Becoming a ‘Slave to the Rhythm’... of the hula hoop

Christine Manby puts on her Grace Jones record, stands on her bed, and returns to her childhood days of spinning the hoop. All for health reasons, of course

Illustration by Tom Ford

As a kid, I loved hula hooping. It was about the one physically active thing I could actually do. My little sister could do handstands, cartwheels and backflips. She was often seen hanging by one ankle from the top of the swing set. I couldn’t do any of that – but I could spin a hoop around my waist for hours at a time.

The hula hoop has been around for time immemorial. It’s believed that hoops were a popular toy in Ancient Egypt. Hooping was a huge “craze” in 14th century England, when hoops were made from wood and metal. Several people died as a result of overdoing it. The hoop was certainly big in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when it was bowled along with a stick. But the hoop as we know it, like most things made of plastic, found its modern incarnation in the 1950s when it was put into mass production by the Wham-O toy company. They gave their plastic hoop, modelled on a bamboo exercise hoop, its popular name – hula hoop – and two years after its release in 1958, more than a million were in circulation. Geddit?

Since then the hula hoop has been a staple of modern childhood and of light entertainment. Dedicated hoopers have broken astonishing records. In November 2019, champion hula-hooper Jenny Doan (not to be confused with Jenny Doan the champion quilter) kept a hoop spinning for almost 100 hours (I’m assuming she was allowed to stop for loo breaks). Meanwhile, Britain’s Got Talent semi-finalist Marawa the Amazing can spin an incredible 200 hoops in one go.

But the ultimate hula-hooper has to be Grace Jones. While browsing YouTube for her sublime version of La Vie En Rose, I found a clip of the diva keeping a hula hoop spinning while she sang the whole of her iconic hit “Slave to the Rhythm” at the 2012 Jubilee Concert in front of Buckingham Palace. She was dressed in a red and black PVC bodysuit with a voluminous train and a hat like a huge red lizard’s frill. Three years later at British Summer Time in Hyde Park she repeated the feat wearing nothing but a painted bodysuit and a giant bow on her head. She did not miss a note. She was at it again in 2017 at the North Sea Jazz Festival, as her seventieth birthday loomed. Seventy! I had no excuse.

Channelling my inner Grace and my long-forgotten inner child, I ordered a new hula hoop that day. It arrived by Royal Mail. Disappointingly, the postman did not arrive swinging the brown-paper wrapped hoop around his hips. It was folded into a square box and required assembly. The instructions for assembly were extensive and baffling despite (or perhaps because of) the pictures. I got on just fine by ignoring them. A hoop should be a hoop, right? Thankfully no allen keys were involved.

My childhood hula hoop was a hand-me-down, found in the back of the shed when we moved into our house at Old Painswick Road. At one time it must have been red but over the years it had faded to the pink of a strawberry stain left on a tablecloth. Somehow it had water inside it, that sloshed about and occasionally leaked to make marks on my clothes. It was popular with the shed’s spiders, who used it as a frame for giant webs. But I loved it.

My new hoop was a flashy black one with a neon pink spiral and it was enormous. Somehow, I hadn’t thought of hula hoops as coming in sizes (largest ever hoop successfully swung was 5.18m, fact fans, by circus performer Getti Kehayova. That hoop was so heavy, she had to wear a special armoured vest to protect her ribs). Anyway I discovered pretty quickly that I had chosen the wrong size – if not for my body and maximum health benefits then definitely for my house. I tried using the hoop in my sitting room. I took out a table lamp. Forget being able to swing a cat. The measure of liveable space should be based on the ability to swing a medium sized weighted hoop without damage to family heirlooms or persons with whom one cohabits. The only way I could get enough space to spin my new hoop without breaking anything was by standing on the middle of my bed. It did not make the task any easier but perhaps struggling to balance on the squishy mattress added an extra element of muscle toning instability.

There are lots of reasons to pick up a hula hoop. It’s great cardio, leading to all the usual benefits of that kind of exercise: reduced risk of heart attack, lowering of cholesterol and blood pressure et cetera. It can help you lose weight. Burning more than 400 calories an hour, it’s as effective as using a treadmill. Hooping can tone your core muscles, negating the need to do any more sit-ups. It also strengthens your back. Many hula-hoopers actually liken the effect of a quick spot of hooping to getting a massage. Likewise, the repetitive nature of hooping can make it a sort of moving meditation. Best of all, you can get all these results from consistently using the hoop for just 10 minutes a day.

Standing in the middle of my mattress, I aimed for my first 10 minutes. It was not as easy as I thought it would be. My maximum number of twirls seemed to be five before the hoop started to head from my waist to my hips and thence straight to my feet. Still, I persevered. I played “Slave to the Rhythm” for inspiration. If Grace Jones could hoop for the whole song when she was on the verge of turning 70 then surely I could keep the hoop twirling for at least one chorus. Spoiler alert: I couldn’t. I certainly couldn’t sing at the same time. But all the same, I was inspired to continue.

I’ve never experienced the mythical “runner’s high”, that release of endorphins which is the apparent pay-off for a jog, but after 15 minutes with the hoop – OK, three minutes – pretending to be Grace Jones at Glastonbury, I definitely felt a sense of wellbeing that may have been something similar. My arms also ached from having to keep them above the hoop. I don’t recall that from my days in the back garden in Gloucester.

It’s was tougher than I remembered but hula hooping is so much more fun than most cardio workouts. It’s cheap. It requires no expensive instruction. You don’t even have to go outside to do it, providing you move all your ornaments out of the danger zone. So, I have a new fitness goal. It’s to be able to hula hoop along with Grace for the whole of the 14-minute 12-inch version of “Slave to the Rhythm” by the end of the summer. Even she must have started somewhere.