A friend of mine started C25K and said she was hoping to like running eventually. I told her to experiment because exercise is always easier to stick with if you enjoy what you're doing. She replied that she liked the hula hoop. Which reminded me ...
I LOVE the hula hoop! (Comes in as a close 2nd to climbing on playground equipment, lol - I'm a kid at heart!)
I guess it never occurred to me to use the hula hoop as part of an exercise because it's just something I do for fun. I've never really hooped for more than 5 or 10 minutes either so I didn't realize how much of a workout it could turn out to be.
About a year ago, Sweetie made big ones for us to use. She made them relative to our heights as instructed in the DIY she found online. Mine is empty (light) and her's is a bit weighted by being wrapped in duct tape. The empty hoop makes you work harder to keep it spinning so it's more of an aerobic exercise. The weighted one makes your muscles work harder to swing it but it's easier to keep spinning.
Last night, I decided my 30 minutes of exercise was going to be the hula hoop. I turned on Elton John's Greatest Hits (disc 1) and got to spinning! Within 10 minutes I was bored so I tried walking around, hopping, moving my arms around, trying to "dance", and even spinning in a circle while keeping the hoop going. It was so much fun and I was dripping sweat by the time I finished - which was a welcome surprise! It's not as much as a muscle workout as my other routines are because I don't feel any soreness today. I'd like to do it again with my heart rate monitor on to see how much I'm getting out of it. I have a feeling it will be the exercise for those days when I don't "feel like it".
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