I haven't seen anything regarding hooping with a herniated disc either. I herniated a disc and had another one bulging almost 2 years ago. I've been hooping for about 4 months faithfully - about 4 days a week 50-60 min at a time and my back feels BETTER when I do it. I believe it's because I've gotten so much stronger.. I'd run it by your Doc or a PT if the herniation is fairly recent
Good luck!
...

I am a former herniated disk sufferer. I took up hooping during my long recovery from a slipped disk in my lowerback. The best thing for a slipped disc is to strenghten your abdomen and back muscles in order to help support your spine, the second is to promote flexibility in that area. Hooping does both. Look, a person with a slipped disc lives in constant fear of a relapse as it could happen at anytime, as a result of anything, even stress. The doctors don't know either, they just say don’t do it if it hurts, so just pay attention to what your back is telling you. I haven't had a relapse in over 3 years thanks to hooping, a great chiropractor and some sporadic pilates. Perhaps hooping can cause a relapse but so can living in fear of making the wrong movement! So my advice to you is don't be afraid to hoop.. but don't hoop when it hurts...and no heavy hoops.

Clare
New York

Can anybody recommend an instructional DVD for someone who has never hooped before (and is overweight). I just ordered an adult hula hoop to see if it is a type of exercise i like, but so far have only managed to get it to go around 5 times in a row. If a DVD would help, I would like one that is truly for out-of-shape beginners.

Hoopnautica has an instructional DVD that is a good beginning DVD.

Hi Laura,

I'm currently in the healing stage, so I'll share a bit. After hooping with no problems for about 6 months, I had picked up the duration (up to 3 hours a day sometimes.) The repetition, bending and jumping I was doing (I'd moved into tricks...) caused a disk I'd herniated 15 years prior to be reinjured. So, if you recently injured your disk, or you have symptoms still, I don't think it would be a good idea to hoop. There's a lot of repetitive motion going on there and depending upon what you're doing, the contorting of your spine could really aggrevate things.

That said, of course I wanted to get back to hooping ASAP, so I sought help from the Hooping Tribe (an extension of this site) on how to get past this. Since I'm unclear whether your injury is new or not, I'll share some of what I've been doing to recover and maybe it can serve as either help on recovering or as preventative.

Pilates and yoga were both recommended for the stretching/strengthening components. I've been doing pilates because of the focus on core strengthening, and I think I'll be a stronger and more flexible hooper in the long run for it. The other advice I received was to hoop in BOTH directions, so that you don't wind up with uninlateral muscle development that could lead to injury; not uncommon evidently. Spinal adjustment (chiropractic and another type) were recommended as well. (Thank you again to fellow hoopers for their advice.)

Unfortunately for this post, it's too soon to know if I'll be able to hoop as much as I like and do all the things I want to do, but I'm fairly confident that I will be since I see the hoop as more of a healer than not; another post ;-) Since everyone's situation is different, I hope you can take something from all this that works for your situation.

Peace,
Poppy