Stay In the Hoop

September is a great month to make the most of your weekends! The sun is still out and it's the perfect weather for outdoor hooping and...for continuing to improve your practice! Check out these three tutorials that will turn your weekend into a hooping workshop!   1. To get you warmed up, here are some Hoop Workout Tips from Hoopnotica Founder, Gabriella Redding   2. Now, try your hand at Isolations   3. Mini Hoops Pendulum Isolations Prerequesite: Isolations Hoop: Mini Hoops  

MSN shows the world why it's a great idea to take hooping for a spin...      "Kelly Osbourne's skinny secret: Hooping 

Keep Summer Going Strong & BYOS (Bring Your Own Sunshine)—with this cool series of tutorials that are guaranteed to turn up the heat in your hoop practice! Watch & Learn!   

(MORE: See the 1st Tutorial: The Vertical Step Through here.)

(MORE: See the 3rd Tutorial: Knees to Waist Transition here)

Keep Summer Going Strong & BYOS (Bring Your Own Sunshine)—with this cool series of tutorials that are guaranteed to turn up the heat in your hoop practice! The Hoopnotica Team met up with Hooping YouTube Sensation Katie Sunshine to decode some of the coolest hoop moves you're for sure going to master! Aside from bringing hooping to new audiences worldwide with her viral videos, Katie is a sweet, approachable, southern belle and an enthusiastic teacher IRL (*in real life*). We've had a hoop crush on Katie for ages and we were so excited to hoop with Katie and create this exciting series of tutorials for you. Katie Sunshine Tutorial #1: The Vertical Step Through     We hope you enjoy the first of these videos, perfect to share with friends and to watch again and again! Check back here and subscribe to Katie's YouTube Channel to make sure you don't miss out on the next tutorials! (MORE: WATCH THE NEXT TUTORIAL: HOW TO HOOP ON ONE LEG) (MORE: WATCH THE NEXT TUTORIAL: KNEES TO WAIST TRANSITION)

So now that you've fallen in love with hooping, you'd like to share that joy with others, right? Our Facebook Inbox often gets messages from hoopers like you looking to connect with other hoopers in their area. So here are our top tips for finding hoop buddies in your neighborhood!   1. Find a Hoopnotica Instructor Near You To get "linked in" to the hooping circuit in your area, start by finding a Hoopnotica class near you. Going to class will not only give you the opportunity to learn new moves but will be the perfect opportunity to meet other hoopers in your area. Start connecting with other hoopers today by searching for a teacher/class in your area with the Find an Instructor function on our website! You can search by exact address or ZIP Code.   2. Search Facebook for a Local Hoop/Flow Group Molly Billinski, a recently-certified Hoopnotica Instructor and hooper-networking pro, suggests that conducting a simple Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr search for hoop groups in your area might be all that you need to do! Next time you're on Facebook, for example, simply search the Name of Your Town/City + Hooping or Hoopers and see what comes up under the "Pages" or "Groups" Category. You may be surprised to find that there is a group of hoopers in your area that you didn't know about!   3. Find/Start a Hoop Jam on MeetUp.com If you've never tried MeetUp.com, it's a great site for connecting with people in your area who share your interests whether it is biking, gardening, or owning a cat! MeetUp has been a great online resource for hoopers looking to connect and...you guessed it...meet up with other hoopers! Try going on MeetUp and searching key words like "Hoopers" and "Hoop Jam" and chances are there will be a listing near you!   4. Hoop in Public! "My hoop starts a conversation wherever I take it," Molly says. "If all else fails, get out there and hoop! Find a spot in a park or field, play some tunes, and hoop your heart out! You might not feel confident in yourself at first, but the spectacle that you are creating will draw lots of positive attention to you. You’ll find people coming up to you that you’ve never met before asking what you’re doing and wondering if they could try. (For this reason, it’s always good to have a couple extra hoops handy.) When people begin to notice that you’re at the same spot regularly, they’ll want to get involved. You have the power within you to share hooping. Spread your love and passion, it’s contagious!" And if you find that you have a knack for teaching people hoop moves, you may want to consider the following...   5. Become a Hoopnotica Certified Instructor Don't Dream It, Be It...and do what Hoopnotica Director of Teacher Development Jen Moore did in her hometown of Rochester, NY and what Molly did in Fleetwood, PA: get certified to Teach Hoopnotica and become a founding member of a thriving hooping community in your area! Molly says, "I'm not saying that there was no hooping community in my area before I began teaching classes, it just wasn't as accessible to me because I didn't know it was there!" As a newly certified HCI, Molly was able to fuse an existing group of hoopers in her area that she found through Facebook with the new hoopers she was creating through the Hoopnotica classes she offered to build the ultimate local hooping community: "It's really important to find a balance between having students and having hooper friends who also teach. It builds a larger community when everyone is working together to achieve the same goals, whether it's to have fun, build confidence, create flow, or even just to socialize with like-minded people."   Have you made friends through hooping? How have you met hoopers in your area?  

Hoopnotica founder Gabriella Redding shows you some great moves to expand your hooping practice and amp up your hooping workout! Watch & Learn! 

Get the TravelHoop™ Gabriella is using in the video here.

 

Get the cute "Hooper Valentine" Tank!

A Fabulous Behind-the-Scenes Moment Was Captured On Film...Watch & Laugh!  See what happened when Hoopnotica Accountant David Huntsman stepped in to do the "test" for a Jacqui Becker Hooping tutorial shoot....     David made a valiant attempt to mimic Jacqui's teaching flare and flow but unfortunately got a little tangled up in his version of "off body" moves. Thanks David for being such a good fill in and for being a good sport about us publishing your test footage! Moral of this story: We at Hoopnotica absolutely love what we do: working to delivery hoopiness around the world! Oh....and there's only one Jacqui Becker.  

Get to know the rest of your friendly Hoopnotica Team!

 

Oprah celebrates her latest on-screen role in "Lee Daniels' The Butler" in true hooping style!

We've been sending Oprah Winfrey hoops for years and we're so happy to finally see an action shot of her hooping! From Oprah's Instagram @oprah... More evidence has recently emerged that Oprah Winfrey is a devout hooper: namely, her reaction to "Lee Daniels' The Butler" hitting No. 1 this past weekend was to reach for her hula hoop! Oprah, who plays Forest Whitaker's wife in the blockbuster, was recently quoted in The Huffington Post re: her plans to celebrate the film's instant success: "I actually got a purple Hula Hoop that I bring out for occasions like this," Winfrey said. "So I brought out that Hula Hoop in the front yard." Oprah has long been a proponent of hula hooping for fitness, fleshing out the benefits of hooping on her website and in issues of O, The Oprah Magazine. So we guess we can say that some celebs are just like us hoopers: they hoop to celebrate good things too!  

Learn to unlock the art of performing as a hooper with these key tips from Go-Go Hoop Performer Madison Orange For any hoopers who are interested in booking paid hooping gigs and bringing their absolute A-game, here is a some fantastic practical performance advice: 1. Keep it Simple Madison's first rule of Performance Hooping is to keep things simple! Be aware that the things that we as hoopers think are really cool (like fast transitions, breaks, and lots and lots of spinning) may not translate over to an audience in that same way. So pick some moves that may seem "simple" to you but that are visually stunning for audience members to see, such as floats and stalls, which you can perform almost effortlessly.   2. Play it up for the Paparazzi Lots of people will be impressed with your hooping skills on stage and will want to capture the moment to share with their friends. The pictures people take of your performance are your calling card as a hoop performer so make sure you're giving your audience the best photo ops! Keeping your silhouette in mind is key! You can create beautiful photo ops and an engaging performance simply by holding the hoop in the vertical plane behind or in front of you. Spend some time in front of the mirror before the performance picking and perfecting your favorite hoop poses so that you can whip them out during slow songs or at the beginning or end of your set! (For more tips and tricks on starting and ending your performance, check out our video tutorial)   3. Repetition, repetition, repetition! Don't try to go too "big" for your first hoop performances. Trying to memorize an intricate choreographed routine can get you caught up and you never know for sure what music will be playing or if the song you were counting on hearing will get interrupted. Know which hoop moves you want to put on show and then keep on repeating them. If you do it artfully and to the beat of the music, the repetition will look great and you won't be exhausted or get sloppy with your hooping.   4. Stick to the 3 Levels of Performance Hooping Madison outlines three "levels" of performance hooping as part of her comprehensive Go-Go Hooping Curriculum that can become your go-to levels while performing:

1. Above the head (Think halos all the way!)

2. Behind your back (Think weaving, isolations, and dramatic posing)

3. The bee's knees! (Think knee hooping, and don't forget, while you're catching your breath with your hoop at your knees, you can move your arms to the music!)

If you decide that you want to add your own spin to this system, or haven't yet discovered the joys of knee hooping, feel free! The idea, though, is to stick to 3 basic hoop positions that you can return to time and again (repetition!) throughout the performance and which you can sustain without burning yourself out!   Oh, and, here is one final performance tip from the Hoopnotica vault: Hooping is fun, so....DON'T FORGET TO SMILE!!!!   Madison Orange is a professional Go-Go Hoop Performer, read her full Q&A with Hoopnotica here.  

1. Take a deep breath.... As many yoga aficionados know, taking time out of your busy day to just breathe relieves stress, improves mental clarity, and makes life just a little more pleasant in general. 2. Ditch the energy drink for endorphins! Endorphins are your brain's best friends. They are the brain's natural pain relievers and give you a sense of well-being. Stimulate endorphin production by hooping for just under ten minutes and the effect produced by the endorphins slowly being distributed throughout your nervous system can have euphoric  effects for hours after you finish hooping! 3. Give yourself a pat on the back (or a massage...) Hooping actually massages your muscles! And some studies even suggest that the "massaging" effects of hooping on your abdomen can actually decrease your body's visceral fat in that area. 4. Hooping = "Me Time" Dedicated hooping time (even if it is just 8 minutes) translates into dedicated "me" time which we not only want, but, according to some major studies, need in order to be our happiest selves. Using your time with your hoop to clear your mind and re-center yourself in the midst of a busy day will allow you focus more clearly afterwards and not feel overburdened. 5. - 54. BURN 50 CALORIES! The last 50 reasons to hoop for just 8 minutes a day are the whopping 50 calories you'll be burning in that short amount of time! Just think, in the time it takes to watch an infomercial on TV or to scroll through your Facebook timeline, you could be burning 50 calories-poof, gone!   So, throw on your favorite playlist and hoop for three songs...you have fifty-four reasons to get up and hoop and zero reasons not to!   

MORE: Read about the other, long-term benefits of hooping here. 

Don't have a hoop? Get started here!