When students talk, I listen. Since hooping can be a very personal experience, I am always interested to hear different perspectives on hooping. Recently, a student told me that one of the reasons she attends hoop class is to keep her brain healthy.

So I got curious:  Hooping is more than just getting oxygen rich blood to your brain –which hooping does very effectively– my student believes hooping helps to keep her brain and her body strong.  That got me thinking, it is fairly common knowledge that trying new activities, such as puzzles, number games or learning a new language, keeps the brain engaged, active and in good working condition, so why can’t hooping do the same thing? After all, most students come to class wanting to learn new hooping skills and then ask their bodies to move in new and different ways.

I did some research: According to AARP, “Brain experts are convinced that engaging in active learning throughout life will help maintain brain health in our later years. “The brain wants to learn,” says Michael Merzenich, PhD, a neurobiologist at University of California, San Francisco. “It wants to be engaged as a learning machine.”

Merely replaying well-learned skills that you’ve mastered in life may not be enough, though. “The brain requires active continuous learning,” Merzenich adds. “It requires change, and that change requires that you acquire new skills and abilities, new hobbies, and activities that require the brain to remodel itself. That’s the key.”

Sounds like hooping is a great brain activity to me.  Waist hooping usually comes with easy, but when I ask students to  chest, shoulder or knee hoop, they typically are learning the skill for the first time and then need to practice often to attain the skill and practice even more to smooth it out. At times, I see happy frustration in the faces of my students and I know they are trying something they have never asked their bodies to do.

So we know that hooping strengthens your waist, hips, arms and legs, increases coordination of  body movement, pumps oxygen-rich blood throughout your body, burns calories and strengthens your core while increasing flexibility, but also remember: Every time you pick up your hoop and try a new hooping movement, you are also working out your brain and keeping it healthy and challenged for the long haul!

Happy Hooping!