adult hooping

My brother visited from up North with his children the other day.

As with most kid visits, the hoops soon found their way into the playspace, and my brother decided it was time to give it a shot.
K is a very accomplished athlete, a triathlete, golfer and competitive basketball player. So he was adequately frustrated when he couldn't keep even my adult-sized hoop up for more than a few revolutions. He asked me what the motion was and I made several attempts at explaining both a side/forward rocking and a basic front/back... he still couldn't get it.

Finally, I said "Karl, just pretend you're fucking. Pump, back, pump, back, always pushing against the hoop." The next time he picked up the hoop, he went for over a minute, with a look of pure glee on his face.

So now, grown-ups, you know the secret of good hooping. :)

Steve Harvey's Big Time Challenge

Prolly not a Burner, but a Hooper true to heart:

look, pa, new tricks!

yay, this week I learned two new hoop tricks:

1. the ability to do a lift and without hesitation bring it back down to the waist (with an optional acceleration, nice)... the trick to this was to realize I needed to rotate my hand full around the barrel from inside to outside kind of using my thumb like a hook... I got it from doing: lift, beat, drop, and kept going until i removed the wait beat.

2. that thing i see everyone do where they pump their arms in and out of the hoop one after the other (it looks like some crazed 60s go go dance :) ... that was way easier than i thought, and again I got into it by just putting one arm in, waiting, remove arm, wait, put other arm in (down), wait, etc... then just got more and more in tune to the beat of the hoop and started pumping it without the waits.

3. the neat thing is, both these things have allowed me to come a lot closer to achieving one of my own holy grails, the precision timing of the hoop rotation to the beat of the music.

4. the laser hoop is coming! stay tuned!

In the Flow

Some say "dance like no ones watching"... I say, "Hoop in your underwear!" Greetings, Earthlings! I come from the Planet Hooplaughteron!



PS - beats by Bassnectar. Unless you are allergic to ass-shaking, BUY THIS ALBUM NOW!

PPS - black socks R kewl

Hoops as Portals

I am really blowing my own mind considering the hoop as a portal into other dimensional choices. As I am finding out in my playtime, walking / stepping / wiggling / moving through hoops with other hoopers is a journey of consciousness. It feels almost as powerful as a DMT trip, and that is saying a LOT.

hoop thoughts evolving

i hadn't hoooped much in the past month because I saw it as a really one-dimensional practice as opposed to poi, which are naturally multi-planar and dynamic.

then i saw Hadria Beth's video with my daughter, and we were INSPIRED, and i thought, OK, time to upgrade my skillz. but i also stubbornly wanted the skills to evolve naturally from the core gyrations, as opposed to "studying a trick and trying to emulate it through trial and error." so i put on some good music and every time i wanted to get up and spin, i forced myself to grab a hoop (and go counterclock) instead.



the first thing i realised is: poi has quick recovery from "bops"... hoop recoveries suck, cause the thang drops all the way to the ground. here are the things i thought i could naturally pick up with the practice still being "fun" without too much technical intrusion:

1. hooping to the rhytmn -- this is proving far more difficult than i could imagine. the dang hoop has a mind of its own!

2. clock to counterclock and back again, smooth direction changes

3. DONE - pirouette in same direction as the hoop, so that the relationship between hoop and hooper stays static (the hoop "sticks" to your body in this mode, its pure centrifigal force that keeps it on your body.

4. control the hoop's altitude on the body, i.e. upper chest, belly, lower hips, etc.

5. hoop while running (thanks for the AWESOME visual, carolyn!)

6. hoop while standing on one leg (this direct from my tree yoga practice, see below)

finally, i have foresworn shirts for hooping. the sticktion of hoop to flesh is unparalelled (well, i haven't tried latex yet...)... AND, i LOVE the feeling of that hoop rubbing on my (perpetually sore and cracked) ribs through thin layer of flesh.... better than many massages i'd had!

6 year old alyson is a master

and i, the apprentice. witness the wisdom:

"let me show you my hoop tricks...
and you can also use poi in this context, oK daddy?"

she's already related the two, with no prompting other than practice. yay, ally!

oh, neighbors!

one of the more amusing side effects of being both a poi apprentice and a nocturnal human is when my poi or hoop collide violently with the cieling.

I had always considered being on the ground floor of an apartment to be a lower status arrangement... the view is street level, and when the upstairs neighbors dance or jump (or whatever they do) you can hear the thump thump thump. (of course, its easier to get groceries in the house on ground level, hah!)

How unusual it must be to hear the thump thump thump coming from your *floor*! I grimace and laugh lightly when I bop their floor at 4 in the morning... of course they might not be able to hear it with the bass from my house music goin on too! :)