Is your Hoop Dangerous? What other websites won' tell you.

The market trend is to either use a heavy hoop, (between 2-8 pounds) a small light hoop (under 1 pound) which is mostly for doing tricks off the body or a handmade, rigid hoop.

      3 Basic Features of Hoops:  Size, Weight & Flexy or Rigid.

3 Determining Factors for Choosing the Right Hoop: A person’s height, weight and range of motion between the pelvis and core muscles. 

EXAMPLE: Just like one would need to adjust the seat and handlebars on a spin bike, choose the right sized golf club, or the proper weight of dumbbells, one would also need to make sure that the hoop can fit their height, weight and agility.

Heavy Hoops & Hoops with Ridges: (over 2 pounds) Common sense should show that a very heavy object which repeatedly pushes into the organs and spine will be painful and might bruise tissue.

Injury Reports: Bruised tissue and organs, pinched nerves and discs around the L4, L5 area (lower back), torn ligaments in knees.

Hoops under 1.5 pounds: (under 2 pounds) Hoops that are too light for the standard adult height and weight, will be too light to stay spinning. The body will need to thrust twice and fast and with twice as much force, just to keep it spinning.

Injury Reports: Pinched nerves in neck which leads to headaches and arm numbness, pinched nerves lower back, torn ligaments in knees,

Analogy 1:  A rock picks up more momentum and goes a farther distance, and will put less torque and stress on the body, keeping it in alignment and balanced. A feather will be so light that the body will need to overcompensate and thrust itself off center/balance, in order to even throw it a few feet.

Analogy 2: If an adult between 110-220 lbs. the hoop will be too small. Using a small hoop (under 10'10" circumference) is like driving your car around a hairpin turn. It will be harder to control the turn, than if you were steering around a wide angle turn. This means that you will have to move your body twice the normal speed. Moving fast isn't really the problem. It is moving fast with your current compression and bad posture. Moving fast, just to keep the hoop up actually makes one's posture and movements worse and has created many injuries.

Safe & Effective Hoops for Adults between 110 – 220 pounds

Hoops that are between 1.5 and 2 pounds and about 10’10” circumference     Handmade Hoops: These can be effective and pretty safe yet they are rigid. Even if you can get a hoop that is the correct weight and circumference, the rigidity of these hoops create more out of alignment thrust in the person. Flexy hoops act as a shock absorber to one’s rigid core movements. These have been proven to not only stay up longer but help the person stay in their core, rather than thrust the torso forward and over use the lower back.

The Betty Hoop Technology: My collapsible hoop design is for the total beginner to the most elite hooper. I teach thousands of people each year, since 1998. I wanted to make my job and their experience as easy as possible. I also product test every new hoop on the market to see how effective and safe they are, using knowledge from basic sports science and body mechanics. I see all the short and long term injuries from lots of hoops.

Most adults use their legs and low back to initiate all movements. Hoop Core (The Belly Pump Method & The Top 5 in 5) retrains the body to fire from the core muscles first, toward the back of the spine. The standard adult, even at 5’3” and of average weight will need the same size hoop as someone 6’. This is because they need that space of a large hoop to retrain their body to move from the core rather than from their low back. A small hoop will move too fast and they will just be repeating their bad posture at a very fast pace.