Allison Roberts

Fun fitness?

Life’s too short to be bored by your workout.

by Allison Roberts

You set your routine, you start out strong, you’re sure nothing can stop you.

But something happens on the way to fitness bliss. You get bored, not buff. And who can do leg presses while stifling a yawn?

To help find ways to banish the doldrums, we searched around town for some places where people were working up a sweat and a smile on their faces.

In a three-part series, we’re trying them out to see if we can find the sweet spot between working out and playing.

Hoop Dreams

Want to lose 130 pounds? Try Hula Hooping.

No really.

At the Downtown Fitness Club on Chestnut Street, Jen Moore teaches Hula Hoop exercise/dance classes. Last year at this time, she weighed nearly 300 pounds.

“I figured I was doomed to be fat,” she said. “I was fat my whole life. Then I tried hooping because I knew I was too big to run. Hooping was fun, and I didn’t feel like I was sweating that much.”

In a photo from a year ago, when she started her regimen of hooping and eating better, she looked like a totally different person.

The last time I tried Hula Hooping was not when I was 8, as you might expect, but when my daughter was about 8. I stunk at it. So when I found out the Downtown Fitness Club offered Hula Hoop exercise/dance classes, I got both excited at the prospect of trying it and sort of nervous. What if I threw the hoop across the room and took out the instructor, or broke a ceiling light? Those hoops can get spinning pretty fast, you know.

But I went anyway. Really there was nothing to lose. At best, I might find a fun exercise that could actually help me stay fit. At worst, I could play with a Hula Hoop without having to pretend I was trying it out for a kid, like I have to do in Target.

I never thought of hooping my way to being fit. But Moore promised big things. She said the benefits of what she teaches are both mental and physical. Hoopdancing builds core strength, tones the entire body, provides cardiovascular workouts with low-to-no impact, increases energy and develops balance and coordination. Mentally, hooping clears and quiets the mind, generates joy and laughter and lifts one’s mood. Apparently you can burn up to 600 calories an hour—an average of 7 to 10 calories a minute. Also, hooping commands focus. You have to think about what you’re doing.

“In hooping, you can’t just unplug and disconnect from your body like you can when you get on a treadmill,” she explained. “So it’s great for people like me who were really big and therefore disconnected to their bodies; it forces you to reconnect.”

It all sounded good to me; so I took up an Aerobic hoop (a bit bigger than some of the others) and stood in the back of the room. Three other women were also attending—one older than me and two younger—plus Moore. It was nice and comfy in the room, and although the low ceilings were a bit of a hazard during some of the overhead spins, I felt comfortable and sort of “hidden” from the eyes of those in the weightlifting room (when you’re clinging to a big circle of plastic in a gym, it’s hard to look a weightlifter in the eye).

Moore started out by showing me two hip techniques: the “Pump,” which is where you propel the hoop around the waist on the horizontal plane, and the “Warrior,” where the hoop is swung back and forth over the hips vertically on alternating sides of your body—one foot facing the front of the room, the other behind.

I have no idea if the Hula Hoop Gods were in the room that night, but I got both of those moves down and the hoop stayed up. The way Jen explained how to move my hips was pure brilliance. I was suddenly “hooping!”

I was having fun, and I was extremely to be keeping the hoop up. But then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked like I was in the throes of a full-blown seizure while trying to keep the hoop moving. (I suspect the gracefulness and fluidity of hooping comes after more time and practice).

We ended the night by doing a few other moves: the “Halo,” where you twirl the hoop on a horizontal plane above your head with one hand, and the “Swish,” where you use one hand to keep the hoop spinning in front or alongside your body.

I did hit the ceiling once. And my hoop flew out of my hands twice during the Halo, knocking over my neighbor’s hoop pile and water bottle. But other than that, I didn’t give myself—or anyone else—a black eye.

Weeks later, I ran into one of my fellow hoopers from the class. She said to me, “Were you sore the next day? ’Cuz you’re obviously in
shape and so if you were sore, I don’t feel so bad for being sore.”

I laughed out loud and said, “Yes! My God! I was sore. My shoulders were killing me!”

My hand felt a little sore, too, the next day from spinning the hoop around it, and so did my abs. That made me think my core was probably sufficiently worked out, and I did break a sweat during class. Just as important, I laughed a lot during the workout.

It takes time to get proficient at anything new, so the class challenged the perception I had of my abilities. But I realized that’s just fine.  I’m not going to be a professional hooper, and I can live with that. That actually might be another advantage of this sort of exercise: There’s not much pressure to excel, so there’s less in the way of having fun.

Plus, now I know my hips can still move when they need to—like the next time I’m invited to an 8-year-old’s birthday party.

Hoop classes are also held at Goddess Hour, 1470 Monroe Ave. in Rochester (224-0277; www.goddesshour.com), and Victory Fitness Center, 4 Elton Street in Rochester (370-2480; www.victoryworkout.com). For information on Jen Moore’s classes at Downtown Fitness Club, call 756-4090, visit www.downtownfitnessclub.com or search for RocCityHoopdance on Facebook.

- Allison Roberts, founder of EstroFest comedy troupe, is a local visual artist and writer.