My first thought this morning was “Crap, why do I hurt so much?”  And then I remembered why.  I started taking Jenny Hill‘s class on circus style hooping the previous evening at Studio Spin.

Circus style hooping is different than most of the hooping many of your are familiar with.  First, it’s mostly on body, specifically your core.  Second, it involves multiple hoops.

Jenny is a circus style hooper.  Here’s an example of her doing multiple hoops in her hoop reel.

Yes, she is that awesome!

We started off a circus warm up drill that I’ve probably have written about before, but as a reminder, it an exercise that starts at the top of your body and you work your way down.  Here’s a great video by Kristin McQuillen, who is also Jenny’s sister, that explains and demonstrates how to do it.

It’s a pretty hardcore workout.  Give it a try.

Then we worked with hooping with two hoops at the waist, and then Jenny added a third for each of us.  We did multiple (haha) exercises with that, and worked with placing a second hoop on different parts of the body while maintaining one at the waist.

Now you see why hurt even as I write this.  It’s not as bad as it was when I woke up, but my abs are gently reminding me of the workout I got last night.  And, it reminds me that I’m out of shape.  Oi.

I recommend checking out circus style hooping if you need to try something different in your hooping life.  Core hooping is the base of what we do, anyway, and circus style hooping seems to be a great way of exploring the multiple (tee hee) ways and variations of how that can be done.

Now, go do those drills!