Blood, Sweat and Hula-Hoops

You read that correctly. A hula-hoop is the latest, in demand, fitness tool. Of course, it’s not your typical playground version. Rather, it is a weighted, adjustable, self propelled circle that proclaims weight-loss in the abdomen, legs, and even arms. The many selling points of these hula-hoops include improved balance, a well liked cardio plan, low impact on joints, and sometimes even a massaging feature which helps with toning muscles.

The design of the hula-hoops varies from brand to brand, but overall, the weight can be adjustable and some come with other exercise equipment such as elastic bands or a jump rope. All hula-hoops seem to come with some sort of workout plan for you to follow. If you get bored with the designed workouts, the social media app, TikTok, offers various videos of workouts that can be completed.

Hula-Hooping and Calories

Naturally, the first question many people ask when exercising is, “How many calories did I burn?” Let me tell you, doing one work out with my weighted hula-hoop had my heart pumping and my abs sore.

At first I wasn’t too sure if I was going to even break a sweat. I then soon realized I had only made it through the warm up comfortably. I followed a 5 part circuit, which at first glance did not look like anything too crazy. Each round was only 2 minutes long.

For the first round, I spent about 30 seconds getting the exercises down, and keeping the hula-hoop up off the floor. When I started the second round for each exercise, I was surprised to find I needed to take a break about a minute and a half into the 2 minutes. By round 5 I was dripping sweat and could only complete a full 30 seconds of the last round of exercises.

Hula Fitness Here to Stay?

Just like most fitness trends, they are exactly that, trends. I believe we will see a lot more of this hula-hoop weight loss program going around; however, I do not see the hula-hooping community offering enough diversity in their workouts to keep its members interested for very long.