The Next Steps

I’ve been working with successively lighter hoops to try to polish my skill set. My favorite go-to right now is a 38″d 1/2″ 125psi black tubing which is super bouncy and really amazing for breaks & reversals. It is significantly more difficult to nail certain on-body moves, like vertical shoulder hooping, which I’ve only recently learned on my heavy hoop (165psi), but I’ve got barrel rolls almost fluid with it so far.

I don’t have any decent video from today’s practice because I didn’t realize that my angle was a little short. So for much of the video,  the action that is above the waist is mostly lost. But I was able to snag some beautiful stills.

I’m finding that the jump-throughs are only slightly different with the lighter hoop, mostly in that the response time is quicker. This has been a reasonably easy adjustment because it’s only slight, since the diameter of the hoop is pretty close to the same – maybe this one is 1″ smaller, I don’t know, but it’s not enough to make a significant difference in where I put my body, only in how quickly I need to put it there.

I’ve been practicing a combination that goes from a shoulder toss into a backward weave and then into a back roll, which has been SUPER FUN, but because this hoop is so light, it gets away from me pretty quickly. Once today, the hoop rolled right over near the camera, then literally fell with the camera in the center and I was able to get this image from it:

There’s a HoopCity.ca challenge going on right now about keeping two hands on the hoop at all times, which I’ve been meaning to do and sometimes remember to do, but then immediately forget.  This is that two-handed overhead twist thingy that Katie Emmit calls a Vertical Arm Cross Hoop Fold.  I didn’t have a straight-on angle, but you can watch her video to see the move. Mine doesn’t look like hers, but tha’s okay.

And, finally, a well-placed barrel roll.

I’ve been having to restrain myself from hooping too much indoors. Last night, I took out a light fixture when Lauryn Hill wooed me into a good flow and I forgot where I was. So now I try to position myself away from anything delicate and only perform drills (no flow in the house, yo!) Tonight, for example, I practiced counter-current shimmy and counter-current barrel rolls. They’re not pretty, but I did make some progress, completing one barrel roll in the counter-current. I couldn’t repeat it, but tha’s all right.

I’ll be practicing with my oldest hoop tomorrow at the school in between classes. It’s 42″ 3/4″ tubing and 125PSI, so it will be really interesting to feel the difference between these hoops and eventually become fluent with all of them, so no matter what I’m handed, I can hoop it.

Thanks for readin’ or bein’ interested, or both if it applies.