Want to try hanging hula hoop? I advise you to do it within your ability

Key Points

★ The exercise effect of “hanging hula hoop” is limited, and it is not recommended for everyone to imitate it.

★ You can exercise your waist and abdominal muscles by simply spinning a hula hoop. It is simple and effective.

★ Adding a weight to the hula hoop will put too much burden on the spine, and exercising for too long can easily cause lumbar muscle strain.

Not long ago, Nicholas Tse posted a video of himself "spinning the hula hoop in mid-air" on a social platform. In the video, he only used his feet for support and used the strength of his waist to spin the hula hoop while taking pictures with his mobile phone.

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After the video was released, it immediately caused a heated discussion on the Internet. Netizens also set off a wave of imitating "hanging hula hoop". Some netizens even increased the difficulty of Nicholas Tse's action to form difficult hanging hula hoop movements such as "lifting barbell-style hanging hula hoop", "hanging multiple hula hoops", and "hanging human flag hanging hula hoop". However, is it really necessary to learn such movements as "hanging hula hoop"?

01

Do the "Hula Hoop"

Be careful of getting hurt

From a kinematics perspective, the exercise effect of "hanging hula hoop" is relatively limited, and the element of showing off is far greater than its exercise significance. Completing this action requires very high core strength. For experienced fitness enthusiasts, their waist and abdomen core muscles are strong, so it is not difficult to imitate this action. But if ordinary people blindly follow the trend, they may accidentally cause sports injuries such as muscle strain, lumbar muscle strain, lumbar spondylolisthesis, etc. It is not recommended that you follow the trend.

Keep fit and have safe equipment. | Tuchong Creative

In addition to avoiding muscle damage when doing "Hula Hoop in the Air", you should also pay attention to the following conditions: First, your sit-up bench should be firmly fixed. The "Hula Hoop in the Air" action requires the legs to provide a force support point for the body through the sit-up bench. If the sit-up bench is not firmly fixed, it is easy to lose the center of gravity and fall, which can cause muscle strain at the least and life-threatening at the worst.

Secondly, when imitating the movements, there should be a professional protector to provide protection. In the "Hula Hoop in the Air" movement, more than two-thirds of the body is suspended outside the device. If you blindly imitate the content of the video, it is easy to exhaust the waist and abdominal muscles. When the waist and abdominal muscles are weak, the body will be in a reverse arch state due to gravity. If there is no one to protect you at this time, the body's reverse arch arc will exceed the body's tolerance limit, causing damage to the spine and other parts.

02

What are the benefits of hula hooping?

Since the action of "hula hooping in mid-air" is difficult and dangerous, can ordinary fitness novices just do hula hooping to exercise? The answer is yes. For ordinary fitness novices, hula hooping is a simple and effective aerobic fitness method that can stimulate our core muscle groups such as waist muscle groups and abdominal muscle groups to a certain extent.

You can also hula hoop outdoors. | Tuchong Creative

Hula hooping mainly keeps the hula hoop turning by rhythmic contraction of waist and abdominal muscles, and the turning of the hula hoop will exert certain pressure on the abdomen, which will promote intestinal peristalsis. Generally, we recommend exercising 3 times a week, 30-40 minutes each time, and each exercise time can be divided into 3-4 small sections, each section of hula hooping should not exceed 10 minutes, and rest for about 3 minutes between two sections.

Hula hooping can strengthen your waist and abdomen. | Giphy

Although hula hooping is good, the amount of exercise varies from person to person.

03

Don't weight the hula hoop

Don't turn too long.

Since hula hooping is a simple waist exercise with a relatively small amount of exercise, it is unrealistic for people who want to lose weight to quickly lose weight by hula hooping. Therefore, many people increase the weight of the hula hoop to increase the exercise load, but this is actually more dangerous. Although a heavy hula hoop will increase the exercise load of the waist and abdominal muscles, it will also cause greater compression on our spine, which is easy to cause spinal injury or slippage due to increased pressure in the spinal canal.

In addition, some fitness enthusiasts think that since it is impossible to increase the weight of the hula hoop, is it possible to increase the energy consumption of exercise by increasing the time of turning the hula hoop to achieve the goal of reducing fat?

Lumbar muscle strain is not pleasant. | Tuchong Creative

Hula hooping only uses the waist and abdominal muscles to exert force. Hula hooping for a long time may cause local muscle overwork, which will cause chronic lumbar muscle strain over time. In addition, hula hooping is not suitable for everyone. We do not recommend hula hooping for people with lumbar muscle strain, herniated, bulging or slipped intervertebral discs, osteoporosis, hypertension, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, so as not to aggravate the condition or affect treatment.

In general, "hanging hula hoop" and the "comic waist" some time ago are both likely to cause excessive burden on our lumbar spine, so how can we protect our lumbar spine through daily exercise? We can strengthen our waist and abdominal muscles through side plank support (both sides), prone double-end raises, hip bridges, supine bicycle pedals, supine straight leg raises and other movements. The intensity of exercise should be gradual. It is recommended to choose 2-3 sports each time and practice for about 20 minutes.

Author: Wu Dongming, Associate Researcher, National Physical Fitness Research Center, Institute of Sports Science, General Administration of Sports of China

Review | Song Shuang, Associate Researcher, Institute of Nutrition and Health, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention

Editor | Jiang Fan

Editor | Ding Zong

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