Source: NY Times

It had been quite a while since Marisa Tomei picked up a Hula-Hoop, since her childhood in fact, and she had not figured it would become a part of her adult work out routine.

That is, not until two and a half years ago, when a friend asked her to come to a hooping class in Los Angeles. The class wasn’t about the familiar plastic hoops that Wham-O popularized in the 1950s and 1960s and are spun around the waist — rather, it was about heavier, wildly adorned, adult-size hoops that are spun around practically every part of the body.

Ms. Tomei, the Academy Award-winning actress, was instantly hooked.

“You just can’t help but laugh and smile when you’re hooping,” she said. These days she hoops several times a week and credits the regimen with helping her get in shape for nude scenes in the 2008 movie “The Wrestler.”

Last year Ms. Tomei started working with Gaiam, the company that helped bring yoga to the masses, on a “Core & Curves” workout video that will be released March 30. And when Gaiam asked her to work on another video, she had a ready idea for them: hooping.

In December, Gaiam shot a hooping workout video with Ms. Tomei that is scheduled for release in May. More are in the works.

“We’re working with Marisa Tomei in potentially the same way that Jane Fonda worked with aerobics,” said William S. Sondheim, president of entertainment and distribution at Gaiam. The collaboration, he said, “may be the catalyst to take hooping from a cottage-based industry status that has been bubbling under for a few years into a significant and new form of fitness.”

Ms. Tomei is the same age now — 45 — that Jane Fonda was when she released her first aerobics video in 1982, but she does not invite a comparison. “I’m not even going to go there,” she said. “I’m just a girl with a pink hoop.”

Star Power
Hollywood heavy hitters like Tomei and others have a way of quietly getting a trend kick-started. From promoting the benefits of natural aroma therapy and vegetarian diets, to mattresses and even health insurance, stars can literally take a product and carry it to the mainstream if the match is a good one. You wouldn’t exactly want to take advice on the best natural skin care products from a B-movie character actor. The brand and the name recognition go hand in hand.

Some exercise professionals say they doubt that hooping will make the leap to become a workout routine with mass appeal.

“My gut tells me it will be a personal tool to use occasionally in fitness, like a medicine ball — I think it will be a fad,” said Neal Pire, an exercise physiologist and a fellow with the American College of Sports Medicine. “As a group exercise class, I don’t see it taking off, because it’s too difficult to do a lot with it.”

But to hooping enthusiasts, the sight of Michelle Obama hooping on the front lawn of the White House this past fall was a happy omen. They predict that it is just a matter of time before hooping has its day in the sun.

“This whole culture has sprung up in the last few years, and there’s no reason to think it won’t continue,” said Philo Hagen, who helped found the Web site Hooping.org in 2003. The site, which started as a part-time gig but is now Mr. Hagen’s full-time job, gets 20,000 to 40,000 unique visitors each week, some of whom organize meet-ups in public parks.

“The Internet was supposed to be this thing that brought people together, and I don’t know if that’s necessarily true generally, but it is with hooping,” Mr. Hagen said. “We all found each other all over the place.”

The promise of hooping is similar to many other emerging workout routines: you exercise while having fun.

“Anyone can hoop, and most people will be hooping within five minutes,” said Susan Guralnik, 43, who started hooping five years ago and now teaches it in the Los Angeles area.

“A lot of my students want to do it for the exercise, but they also like the playfulness of this,” said Allyson Makiej, 46, a full-time hooping instructor in Lowell, Mass. “But it can also be nondenominational meditative. It’s a calming tool.”

One of Ms. Makiej’s students is Kathy Little, a 44-year-old mother of two who started taking hoop classes three years ago and credits them with helping her lose 18 pounds. “I do it more for the fitness part of it,” she said. “For me, it’s all about core strength. It’s not like you’re in Pilates and your instructor is telling you to hold it for eight seconds. You’re holding it to keep the hoop up, and that’s just fun.”

Gabriella Redding tells a similar story: She took a hoop class to help get back in shape after having a baby. By the following year she was so hooked on hooping that she became a cofounder of Hoopnotica.com, which sells hoops and DVD’s and has helped formalize the sport by certifying instructors.

“That’s the market I want: women who want to lose weight,” Ms. Redding said.

Hoopnotica opened in 2006 in Marina del Rey, Calif., and Ms. Redding said it has been growing steadily, to more than $1 million in sales in 2009. She said she believed the sport was about to grow exponentially.

“As soon as the gyms buy into it, then it will explode, the same way yoga did,” she said.

And a celebrity spokeswoman can only help. “We need a Marisa Tomei right now,” said Jonathan Baxter, 35, a hooping instructor based in Carrboro, N.C. “Hooping needs a marketing push. Everything else is right there.”

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My Take: It seems like exercise is one of those ties that bind us to the rich and famous, no matter how we try to create our own personal bubble in the world for that. I’m not a big fan of Hula hoops, and frankly they remind me of props to go with Halloween costumes, or something you’d see kids doing outside a line up for Bon Jovi tickets . It may be fun and joyful, but it conjures up a much less serious tone than say yoga or Pilates, both of which carry a more professional air about them and the adult costumes or workout wear are muted tights and stretchy shirts. Not a lot of flash in either exercise routine.

Speaking of concerts, did you know that you can now buy concert tickets and tickets to many other events including sports events directly from your cell phone? The Mobi Tickets technology allows you to purchase a ticket via your cell phone for which you receive back a barcoded ticket or “mobi-ticket” which is scanned at your point of entry. Seems like a pretty simple way to bypass those long lines and of course a great way to cut down on paper tickets. The downside: Nothing to put in your scrap book.

I’d be leery of buying tickets on your cell phone to events over the border, like in Canada for example. Be sure check on line before you purchase your tickets to make sure your potential seller is not linked up with any Ottowa fraud attorney. You could have to hire an Ottowa criminal lawyer to help you get your money back if you choose a seller who cannot honor the cell phone bar code process once you get to the event.

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