal, joyous pursuit.

"People come at hooping from all kinds of angles," she says. "Some are into the hippie-jam-band thing and some are into the more meditative or yoga aspects. The best part is that it is about impossible not to laugh when you hoop."

Stallings and Spencer say hooping made a comeback about 10 years ago with The String Cheese Incident, an alternative-music band that likes to fling hoops into the crowds. The fitness comeback is relatively recent.

Richard Seven is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff writer. He can be reached at rseven@seattletimes.com. Scott Cohen is a Seattle Times staff photographer.