This post has been updated for 2022.
Hula hooping seems like such a fun, colorful way to get your daily workout in, doesn’t it? Besides the fact that hula hooping burns mega calories, tones muscle and improves your cardiovascular health, I’ve also never seen anyone spin a hula hoop without smiling at the same time. It’s impossible, trust me!
Pictured: Briana of the #RubyFam
But, if you get into hula hooping without the proper information, you definitely put yourself at risk of injury.
If you’re like most people new to hula hooping for exercise, you probably bought one of those big, clunky hula hoops from Target or Amazon. They’re colorful, usually fairly large compared to the hoops in the toy section, and marketed by big corporations as “weighted fitness hula hoops”.
So after your first day of using it, you wake up the next morning and gasp at the pain you feel around your middle! Soreness and bruising, maybe even skin irritation. It hurts to get out of bed. What in the world did you get yourself into??
But before you give up on hula hooping forever, let me explain to you WHY your first time hula hooping hurt your waist, and what you can do differently to keep hula hooping without getting hurt again!
Before you read any further, throw that bumpy hula hoop in the trash. Seriously – now.
I’ll wait.
That hoop is way too heavy, it’s clunky as hell, and it has weird ridges. Why do weighted hula hoops have ridges, anyway?
I Googled that to find out, but all I could find was some mumbo-jumbo about how they help massage and stimulate your muscles…or something.
Of course, they forgot to mention that they also cause bruising and internal injuries.
So what kind of hula hoop should you use, then?
The best hula hoop for burning calories, toning your body, and improving your overall health is one that weighs about 1-2 pounds, does NOT have ridges on it, and is custom-sized to your specific body type.
As you can see below, this hoop, which is perfect for learning how to hoop around your waist, does not have any ridges and it is not super thick, heavy tubing.
Pictured: Me, Mama Ruby!
Excessively heavy hula hoops serve literally no purpose. You can get a much better, and SAFER workout using a hula hoop that weighs considerably less and doesn’t hurt your waist.
Like any popular trend, hula hooping, due to its rise in popularity in recent years, has fallen victim to big corporations and their endless resources for marketing. These companies have done a great disservice to the hula hoop community by confusing the public on what kind of hula hoop is best for exercising.
They feed off of our urgency to lose weight and our insecurities and anxieties about our bodies – offering the proposition that the heavier your hula hoop is, the faster you will spin your way to looking like a runway model.
But it’s just not true. To learn to hula hoop around your waist, you do need a LITTLE bit of weight–remember I said about a pound or two at the most–but never more than that, no matter what body type you have.
The most important factor about your hula hoop is how big around it is – the diameter. For our best-selling beginner hoop, we use a size chart based on your waist measurement to ensure we get you in the perfectly sized hoop for your unique body.
After all, everyone is different! I am a tall, naturally large woman, so I needed a bigger hula hoop than my friend Jean did, pictured below.
Pictured: Jean at the Ruby Retreat 2017
Once you get the correctly sized and weighted hoop, you will never have to worry about hula hooping hurting your waist ever again.
To start your journey off right, take my Six Week Beginner Hula Hoop Challenge for All Bodies, an online course you can take at your own pace, where I personally teach you all the foundational moves of modern hula hoop dance.