Choosing the perfect hula hoop is not always straightforward for beginners, so we're sharing our answers to your most frequently asked questions!
One of the first questions that new hoopers often ask is: What is the best starter hoop for me? We believe that a 40-44” diameter hoop weighing about 1½ - 2 lbs is the perfect hoop to begin with, whether you are hooping for fitness, flow, or fun! Just add on one of our acclaimed instructional DVDs and you are on your way to learning the basics!
Check out these hoops that are perfect for beginners: The Forties, The TravelHoop
Question number two: I read somewhere that I should have a hoop that goes up to my belly button. Is this true? While this has been a standard way of measuring a hoop for many years, we don’t necessarily follow this method exclusively. We believe that your level of learning as a hooper is the more accurate way of determining the size of the hoop you need. If you are a beginning hooper, and are at least 4’11” you will be fine to start with a hoop that is at least 40” in diameter. If you are under 4’11”, you still may be able to use a 40” hoop, but you may also enjoy a hoop that is about 38” in diameter. If you need a smaller hoop, Hoopnotica can customize one for you! Check out the chart below to see what type of hoop is perfect for you:
Another question we often get is: Is there really a difference between a kids’ toy hula hoop and an adult fitness hoop except the price tag? Yes! The adult fitness hoops that Hoopnotica sells are larger in diameter and heavier than toy hoops because they are built with adult hoopers in mind. They are also made of more durable materials than the toy hoops you can pick up at the Dollar Store to ensure that you won’t break your hoop if you drop it or step on it! Have you ever, as an adult, seen a child's toy hoop on the ground and picked it up, thinking, "I used to be able to do this" or “I wonder if I’ve still got it”? If you decided to give it a whirl, chances are the hoop fell down almost instantaneously. It’s not you, it’s your hoop! Everybody can hula hoop, at virtually any age, size, and fitness level. Unfortunately, a lot of people think they can’t hoop the way they once did as kids simply because they are using the wrong hoop!
Most toy hula hoops only weigh 1.5-2 oz. which is far too light for adult use!
Note on Weight: Is a heavier hoop better for weight loss? As with most things, moderation is key when it comes to the weight of your hula hoop when starting out. While a heavy hoop can increase muscle tone and does have fat-blasting benefits, as a beginning hooper you will want to keep your hoop at around 1½ lbs, and, ideally, no more than 2lbs. A 1½-2lb hoop will allow your body time to build up muscle memory and endurance so that you have a much lower chance of bruising and soreness.
Photo: Gaz Shirley, Pacific Coast News.
This is what happens when a marriage proposal meets a hula hooping flash mob! Get out the tissues! Watch the incredible video here.
I guess you can say he put a ring on it! Congratulations to the happy couple: Jo Mondy and Andy Broughton!
Hoopnotica Master Trainer Jacqui Becker shows the lovely ladies of New Beauty Magazine some seriously entertaining and effective hoop fitness moves.
Warning: Unlike these ladies, you may not want to do these hoop moves on camera, they WILL make you sweat!
Master Trainer Pamela Crawford led a fantastic weekend of HoopnoticaFlow and HoopnoticaFiT Trainings in Mexico City.
Congratulations to this happy circle of new Hoopnotica Certified Instructors!
And be sure to look out for a whole slew of Mexico Teacher Trainings in the future as we welcome a new Master Trainer to the Hoopnotica Family! (We'll introduce Fernanda to you all soon!)
Are you THAT GIRL? Women and girls everywhere are choosing to be their best selves...and to offer other girls support along the way!
A few years ago Alexis Jones and Emily Greener, two best friends in their mid-twenties, were up late one night discussing what it meant to be a modern day girl, sharing stories and talking about what it would be like to have more of a community with women where they shared and didn't compete. They quickly wrote something up and decided to put this "manifesto" up on Craigslist. They posted the it late in the evening. When they woke up they had hundreds of response. They realized that women and girls everywhere were desperate to connect and this was the beginning of I AM THAT GIRL.
Today I AM THAT GIRL is a nationwide-presence with chapters in every state. They are the source of positive interactions between girls and women everywhere including Sofia Bush, Kristen Bell, and Maggie Grace.
Hoopnotica is proud to support I AM THAT GIRL, an incredible movement that is reaching girls and women everywhere, encouraging them to be their best selves (and giving them important tools to achieve that goal!)
I've had the privilege to know both Emily and Alexis for years and these women continue to inspire me to no end.
Happy Hooping,
Melissa Palmer
Hoopnotica CEO
READ MORE to learn how you can get involved in I AM THAT GIRL and to see what happened when the I AM THAT GIRL Team had a hooping lesson with Pamela Crawford!
Recently,Chase Branch Manager and Vice President Frank Corso and a colleague, who heard about the joy of hooping from Hoopnotica Accountant David Huntsman, decided to drop by the Hoopnotica Studio on their lunch break to buy their hoops! They were hooked!
Last week our friends from Chase were back to help colleague Christina Illescas pick out her first hoop and DVD kit and surprise us with breakfast! They also came to invite us to apply for a Mission Main Street Grant, a Chase Bank initiative designed to help small business like ours continue to grow!
It is hard for us to express what winning a grant like this would mean to our business but with these expanded resources we know that we could achieve some of our biggest hooping dreams.
Please take a moment to vote for us and share our Mission Main Street profile with your friends, followers, besties, sisters, husbands and, of course, your fellow hoopers! Anyone with a Facebook Account can vote!
Let's spread the joy of hooping EVERYWHERE!l
Hoopnotica CEO Melissa Palmer discusses how she lost sight of her own health and wellness while building a fitness movement that inspires thousands of women to maintain a healthy lifestyle... and how she is finding it again. Once upon a time I weighed over 200 pounds...I didn't feel at home in my body and I was extremely uncomfortable. Working out was a chore for me, not something that felt good.
That was until my girlfriends introduced me to what would soon become my new obsession: HOOPING! Once I got over my fears that I was too overweight to do it, I couldn't stop. Hoopers will know what I’m talking about when I say that I got it bad: the full blown hooping bug, complete with I-can't-leave-my-house-without-my-hoop-itis.
The result was that I hooped my way to health and happiness...I dropped 50 pounds. I made new friends and learned what it was like to feel at home in my body, especially while in my hoop. A born and bred entrepreneur, I saw the amazing potential of this practice. One night while hooping, I looked up at the sky and said to my best friend and HoopMamma* Jessica, "One day I will own a hula hoop company and make DVDs that teach people how to do this and sell them all over the world."
Fast forward 7 years: I am one of the partners and the CEO of the largest hula hoop fitness company in the world. We make instructional DVDs and send them to our customers across the globe; we have taught hundreds of thousands of people how to hoop; trained thousands of teachers; touched countless lives and we're at the front of a movement which is poised to become a global phenomenon. Sweet success, you would think...
Except something happened along the road to this point: I lost myself. As many women in of midst of the pressures of family crisis, life transitions, relationship issues, financial strains and fighting to keep a business alive, have done before- I forgot to take care of myself.
It happened slowly, as it usually does: I started working longer hours, spending less time with friends, drinking less water, sleeping less, breathing less, moving less, stressing more and eating more (usually at the same time) . I wasn't hooping every day and eventually stopped completely. The weight that hooping had initially helped me to lose slowly crept back on.
As my role in the company (and my body) got bigger and bigger my visibility got smaller and smaller. I basically hid, refusing TV press opportunities and making myself virtually invisible to our incredible community. Why? I was ashamed. I felt like a fraud. How could I be “letting myself go” while running a fitness company!? This constant loop played in my head, a negative mantra, and the shame built and built. I tried to diet and failed, and worst of all, when I picked up my hoop, previously the source of my joy and feelings of success, it just felt like a chore. I felt like I had failed. It was the worst feeling in the world: I was trapped between my love of what I had helped to build and my sense of being excluded from the joy and sense of accomplishment it was bringing to so many others. I even thought of leaving the company and team that I love so deeply and just couldn't. I felt trapped.
I knew I couldn't go on like this...so a few months ago I started soul searching... I started asking for help, reading books, opening up to friends and family and getting honest about where I really was. I opened up about my struggle with our amazing team, the same people I felt I was failing by letting myself go, the same people that had seen me hiding away in the office. Their support and faith in me fueled me. I stopped feeling so guilty and started to imagine what it might feel like to feel good in my body again and slowly things started shifting... Little by little I'm making different food choices, and am starting to walk or swim in the morning before work. Most importantly, I have started hooping again little by little. It feels like making up with a best friend.
Then I had one of those "light bulb moments:" I'm not the CEO of a "fitness" company, I'm the CEO of a company that exists to spread joy, fun, love and feeling good. I'm also part of a community connected by a shared love. One that is made up of women at different stages of their journey towards health and fitness and committed to feeling good in their bodies. Given that so many amazing hoopers have shared their journeys, their good and bad days, their “before and during's” with us on a daily basis, who was I to be invisible on my journey?
So here I am, outing myself: I am a fitness company CEO with 60 pounds to let go of (I have already released 10!). And this is what I know to be true: I am learning every day to love my body right now, just as I am. I am learning every day to walk (sometimes skipping and sometimes limping) my path towards increased health and well-being with this love. I am part of an community in which sharing the joy of fun fitness with others does not come at the sacrifice of our own. I love hooping and I love our company. I am filled with gratitude that every day we get to spread the joy of hooping further and further across the globe.
I've been so honored to hear your stories over the years. You've moved and inspired me to share mine as we grow (or shrink!) together.
Happy Hooping! Melissa*Definition: HoopMamma (n.)
1. That special person who first turned you on to hooping!
2. An amazing Mom who hoops.
This is our must-see video of the week! We honestly don't want to say too much...just click to watch below for a big dose of insta-inspiration. How could you not want to grab a hoop and start dancing after seeing this!
Etereas / Animation Shortfilm from Flaminguettes on Vimeo.
Director: Daniela Villanueva, Mara Soler Dancers: Brecken Rivara, Tiana Zoumer Production: César Moheno Plá Camera: Pamela Albarran Music: Julian Placencia / Teen Flirt Animation: Daniela Villanueva, Mara Soler, Alejandro Caballero, Marco Garfias, Fernando Sica, Luis Núñez
Etereas / Animation Shortfilm from Flaminguettes on Vimeo.
We love how the video focuses on the incredible geometry that hooping creates, the shapes, angles and gorgeous lines connecting and intersecting.
"A hula hoop floats amidst a stunning location of México city. As it moves, a dancer appears and plays with the hoop. Every movement creates lines, impressive shapes and lights that float in the space as if being drawn to gradually create an impressive sculpture in movement."
Hear that hoopers? We are moving works of art!
Hoopnotica is hooping with the Queen....Queen Latifah, that is!
Queen Latifah recently featured Hoopnotica on her new (highly anticipated) show, during a segment on fun exercises for fall. Although Queen Latifah didn't pick up a hoop on set, she sure did show off her air-hooping moves!
Watch Queen Latifah go..
Based off if her air hooping skills, we have a secret suspicion that Queen Latifah may be very good at hooping! You can tweet @IAMQUEENLATIFAH and kindly request that the Queen show us her skills inside of an actual hoop!
FUN FACT: Kelly Osbourne, one of Hoopnotica's star students, was on The Queen Latifah Show last week! Hoopers, hoopers, everywhere!
