Hooping.org

Earlier this week we dropped in on a hoopjam in Berlin hosted by Hoopla!Berlin. Now WNYC, New York’s flagship public radio station, is doing the same. Balazs Ari, a former mountain bike racer from Canada, has made a career out hooping. “It’s something like yoga but faster. It’s one way of saying it. It’s like Pilates without all the equipment. It’s like riding a bike with a smaller circle, if you wanna do it for exercise,” Ari explained. Hoopla!Berlin was established by Ari and his girlfriend, Rachel Catton, six years ago and they teach hoop dance. “Basically, it started with one hoop,” Ari says. “My girlfriend had this hoop at home, and after five minutes, I started sweating. I figured this could be good exercise. I don’t like going to the gym. Then we started to look into it, and we realized, in California, it’s been a trend since the early nineties. Well, it’s a trend. There are so many moves. We started to experiment and to practice, and it took about a year to build up the courage to actually start doing classes.” Britta Poppe is a Hoopla!Berlin regular. Once a week she joins their class at Kater Holzig, a club near Jannowitzbruecke. She says she can tune out all her problems. It’s a bit like meditation but also a great work out. “It’s really good for toning the body because all these lower muscles, the deeper muscles are trained. You have to change your equilibrium every second, so it’s really good for toning the body. Listen to the radio broadcast below.